Knaust’s Stand Unboxing

On 21 September 1944, the last of John Frost’s paratroopers at the Arnhem road bridge ran out of ammunition and luck. One of the German units that wore them down was a scratch battle group under Major Hans-Peter Knaust. With the bridge back in German hands, Knaust took his men south across it and dug in at Elst, a farm village halfway to Nijmegen. XXX Corps was coming up that road, and Knaust’s job was to stop it.

That’s the setting for Critical Hit’s Knaust’s Stand. It’s essentially their take on MMP’s Decision at Elst, done as a full ASL module. I’ve got a love-hate relationship with Critical Hit, like a lot of ASL players. Some of them skip the love part. So let’s open the box and see what you actually get, because Critical Hit sure won’t tell you on their website.

This is the ATS version of the cover. The ASLComp version is the same.

Getting It

Critical Hit released Knaust’s Stand in 2022, in both an ATS version and an ASLComp version for ASL. I bought mine new because it was new. Normally I buy Critical Hit used, since I think the older stuff is better.

Here’s my biggest gripe with buying new Critical Hit. Go to MMP’s or GMT’s site and the product page tells you exactly what’s in the box, right down to the counter sheets. Critical Hit’s listing doesn’t. Even the back of the box is just a description. You’re flying blind until you cut the shrink-wrap, so here’s the list.

Contents:

• 10 map panels (oof)
• A half-sheet of counters you don’t need
• 8 scenarios
• 1 monster scenario, Sperrverband Elst, at 32 turns
• 4 pages of rules

Arnhem and the Island

Operation Market Garden kicked off on 17 September 1944. Three airborne divisions dropped to grab the bridges along one road through Holland, and XXX Corps drove up it to link them together. The last bridge was the big one at Arnhem, over the Neder Rijn.

The British 1st Airborne Division landed on the heaths west of Oosterbeek, about 8 miles from that bridge. Only Frost’s 2nd Parachute Battalion and some attached troops got through to its north end. They held it for three and a half days against the 9th SS Panzer Division.

On the second day, the SS recon battalion tried to bull its way across the bridge from the south and got shot to pieces. The rest of the division never reached Frost. By 21 September, it was penned into a pocket around Oosterbeek.

Down south, the 82nd Airborne’s 504th Parachute Infantry crossed the Waal in canvas boats on 20 September, and the Guards Armoured Division took the Nijmegen road bridge that evening. Only 11 miles of road were left. The land between the two rivers is called the Island. It’s flat polder, cut by ditches, with the road raised on an embankment. Tanks on that road are sitting ducks, and the Guards found that out at Ressen on 21 September.

The 43rd Wessex Division tried the back roads instead. On 22 September, the 5th Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry and a squadron of the 4th/7th Dragoon Guards dashed from Oosterhout through Valburg to Driel in about half an hour. They linked up with the Polish paratroopers who’d dropped there the day before. That night, German Tigers came hunting for the column, and the DCLI ambushed them at a crossroads with PIATs and mines.

Elst was the hinge of the German line on the Island, and Knaust’s battle group held it. It was a mixed bag of soldiers and tanks from every corner of the German war machine, stiffened with Tigers.

On 23 September, 214 Brigade went in with the 1st Worcestershires and the 7th Somerset Light Infantry. It took three days of fighting house by house to clear the village. By then it didn’t matter. On the night of 25 September, about 2,400 men of the 1st Airborne crossed the river back to the Island, and Market Garden was over.

Here’s the whole fight on the map below. Its letters match the chronology beside it.

Ten Panels of Pain

Historical modules are great. Even if you never play the campaign, they’re a gold mine for building your own scenarios. But Knaust’s Stand jumps the shark on size. Instead of one fold-out map, you get a stack of oversized map panels. Ten of them.

Then the fun starts. The panels are printed with image bleed, so they don’t butt up edge to edge. You have to overlap them on every side to get the hex grid to line up, corners included. Building the whole playing area takes a giant table and a lot of patience.

Lining up the triangle intersection and the church steeple at Elst was a massive, stupid pain in the neck. My guess is the panels are cheaper to print. And as far as I know, no VASL map of Knaust’s Stand exists.

The map itself is more detailed than MMP’s. It’s got slopes, which is very Critical Hit, and it runs much farther west than the Decision at Elst map. The core area in front of Elst and the village itself look about the same, just a bit more complex. Decision at Elst is more abstract, and it fits on a normal table.

A Sheet of Filler

The first thing in the box was a sheet of German concealment counters. I own about a thousand of those already. The back has APCR, APDS and exhaustion markers, which also already exist. Critical Hit’s store calls it a free bonus counter sheet. It feels like padding, there to make the box look fuller. Thanks, Critical Hit.

On the older Critical Hit releases, the counter sheets actually go with the module. On the new stuff, not so much.

Nine Fights for Elst

The rules are short. They cover Elst terrain, the church steeple, irrigation ditches and a bayonet charge. There’s no campaign game. Instead, scenario 8, Sperrverband Elst, is a 32-turn monster that uses pretty much the whole map, with big orders of battle on both sides. Is it balanced? No idea.

The scenarios aren’t in the ASL Scenario Archive, so here’s the list, read off the cards. They run in order from the dash to Driel to the fall of Elst. The last one, ‘Easy’ Orders, jumps to 10 October, when the US 101st Airborne was holding the Island. Hubert’s War is named for Brigadier Hubert Essame, 214 Brigade’s commander. German spotters shelled the building where he was meeting his division commander, billiards table and all. The map’s numbers match the table right under it.

There’s a bright side if you want something lighter. Apart from the church in the middle of Elst, the map is basically flat. With a little work, you could probably play most of this with the Starter Kit rules, the way we played Decision at Elst.

Where to Buy

I’m not going to give you a direct link, because I don’t think you should buy it. 😁

Debriefing

So, should you buy Knaust’s Stand to play the battle for Elst? Honestly, no. The map panels alone make it more trouble than it’s worth, and the module is overpriced for what’s in the box.

MMP’s original Decision at Elst is getting a reprint, at a very reasonable price. Skip the overlapping panels and the filler counters, and pick that up instead. You’ll get a better map, better components and a lot less frustration. If you want more Market Garden, my A Bridge Too Far unboxing covers the fight at the bridge itself.

Academy Out!

GET TO THE CHOPPA…!!!

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