And here we start the ending…

Start the ending? Does that make sense? Sure…

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.”

I am of an age where that was probably floated as a prom song. Sadly it was that freaking Aerosmith song from Armageddon. Class of ’99!

*sigh*

ANYWAY.

Turn 14. 9:30am. D-Day. Not Prom Night.

I do have to make some landing checks for the three Artillery Units that were a bit late coming to the party. One is delayed yet again, but the other two are able to make it to the pock marked shores of France.

And then the event has us remove all Disruption markers again. Dernit. Mind you, it’s only four markers this time, and I don’t have nearly as many units in fields of fire at this point, but still. Dernit.

Unfortunately that removal of the Disruption counter caused M/3/16 to get wiped out over there on the Eastern flank.

Dare I say Dernit?

West Beach only had these two bunkers firing, but it left a mark as Red had armor hits causing the Tank to explode and the Artillery underneath to be disrupted by Green’s fire.

Engineers are still waiting to finish their work.

Had to use both my actions to take out the top Red Bunker, but I think that was worth it.

And I’ve hit another wall over here. E/2/116 can’t finish off Brown Bunker due to missing BR. B/1/116 is also missing BG for Green Bunker. Morse is sitting on Blue Bunker in order to control that for endgame (if he stayed in the hex he was in, he’d be in the field of fire of that Yellow Reinforcement, so he wouldn’t count for controlling Purple). So I think I have to hope the Rangers can hop up and take care of the Yellow Reinforcements, or maybe give up on that corner and go for Green? I’m spread too thin over there, with all my units up with the General. That was poor strategy on my part. I should have sent more westward. I’m too bunched up.

Either way, the turn is done.

Turn 15.

So close. 6 losses on East Beach. 5 losses on West Beach. If either hit 8, it’s game over. I have 2 turns to do that. Then I have to hope I have 19 points to score the win. Then I get to do a little dance and keep playing.

Mind you, playing the full game you don’t need to count your score, but I’m doing it anyway, for educational purposes.

There’s no landing this turn, so we hop ahead to the event phase.

German Reinforcements in A, D and E. Oof. C’mon….there’s SOME that benefit us, ya know.

Huh.

German Fire Phase…and nothing shoots. I drew Yellow, Blue and Green. There’s only Purple, Brown, and Red firing positions on the East side. Huh.

West fires a bit…but it’s pretty useless and does no damage. Those Reinforcements are getting their say, however.

Now that the Brown Bunker is Disrupted during the Engineering phase, I can finally Clear another hex! It’s only one now that it’s Mid tide, but hey, it’s something!

Setting the stages for the end of the First Wave. Trying to position my units to control the most VP spaces as possible, while also knocking out the remaining German positions. Finally knocked on the door of the Purple bunker, knocking out its Depth marker. L/3/116 should be jumping down onto Red Bunker and taking it out next turn. I don’t think I have enough units to hold any of the Draws, however. They’re either too big, or there’s a German sitting there ruining things.

I decided to move those rangers up behind the Green Bunker to meet with HQ for Action Economy purposes. I’m also having some units attack Brown Bunker from the back to help E/2/116 take it out so the next Wave will have very little resistance on landing. A hiccup, though, when E*F/5R attacked the Reinforcements in the middle there, they didn’t accomplish anything AND it put a Depth Marker underneath. Oops. Luckily K/3/116 moved to flank them, so next turn I should be able to put a stop to that, but that was not the effect I was looking for.

It’s now Turn 16. The last one. You strapped in?

Again, nothing lands, but look what’s getting ready:

12 Units of Infantry. Looking forward to that.

One extra action this turn! What luck!

Everything’s coming up Milhouse!

But first…

Ineffective East Beach, though Purple un-disrupting might be a pain later.

I’m getting really good at freehand drawing “Ding” using a mouse, aren’t I?

Engineers can’t do anything on East Beach due to Purple waking up. Brown gives the same reasoning for West Beach. Looks like that’s what I’ll have to deal with for the rest of the game. Still, it could be worse.

Even with 3 actions, I wasn’t able to do much. L/3/16 took out the Reinforcement south of it rather than simply take out the bunker. There’s actually more in the fields of fire of those two Reinforcement hexes than the bunker right now, and neither of those units up there can control anything for VPs since they’re being fired upon.

Hmmm, actually there’s 3 units vs two. I counted wrong. It would have been smarter to take out the bunker. Oh shoot, and the one is in a Primary fire spot. Oh jeez, what was I thinking?

ANYWAY. L/3/116 revealed a 2 with a NA requirement (Naval Artillery), so there’s no removing of that marker any time soon. Will need to get higher numbers and then choose Optional Attrition.

Bit more excitement on this side. WN 66 is finally gone, Green Bunker got its Depth Marker revealed and Removed and the Yellow Reinforcement had the same result.

So that’s it.

That’s the First Wave.

So how did I do?

Let’s see what I control on East Beach:

7 measly points. I don’t get any points for Yellow bunker, even though it’s destroyed, because HQ and Generals don’t control anything (ironically) and L/3/16 can’t control anything because they’re too busy shooting at that Brown Reinforcement. And even though 62AFA controls the lower half of the bunker, you have to control both halves to get the points for it. I don’t control either of the draws because there are simply hexes I don’t. Draw E-3 on the left there is the closest I got, but at the top of the shot there are two hexes I never got to. If Spalding had another unit behind it, I could have moved it up and covered lost ground. But no dice.

It’s even worse over here. Only thing to note, hex G3 over there is in control because the chit under A*B/2R there has two steps on it, so it can control an adjacent hex. So only 4 VP here. Giving me 11 Total.

So if I were just playing the First Waves scenario, this would have been a loss. Of course, I would have played those last turns a bit differently. I couldn’t have charged ahead and tried to take out units further back, but concentrated on taking the Draws (each is worth 5VPs). Because if you’re playing the full extended scenario, turn 16 ends with a First Victory CHECK.

If you have between 11 and 24 points you can continue playing.

PHEW.

I’ll be honest, if I didn’t, I’d fudge some things and continue anyway (though I’m sure I missed some rules and have probably already fudged a bit….but who doesn’t like fudge?) for your sake, but there you go.

But now we must go BEYOND THE BEACH and continue with a few new rules and new objectives.

Now we want to control the crossroads and towns in France, and get our armor and infantry off the map so they can join up with other Allied forces from the other beaches. But we’ll need our Engineers to get our beaches levelled to allow our big machines able to roll up into the draws and up onto the high ground. And we still have German units rushing North to push us back.

The game is no where near over.

Play time to get to this point is about four hours. It took me about 3 months. The second half says 4 to 5 hours. I hope it doesn’t take me as long as I’ve got quite a little process going (I’m sending the file back and forth to various computers so I can keep the posts going no matter where I am). And since this is the fifth post, I’m scheduling everything to start dropping now, so I am now under the wire to get this game done.

Let the stress begin!