Incredible! We did it – we played with Dave the whole Combat Commander Europe Base Game in slightly over 8 months! This was asynchronous gaming, using the Discord for file exchange and interruptions as well as VASSAL to do the actual playing. That was such a joy and fun – organised approach, scenario by scenario, was also very welcome. To the extent that Dave started to play in CCE Ladder! I will provide today the session report from our game, but there will be one more post, summarizing the whole campaign, richly saturated with statistics!

Other Combat Commander scenarios in our camping with Dave:
#1 Fat Lipki
#2 Hedgroves and Hand Grenades
#3 Bonfire of the NKVD
#4 Closed for Renovation
#5 Cold Front
#6 Paralyzed from the West Down
#7 Bessarabian Nights
#8 Breakout dance
#9 Rush to contact
#10 Commando Schools
#11 Hold the Line

#12 Misty Mountain is a large scenario – you would expect such one as a final battle – featuring the Defender (Dave, Germans) as well as Attacker (Michal, US and Brazilian troops). This is December 1944, and the 1st Brazilian Expeditionary Division – organised and equipped as US forces – spent already couple of months in the European Theater. Now they are helping to assault the Monte Castello – this will be already second attempt to take that hill.

The scenario features massive – but Green – reinforcement for allies. The terrain is one of the most variable in Combat Commander, with various hills, woods, buildings and blind spots. Still, the well positioned HMG can really be a lot of nuisance to attackers. Let us see how it went!

You can click on every image and enlarge it for better visibility.

Our set-up of Scenario 12 – Dave is well entrenched in the middle of the map, with HMG on the hill overlooking most of approaches. I have my forces in the bottom of the map, ready to spring forward.
Having good cards in hand, I immediately initiate attack in the middle, killing one Volksgrenadier in the process and preparing to storm the bunker. However…
…the hidden mines not only stop my advance but also allows Dave to counter-attack and kill my melee force. One more Brazilian unit is also destroyed in a firefight which ensued later. Not the best beginning… especially as Germans also bring heavy mortar as reinforcements!
So I am starting a methodical pounding – smoke to HMG and then fire at the exposed German squads. It works pretty well, with two of them quickly dispatched. Additionally we are getting foxholes and mines as events plus Walking Wounded (my squad reconstitutes). Still, most importantly, my reinforcements arrive!
Time to move a bit. Especially as another Walking Wounded event happens! One more German defeated and then… a Wire and Suppression of all my units not led by leader. Argh, things are again happening not as I would love to see them.
I am trying to move forward, but the Time events are too often, not only pushing game forward but also dispersing smoke from HMG. SS appears on objective which could be a game changer, one more hidden wire is found and three US reinforcement units killed.
Final situation at the game end – I managed to exit quite substantial group of units once or twice, but those wires were a nightmare and prevented me from faster movement.
Causalities on both sides.

Summary

Definitely, that was not my day – my initial melee attack did not work well and when I started to move (too late?) the wires sprung-up everywhere. That is a learning not to sit but to risk and charge forward! Anyhow, this was also a good summary of our campaign – which I will describe in details soon.

But for now we moved our attention to… Combat Commander Pacific! More reports to come!