Hull Down

For years I have had (some) issues with dice towers. I used two commercial ones until now. One is a plastic thing that dismantles (very) easily and every now and then dismantles when a dice is rolled in it with the various parts doing a 'Colditz' and escaping under any local furniture and the second a cardboard contraption that did the job but, much like the plastic one, had some issues with either losing or having the dice end up at an unusual angle. My default game rules aside (cocked dice or a single dice exits the tower and both have to be re-rolled. No 'I will keep the one and re-roll the dice that was cocked or exited etc) I eventually took the plunge and ordered one of Mario's (Sgt Essig) hand made ASL towers.  Pre-Order Initially after indicating what design you want (and there are several getting more and more complex/useful). I just had a look through some of the facebook tower posts and picked one I wanted. In my case it was the default simple tower. Next up ...

Staying early war we now moved to this scenario with a decent British force of the Rifles and the 3rd RTR trying to push through from Calais to Dunkirk. The German blockading force of the 1st Panzer Division will be played by me.   Normally scenario attackers have a large preponderance of force but in numbers the Germans are not far behind the British though the British are well led with no less than four officers and one a particularly scary 9-2. The main attacking advantage lies in the four tanks and two bren carriers that the RTR are packing but the scenario designer was obviously keen to prevent too much tank VBM shenanigans because the Germans have plenty of early war anti-tank capable weapons and there is a restriction on vehicles lost on the Victory Conditions (lose 3 full tanks or both carriers and 2 tanks and it's game over). I suspect part of the reason for the high German infantry numbers is the nasty enclosed terrain as there is very little 'must run half my for...

For my next rules deep dive I wanted to look into another one of those sometimes misunderstood sections and look at VBM (Vehicle Bypass Movement) combat. Not 'what to do to stop it' or the 'best ways to deal with VBM' but instead with the various options once that tank (I will say tank but this also includes other, usually more vulnerable, vehicles) moves in.    Example One So let us paint the scene. We have a German 1st line 4-6-7 squad with a Heavy Machine Gun and an 9-1 officer sitting in a wood covering a large area of ground  that the Russian opposition wants to get past without facing that nasty fire from that unit. The Russian opponent does not have many spare resources to deal with this but does have a T-34 that he could use to VBM freeze the squad.  The tank has used 6 movement points up to this point. He drives it up, stops outside the hex taking 9 MP  he stops for 10MP and shoots his machine guns for a 6 up  1 shot (rolls 8 so 'just' misses an ef...