Ambush! Mission 4: D-Day Night Drop to Destiny

With just the two of us for games night, David and I returned to the old-school counters and hex-grid charm of Ambush! which we last played a few weeks before the the first COVID lockdown three and a half years ago.

Our previous squad record was waiting for us as was our recollection of playing this scenario before.  That time, the parachute drops saw our squad so spread out, one drowned in the river and others panicking and being picked off before they had even packed their parachutes away.  Fortunately that was just an exercise...

This time the squad all landed safely.  Still spread out but with some grouping and with two soldiers even landing together.

One squad member landed in the same square as the weapons cache containing our bazooka.  Sadly he was wounded before he was able to open it but he survived the game.  Less fortunate was Ely-St.John who landed on a crossroads surrounded by German-occupied buildings.  He was swiftly incapacitated.

The others fared better with some effective close assaulting by Randleman (soldier H) and Winters (soldier A).  An SS General and his aide-de-camp were encountered but they raced away in their Kubelwagen before they could be captured.  As the Germans were whittled down, the squad proceeded to the road and railway bridges over the river and defused the explosives.  Luz (soldier F) scouted the exfil route and the squad safely exited West off the map.

The squad acquired 10 victory points for securing both bridges, a further seven for the Germans who were activated, and lost two since the incapacitated soldier could not be moved to safety in this scenario.  A grand total of 15 exceeding the 10 required for victory.

Ambush! Mission 3: A Cold Morning in Belgium

Just David and James this week, so a return to the classic Avalon Hill map-and-counters solitaire game Ambush!  After October's disastrous Mission 4, we agreed to treat that as an "exercise" particularly as we should have been playing Mission 3 anyway.

Your squad, on garrison duty in a quiet sector of the front, is bivouacked in a small village just east of a running river.  On this misty, snowy morning, your men have been ordered to patrol nearby bombed out buildings to check for German scouts.

 We deployed in three buildings on the eastern edge of the town (I think the mission designers expected us to deploy someone in the church building in the west - it was the highest point but with the mist limiting visibility to six hexes, we thought it was better to cluster together).

This mission doesn't have activation checks and the mission proceeds by random events and paragraph checks.  After a single artillery strike near us, we then heard some rumbling as we explored the bombed out buildings, and a Panzer IV arrived in the north-east of the map, along with a group of three Panzergrenadiers, three Volksgrenadiers in the east, and three veteran infantry in the south-west.

David's half of the squad had limited cover crouching in the bush and Private E was killed by the full force of the Panzer's bow machine gun.  The rest of the men ran to the same hex as the Volksgrenadiers to engage them at close quarters with the significant side benefit of preventing the Panzer on firing on them, as the Germans will not fire into a hex containing their own men.

The Panzer trundled on, blew up our parked Jeep and eventually trundled off the map.  The game was slow to play with so many Germans activated at the same time but we steadily reduced their numbers.  Eventually a US runner appeared to tell us the obvious - Germans were still in the area and we should get out.  But this at least then gave us a way to attain all the Victory Points needed for a victory - successfully leave the map by the northern edge, and blow the road and rail bridges as you go.

Having taken out all the Germans, another group were activated on the eastern edge of the map, so we decided (also looking at the clock approaching midnight!) to ignore them and the bridges, and just exfil.

We acquired 7 VPs for searching the bombed out buildings, 12 for activated Germans (acquired regardless of whether you incapacitate or merely evade them), 1 for capturing a veteran NCO, 16 for exiting our 7 surviving squad members and the runner, and -2 for the loss of Private E.  A grand total of 34 points, comfortably exceeding the 25 needed despite our ignoring the bridge objectives.

With 32 combat points received for successfully completing the mission, we can hopefully improve some of the squad's stats and improve their chances of completing Mission 4 for real next time.

 

Ambush! Mission 4: D-Day Night Drop to Destiny - 30 October 2019

David and I met up to play another Ambush! scenario.  Continuing the campaign with the squad from the last game, we set up for Mission 4: D-Day Night Drop to Destiny (only afterwards realising that we should of course have played Mission 3 next...).

I had updated the small yellow German character cards with some beautifully illustrated versions that had been uploaded to BoardGameGeek.  A huge improvement to the look and feel of the game.

Inspired by that, I added some headshots from the Band of Brothers characters to the squad sheet for some additional colour. 

