The following example of play is from one of my solitaire games. The situation and the die rolls are not contrived for purposes of illustration; this is the way it played out. On the first turn I rolled a five for the Luftwaffe. Ouch! I put the Ju-88a on one of the ships in Rotterdam and the He-111 on the other. The two Ju-87bs attacked the ships at Hoek van Holland. Ordinarily, I want to barrage the ships and the two stacks of defenders at and adjacent to Waalhaven airfield. But I decided to concentrate everything on the ships as I believed that the paratroopers would be able to take out all the flak batteries and the troops defending Waalhaven. If I could sink any of the ships, it would make next turn's air barrage easier. I disrupted both ships in Rotterdam and sank the Z-5. The paratroopers landed to take out the flak around Waalhaven and the two stacks of defenders.

Ten paratroopers were assigned to take out the Dutch artillery in hex 35.16-another target for air barrage if sufficient planes are available. (Believe me, you do not want these artillery units to be available for use against you during the game.) Other paratroopers secured the bridges at Dordrecht, took out all of the flak around Dordrecht and Moerdijk, and secured some of the city hexes in Rotterdam close to hex 32.18. The seaplane troops hunkered down in hex 30.18. Eight platoons and the two paratroop anti-tank platoons were held back as a reserve. The recon platoon landed at Valkenburg and roared into the palace where it captured the Queen in a great propaganda coup for the Reich. The Germans lost sixteen paratroop platoons, the heroic recon platoon, and five Ju-52 points.

At the start of Turn 2 a strength 2 machine gun company, the 2/1 NB Armored Car, and Wa2 flak occupied the Waalhaven airfield hex. Wa2 survived a 1-1 overrun and a 2-1 regular combat. Ships Gp2 and Gpl moved to hex 31.23, 0-23/0-24 remained in 33.22 and MTB-51 stayed in hex 34.23. The VL2 flak was in hex 38.26. The remaining flak in the Rotterdam vicinity was destroyed. The flak near Ypenburg airfield relocated to defensible terrain in Den Haag and Delft while remaining in range of the airfield hex.

For Turn 2 I rolled another five for the Luftwaffe. This does illustrate the chief liability of the air units-the unpredictability of their arrival; you just cannot rely on getting as many as you need when you need them. So all four air units were placed on the Waalhaven hex. The Wa2 flak battery got a "free shot" at the barraging planes, and MTB-51 added its two flak factors to Wa2's three to get the maximum allowed flak of four. The flak attack proceeded with a 4 rolled against the He-111, a 1 against the Ju-88a, and a 2 and a 6 against the two Ju-87bs. Only one of the Ju-87bs remained to barrage the hex and it missed by rolling a six against each of the target units. Wa2 could now fire at any paratroop units landing within range. MTB-51 received an AA-fired marker and was done for the phase. Even if more planes had been available to barrage the hex, the odds of surviving the flak roll and then of hitting and destroying all three steps in the hex would have been astronomical. (If all the defenders had been disrupted, there is some question as to whether the air landing troops could have attempted to land anyway hoping to scatter away from the hex. Units that landed in the hex would have been destroyed because the hex was occupied. This point should be clarified in the errata.) As it stood, there could be no air landing at Waalhaven or at any of the other airfields, which the Dutch had occupied in their part of Turn 1.

So I decided to land the reserve this turn rather than to hold them for later to threaten air landing on the other airfields if the Dutch fail to keep them occupied. Three platoons dropped in hex 29.25 and three dropped in hex 30.25. Note how they stayed out of range of the ships. Only Wag had a flak shot; it had to fire all of its factors at a single hex. It shot the paratroopers in hex 30.25, rolling two sixes and a two. Since the two was less than its flak factor, one paratroop platoon would scatter if it survived the damage roll. The damage roll was a one for no effect. The platoon scattered two hexes in direction six to hex 28.26. It could adjust three hexes in any direction and adjusted back to hex 30.25, its original hex.

The remaining paratroops dropped near Dordrecht to reinforce the defenders of hex 13.19. The three platoons in hex 30.25 could now move one hex and overrun Wa2 at 3-1 plus 2. (The para platoons have the assault arrow and their attack factors are doubled when overrunning. If all the units in an overrun have the assault arrow, then the attacker has a die roll modifier of plus 2. Paratroops are almost always better off to overrun with the assault arrow effects rather than waiting to get better odds in regular combat.) The attack dice roll was a modified 9 for a D2r1 (defender loses two steps and retreats one hex). The airfield has now been secured, enabling air landing to commence on Turn 3.

The Dutch swarmed towards Rotterdam as fast as they could given their movement restrictions. They maintained a strongly held bridgehead at the ferry crossing to keep pressure on the airfield. They moved up the artillery to be in range of Dordrecht and promise to make a fight for the city. The Dutch attacked the paratroopers in Rotterdam north of the river and the casualty count climbed to eighteen platoons.

On the third turn a roll of eleven for Luftwaffe availability saved the fat man from the firing squad. The planes were allocated as follows: to hex 31.23 4xJu-87b, 1xHe-111, lxJu-88a; to hex 34.23 2xJu-88a; to hex 35.22 2xJu-88a; to hex 12.22 1xHe-111, 1xJu87b; to hex 12.18 lxJu-87b, 1xHe-111. I sent what I thought was an adequate number of planes to take out the ships and allocated a few to help the land battle at Dordrecht.

