What can I say about this one? It is a wild ride, that’s for sure. In an attempt to generate more reports and such on current scenarios, I boldly stated my intentions to generate a tactical plan, post it, then play the scenario using that plan. I predicted that it would be an easy task to cross the river, due to the work everyone else has done in the past on river crossing scenarios… oops.
My initial plan was to do a double river crossing. I hoped to confuse Earl and get past the majority of his forces. I forgot that Earl only does that when I have a VP area… I do not have a VP area. It still might have worked if Hans had not lined the riverbank with enemy MGs and BZs. That game ended on turn 6.
The next three games were similar. I have found that scenarios can usually be won by extreme measures, unless a scenario is specifically designed otherwise. What I mean by this is that if a few HTs help out, then buy mostly HTs. In this case, it required (at least the way I did it) a unique combination of elements.
I needed units that could survive arty and air strikes, units that could fire across the river both directly and indirectly, and could maneuver through rough terrain. The first two were critically important during the first ten turns of the game. During the latter half of the game, movement became the most critical. Without constant reinforcement, this game could not have been won.
Survival was the order of the day for the first phase. Obviously, nothing can stand a direct strike by artillery, but the loss of movement and possible damage caused by adjacent strikes is very important. Only the Elephant Tank can survive a near miss and still be able to move. However, an ET is slow and can only fire in direct fire mode. I needed something else. I combined two units to get the properties I needed. On turn one, I purchased about 15 MAs, 5 MGs, 2 airplanes, and enough forts to place all the MAs and MGs in. I saved the 100 points from the second turn 1 reinforce. On turn two, I bought more forts, more MAs, more MGs, and more airplanes. Ten engineers rounded out the last reinforce. My MGs on the river combined with about 30 MAs (minus those few destroyed on turn 1) made short work of Earl’s remaining infantry.
The forts did the trick. Instead of losing two or three units per artillery strike, I was only losing one or maybe even none. Earl’s aircraft didn’t get a free ride anymore. Since my MGs survived the initial artillery strikes, they could then fire at airplanes.
I started building bridges on turn two. Engineer casualties were high, but tolerable (barely). My next big project was getting some units across the river. My reinforcements in the back were comprised of MAs, HTs, ACMGs, and LTs with a few aircraft to replace operational losses.
A quick note on my own artillery usage. After learning my lesson from the first few games, I set my aircraft and off-shore artillery to destroying Earl’s artillery. The HAs in Earl’s backfield were priority one followed by the LAs in front. The HAs could reach to the mountain pass I was using to move my units through. They had to go first. My aircraft killed most of the LAs. Once the artillery was thinned out, I used my aircraft to keep Earl out of the mountain pass on his side of the river.
From turn 4 to about turn 12, I just kept pushing west. It was slow going. Once I pushed the last of his MAs away from the river, I could slip my own MAs across. That made all the difference. Earl’s last HTs, MTs, and ETs fell to multiple strike. I did not realize that turn 17 was my last reinforce, though I am grateful. Nothing is more boring than having to move hundreds of units just to clean up Earl’s last two.
Turn 19 was the critical one. I had been buying mostly ACMGs since turn 15. That’s when my LT crossed the ridge and found Earl’s last infantry division sitting on top of the airport and city. Turn 19 found me in control of the ridge top. I had plenty of ACMGs and several HTs and LTs left. The HTs were useful earlier, but just didn’t have the movement to participate in the last fight. I used a few LTs soaking up BZ fire, then moved the ACMGs in. These cleared a path to the city and killed the remainder of Earl’s aircraft. Earl had one lone INF in the city vs. my three ACMGs. After the final fire phase, Earl had two MGs near the city and two MAs deep in the woods.
It took me until turn 24 to pin Earl’s MAs and kill them. Earl surrendered. Final score (since Earl’s doesn’t really matter) was 350 points and full control of the (slightly torn up) map.
I am interested in hearing how CoKE has done with his massive artillery prep and wait strategy. Because I am in serious need of counseling, I plan on playing Cross the River a few more times to see if I can better my score. I doubt that anything better than a 450 is possible, but I’ll try a little more.
Hans has given us a great puzzle game. I feel that there is a place for scenarios like this in the TPG2 inventory. I wouldn’t want to do them all the time, but I enjoy the occasional super challenge. I like designing simple scenarios though. It’s too hard to design puzzles. I’m glad we have people like Hans and Ron doing this hardcore stuff. Thinking (and losing) are not bad things.
Ratings
: It has been done before, but not this painfully : Do this with real troops and you’ll find a live grenade under your toilet seat : Everything seems just so to make my life harder 
: Now we’ll discuss max score. for one shot play, for every game after the first. : I cried, I cheered, I shuddered, I went to get a coke
See ya
CaptainKev