It was all downhill from there...

The eight US soldiers and their cache containing a bazooka and four charges entered from the eastern edge of the map and were randomly blown all over the place.  One soldier landed in the river and was swept away, presumed drowned.  Two others landed together but the rest were so spread out that they were out of command and many of them panicked following a series of unlucky initiative rolls. 

As the US regained their bottle, German soldiers and snipers started appearing all over the map, killing or wounding several more US soldiers before they had barely finished packing away their parachutes.

The US discovered a General and his aide-de-camp but after some one-sided firefights, the Germans had a firm upperhand.  The General was being driven away in a Kubelwagen and the Germans had blown one of the two bridges we were tasked to capture.  It was late, we had definitely lost, so we paused the game at this point.

The following day, I was keen to discover the fate of the remaining soldiers.  The highlight was blowing the General up in his Kubelwagen with a bazooka (surprisingly only panicking the driver who then drove off the map!) and the lowlights were one soldier failing three times to shoot two Germans with his SMG in the same room as him, and the remaining bridge being blown up.

The map was soon covered with KIA and Incapacitated markers.  Two wounded US soldiers limped around the map clearing up the town of the remaining Germans.  The US earned 9 Victory Points for discovered Germans but failed to capture the General or the bridges.  There was a loss of 12 VPs (2 each for the six lost soldiers) so a disappointingly negative score well short of the 10 required for victory.  A dismal outcome but still a fun game.

Ambush! Mission 2: Advance to Chasoul - 2 October 2019

From the back of the box:

Ambush! is the solitaire game of combat, adventure, and heroism in World War Two France. Using a ground-breaking development of the programmed paragraph solitaire system, Ambush! gives the player control of an American squad, faced with a variety of missions against an ever-changing, hidden German foe. The variable events, innumerable tactical options, and wealth of unexpected occurrences make Ambush! a solitaire gaming experience unlike any that has gone before. The easily learned rules are specially designed to get the player into the action within minutes. The player selects and arms his squad, providing each soldier with command and initiative ratings, perception, weapons skill, driving skill, and movement capability. After selecting one of the eight missions provided, the player sends his squad into a mission map to conduct operations called for in the mission. Soldiers move freely, as far as the player wishes, checking for events each time they move...until the sequenced action rounds are triggered by the whine of German bullets!

I played this a lot with Duncan in the mid-nineties.  But apart from a couple of games with Kieron and one with David, it hasn't come out much in the last twenty-five years.  In that time, I've collected all the expansions, so was keen to kick-start it again when there was an opportunity.

David and I dusted off our (decade-old?) Squad Record from Mission 1: Bloody St Mick and set up for Mission 2: Advance to Chasoul.

Our squad had to check out all the buildings in a village.  We approached from the west and decided to swing round and approach the village from the south.  Privates Greggs and Harris stepped out of the woods and surprised a sniper in a small building.  Harris instantly bought it but Greggs rushed in and assaulted the German who promptly surrendered.  A Pyrrhic victory as Greggs had to spend the rest of the game very honourably escorting the captured prisoner.

Further round the village, after spotting and disarming a boobytrap in another building, Sergeant Barraclough spotted a second sniper, and sprayed the distant building with his sub-machine gun, taking out the enemy with a lucky shot.  Shortly afterwards, Private Dawson surprised three Germans in the woods and a big scrap ensued, with Barraclough capturing the officer.

Suddenly, a Messerschmitt ME109 flew overhead strafing the village but fortunately missing the squad.  It returned again later and Captain Abernathy raised his Browning Automatic Rifle, took aim and against all the odds, penetrated the fuselage and downed the fighter. 

With all the Germans dispatched and the village cleared, a reinforcement Jeep with a handy Medium Machine Gun unexpectedly arrived.  Private Johnson put up with all the insults when he finally arrived at the railway station where the squad and their two prisoners had gathered.  After a moment to remember Harris' sacrifice, Dawson started to brew up.

The squad gained 19 points for the buildings explored, 1 point for the appearance of the ME109 and 7 points for the various Germans killed or captured, for a total of 27 points.  They lost 2 points for the regrettable death of Private Harris and so just managed to achieve the victory condition of 25 points.  With their chests (and stats) suitably swelled, they set off - next stop Belgium.