There was a total of five flak points in hex 31.23 but the maximum allowed is four. The He-111 was aborted with a roll of two, but the Ju-88a dodged the flak with a roll of six. Only one of the four Ju-87bs got through. I executed the barrage against the ships in hex 31.23 immediately. First the Ju-88a attacked Gp2 and rolled a two with another two for damage resulting in a DG. Then the Ju-88a attacked Gpl and rolled a three with a six damage roll resulting in a DG and a step loss. Next the Ju-87b took its turn. Against the Gp2 it rolled a five for a miss, but it sank the Gpl with a roll of three and a damage roll of six.

Ship 0-23/0-24 fired against the two Ju-88as in its hex and aborted one of them. The remaining Ju-88a sank the ship with a roll of two and a damage roll of six.

Next MTB51 came under fire. It missed both Ju-88as. Now the first attacked and sank the ship with a roll of five and a damage roll of five. Note that ships receive no terrain benefits for being in a partial city hex. As there were no ground units in the hex, the second Ju-88a assigned to attack the hex had nothing to do. It could not relocate to a different hex because all of the air units making barrage attacks are placed at the same time. (The ships could probably have been better played than this. However, I wanted to have them in multiple hexes so as to maximize the number of air units that had to be employed against them. Ideally, the two-hex range flak batteries will be close enough to provide support to the ships.)

In hex 12.18 one of the three strength 5 engineer companies took a hit and became DG. And in hex 12.23 one of the pesky strength 4 artillery units was killed and the other was DGed. This relieved some of the pressure on Dordrecht and bought some time for the reinforcements to arrive.

This was a phenomenal turn for the Luftwaffe. I've played games where all the planes available in a turn couldn't sink the De Twee Gezusters. Most of the time you're lucky to DG the ships for a turn and hope that the ship withdrawal rolls will go your way during the Dutch part of the turn. Anyway, this would have been the perfect time to air land the Waalhaven Supply Head, but because the Germans were unable to air land any troops on Turn 2, the Herrenvolk were too thin on the ground. Therefore, troops would be landed this turn and all but one of the available paradrop supply heads would be used to supply the main fighting fronts. Landing this turn consisted of six of the 8-strength companies, all three of the 3-6 artillery batteries, a 4-3 weapons platoon, and General Student, who would have plenty of ad hoc companies to create. Because the artillery units are one-step units, I preferred not to risk losing them to flak.

I usually intersperse weapon/artillery and leaders between infantry companies. That way if I get a string of bad rolls, all units of a type won't be aborted. The airfield was empty and there were no negative modifiers. General Student landed safely with a roll of five and an infantry company landed with a six. The next infantry rolled a one, which placed a wreck on the airfield and lost a Ju-52 point. I rolled the landings in pairs so the weapons company made it in with a four modified by -1 for the wreck to a three. The infantry then scattered nine hexes in direction five to hex 21.20 which was adjusted to the road hex 24.21 where it attempted to land. It rolled a three modified by -1 for landing on a highway and remained in the hex. The additional Ju-52 point loss was ignored because only one Ju-52 point was transporting the company and it had already been lost when the scatter roll resulted from its attempt to land at Waalhaven.

The same Ju-52 point cannot be lost more than once. The next pair of units now attempted to land at Waalhaven. The infantry company landed unscathed but the artillery lost a Ju-52 point, landing (an attempt to fix the retched line breaks) with a modified roll of two. The next artillery landed OK, but the infantry rolled a one modified to zero resulting in another lost Ju-52 point and scatter. No additional wreck marker was placed on the airfield as no airfield can have more than one wreck marker. The infantry scattered eleven hexes in direction two to hex 41.30 from which it adjusted to hex 38.30 to avoid being out of supply on the wrong side of the river where Dutch forces were moving up. I could have aborted it instead because the German can abort a unit's air landing at any time, but I needed units on the ground this turn so I was willing to take the -2 modifier.

Despite the modifier the company landed. The next infantry company landed safely, but its companion artillery scattered with the loss of another Ju-52 point to hex 35.22 which was adjusted to hex 35.23 where it attempted to land with a -2 modifier. It scattered again to hex 35.28 and tried to land with a -1 modifier and succeeded. The final artillery landed OK, but the last infantry company scattered with the loss of a Ju-52 point. It arrived in hex 30.32 and adjusted to hex 28.31 where it rolled a modified two to land.

Scatter can be annoying but it's not always bad. Except when resulting from a flak shot, scatter will not cause any step loss to the ground unit. On a flak shot there is a one third chance that the unit will take a step loss. Sometimes an infantry company will land behind the enemy lines where it can make useful attacks against those pesky flak and artillery batteries. But units that scatter out of range of supply heads will end their turn as unsupplied, which is almost as bad as being DG. The paradrop supply heads are placed at the same time as the air landing units are allocated so you can't wait until after the units have scattered before deciding where to drop the supplies! Nor can you voluntarily remove a supply head so that it could be dropped again in a different location.

However, the Dutch player receives no victory points for killing the 22nd Luftlande companies so they are expendable when necessary. If the unit scatters into a hex within range of a flak battery that has not fired yet this turn, it could suffer a flak shot in its new landing hex before it attempts to land. Again, if you don't like where your unit ended up after scattering, don't roll to land and abort the unit instead.

On Conquering Fortress Holland Fallschirmjaeger Scenario 5.3

Introduction
The Battlefield
A Proposed German Plan
The Plan in Action
Possibilities for Further Play