My old friend Will Willow and I got paired up in another on-line tournament and we chose African Brothers for our game.
J162 is set in Kenya, in 1940 and features a skirmish between the King’s African Rifles and elements of Africa Orientale Italiana. Three boards, including one of the ‘Fort’ boards set the scene where twenty Italian first line squads, three armored cars and a gun attempt to wrest buildings from some commonwealth troops in a valley.
I got the Italians and had some choices to make. I could set up my troops on board on the big hill, or I could have them enter from off board, or a combination of both. The armored cars had to enter from off board. I had some incremental victory conditions, whereas if I had 1 VP after 2 turns, auto victory. If I had 3 VP after 5 turns, auto victory, or 4 VP at game end. I made the fateful decision to go for an auto victory by taking the big building worth 3 VP by turn 5.
I put the Gun on the big hill, alongside a light mortar in sangers and brought the infantry in as close to the target buildings as possible.
Will was terribly outnumbered, 20 squads to 14 and while I had the best troops Italy has to offer in ASL, he had mostly green troops. He would get some reinforcing 2nd liners on turn 4, but we never made it that far. I intend to demonstrate why.
I hoped to use the gun and mortar on the hill to interdict his spread out force, keeping them from my target buildings. Using the armored cars to keep the front building occupied while I assaulted it (1VP) and the back building (3VP) on my way to sure victory.
I’m only going to put a couple of map pictures in here from this point on Most of it will be the evidence of the dicebot crime.
Will’s first shot of the game:
Will’s fourth shot and my morale check:
First shot from across the hill at my sangered mtr:
Turn 1 Defensive fire:
First shot of Will’s turn 1 prep:
Yes, the bot threw me a bone:
Two of my armored cars go down, back to back:
I’m sure you are getting the vibe here, but I must continue, to purge my body of this silliness.
Will’s HMG vs my broken MTR crew, same fire phase:
Will’s turn 2 Wind Change DR……..sure, why not?:
The last armored car goes down in Turn 2 prep:
more against my infantry:
My shots and his checks:
Now, this pretty much sums the whole thing up. Will has a 6+1 leader, and naturally, I can’t break him. Fire from across the board pins my gun crew. The 6+1 gets into CC with my crew:
It simply continued on from there:
Oh, and my HOB was a surrender. Yay!
Ok, I’ve presented the evidence and found the dicebot to have it in for me.
There was nothing I could do. There was nothing Will could do. If I was him and had this opportunity I would have kept shooting too. More Italians died in this scenario than I have ever seen, and that’s saying something.
When I decided not to continue, this is what the board looked like:
Oddly enough, I was within a whisker of taking the big building by turn 5 and getting the win, except for a stubborn Commonwealth unit who refused to break. I started a charge up the hill towards another victory location, but Will was going to get there first and he still had plenty of time to stop me. What you see on the right is all I had left. I lost heart and interest after that beat-down and simply surrendered.
Will is a great guy to play and I will set up a game with him any day. The dice weren’t his fault, and he actually was a bit embarrassed by it. He did have other rolls that weren’t threes of course, but they didn’t matter much.
I would love to play this scenario again, and I would attack it the same way (so if you ask me to play this one, I will ask you if you have read my blog!). Even with the ASS-WHOOPIN’ I still almost got the three point building by turn 5 and sudden death.
Oh, but it gets even better, my next AAR will show another semi-dicing, I’ll explain then.
Thanks for reading.
Cardboard Warrior 
One thought on “J162 African Brothers – Dicing 101”