Dodgson's World: The Hellfire Campaign Part 5

I seem to be missing an AAR and the accompanying photos. Hmm. Ah well, never mind. Last time around, we fought a battle north of Alacrity. The insurgents held the field but at some cost to themselves.

After the last battle in Alacrity, both sides pulled back to lick their wounds. Casualties had been heavy and neither side felt ready to try again immediately. The rebels camped north of Alacrity while the Company occupied the town, only to retreat southwards to give themselves time to recover before assaulting again. While the two main forces recovered, other elements of both sides began converging on Alacrity once more. By the afternoon of the fifth day, the insurgents felt able to move their main force into the town. ShortCom responded by sending in the remnants of Jessop's Regiment. The insurgents hunkered down, ready to make taking the town costly while Prince Bishopette Athaniel Moor tried to complete her mission of kissing babies and raising the flag for the insurgents.

In the meantime, Liberty Battalion of the insurgents had made its way by secret mountain trails to the outskirts of Alacrity. It immediately moved to pin the remaining ShortCom forces.

In Alacrity, the insurgents had occupied a number of key buildings. They dug in and hoped to weather the ShortCom storm just as they had before.

Unfortunately for them, the ShortCom commander had finally got to grips with the technology available to him. The artillery barrage quickly destroyed one company of insurgents, while the long range shelling for the supporting light tank saw off another. The insurgents had nothing with which to counter this long range assault, so they girded their loins and moved quickly forwards from building to building until they were within range of the enemy and could attempt to take out the enemy with their short-range RPGs. Sadly this did not work. There was nothing for it but to try to break out by close assaulting the vehicles and making a gap in the enemy's lines.

The company guarding the Prince Bishopette charged forward to engage the enemy mobile infantry. They outnumbered the enemy 2:1, their blood was up, and they were fighting for something they believed in. They could not lose. Reader, they lost. As the melee raged backwards and forwards, they held the upper hand at all times but could not quite close the deal. Then disaster struck. A ShortCom snatch team grabbed the Prince Bishopette and bundled her into a waiting APC as the insurgents were driven back. As they caught their breath, ShortCom troopers covered the withdrawal of the APC. The campaign was over. The insurgents had failed and ShortCom could now dominate all of Fidelis Superior.

This was a fun little campaign. The rules required a certain amount of interpretation and sportsmanship on the part of the players, but that suited us nicely. Hellfire itself is a pretty good set of rules. The combat calculations felt a bit clunky at the start but we soon got to grips with them and I'm sure that the mental arithmetic has rejuvenated our ageing brains a little bit. The only problem with the rules is that they don't quite play quickly enough to fit the time available to us, but that won't stop us playing them again when we have more time.

Turning the Flank at Reval: The Battle of Steppe Trails

The Estonian campaign must come to a conclusion at some point. Either the Freikorps juggernaut would run out of steam or the Estonian nation would have been bled white. That conclusion was to happen at Steppe Trails. There could be no other conclusion this day. The winner of this battle would hold the laurels and the loser would be consigned to the dustbin of history.

The ground at Steppe Trails comprised a small number of tiny wooded areas, little more than copses, and several low hills. There were no good defensive positions to hide in, so the Freikorps plan was to drive forward as fast and hard as they could in an attempt to push the tiny defending force from its positions before reinforcements could arrive.


They marched hard up the road (Freikorps movements shown by red arrows and Estonians by blue) towards the probable hiding places of the enemy and had soon reached them. An Estonian tank and armoured car showed themselves and promptly routed a company of Freikorps Uhlans.


At about the same time as the Freikorps armoured car spotted Estonian cavalry in the ambush at that north end of the battlefield, Estonian reinforcements arrived at the south-west, routing the second company of Uhlans and breaking a Landswehr company. Fortunately the machine-guns in the woods caused some casualties to the advancing Estonians. The Freikorps commander quickly sought to redeploy his troops in the centre.


As firefights raged in the south-west and casualties mounted on both sides, the Freikorps destroyed an Estonian armoured car to the north and drove the Estonian cavalry back there. IN the centre Estonian cavalry mounted a charge towards the Freikorps infantry and drove them back. Meanwhile the Estonians were marching forwards through the woods in the south-west and destroying Freikorps machine-guns and routing Freikorps infantry (look for the big chicken marker).


Despite their losses, the Freikorps sought to take the fight to the Estonians and continued to advance into the fire. One big push was all that was needed to carry the day.


Unfortunately, pluck and courage count for nothing against bullets. With all of their Colonels dead and casualties mounting Freikorps nerve failed. Half their army was dead or routed and the rest of the Freikorps took to flight. Miles from home, tired and hungry it was all too much for them.


Freikorps losses = 173 points (Flight Number 170)
Estonian losses = 136 points (Flight Number 205)

This game was characterised by some early good rolling on the part of the Estonians that saw a couple of Freikorps companies routed, while the Freikorps never quite managed to get the Estonians to rout once the reinforcements had arrived. They piled on the terror markers but not quickly enough. Had they done so, then the Estonians would have routed straight off the battlefield and the Freikorps job would have been easier. As it stood, they took slow and steady losses throughout and then failed their flight test the first time they had to take it. In the battle, the Freikorps lost 4 Colonels and 1 Captain to enemy fire, which seemed quite remarkable to us, not ever having seen many officers killed in battle. Still, it was an epic battle with an epic conclusion. The Freikorps fought gallantly throughout but the Estonians won the battle that really mattered and won the campaign as a result.

Turning the Flank at Reval: We Are Men of Desperation. And Desperate Men Scrap Until They Are Dead or Win.

Soldiers!

This is the last hour. And this is judgement day.

We have fought backwards grimly, trading space for time, boxing the Hun’s square ears round both sides of his square head, and whittling him away. But now there is nothing left to men of desperation but to fight and to win.

We are men of desperation. And desperate men scrap until they are dead or win.

I need not paint too black the picture that sits before us. The enemy stands upon the precipice- if he falls forwards, he falls on our women and children and our country burns in the black fire of pillage and foreign conquest. If he falls backwards, he falls into the blacker smoke and wrack and ruin of his own fall, and he will lie on his belly and eat the dust of the earth, a ruin among armies and a marvel among the nations. It falls to us to see he falls backwards.

All his victories have lain neither in muscle nor in spirit nor in strategy, but in numbers and mechanised might. And through good fortune and good fighting, we now wield the mechanised might he left by the mountain track. Now every advantage he has ever held of brook, of tree, of motor-car and cannon-gun, sits with us, at the edge of the world and the judgement of the earth.

And we will make him pay.