Monday, October 23, 2017

A Bit of Solo Chain of Command part 2

When we were last observing the action between the French and the Germans in our distinctly shell-damaged French city, things had rather bogged down.

I picked up the dice again on Sunday morning and things changed rapidly.

In the picture below you can see a French section launching a close assault on Germans in the back yard of the large tenement building.  I launched the French assault thinking that they could probably overwhelm the German defenders in the first yard before having to take on the LMG team in the second.


Having reread the rules, though, I wasn't so sure.  The dividing wall between the two yards is over man height; crossable but it takes a whole phase to do so. Did the presence of the French within 4" bring both German teams into the fight?  I decided that it did but the Germans weren't going to get the benefit of their LMG in the fight.  Even so the French stood a reasonable chance of winning.

I had not, however, allowed for the vagaries of the dice. Rolling about 20 dice the Germans got eight 5s and a 6 killing nine Frenchmen for the loss of just four of their own.  What's more, the French section leader was wounded. The French section fled the table taking the platoon sergeant with them!

I then managed to roll the highest possible loss of Force Morale (six points) as a result of the bad things that happened.  This took the French down to three points and reduced them to rolling three command dice henceforth.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table French Force Morale was further reduced by continued German LMG fire at the broken remnants of the French rifle team that had previously suffered from a flamethrower attack outside the kiosk. Now the Germans launched a final attack on the men sheltering within that false strongpoint.


A flamethrower burst from one side and a close assault on the other put paid to French resistance.

So that's scratched the Chain of Command itch for a few weeks, I guess. It also inspired me to tidy up some the paint jobs. Many of the figures I was using were first painted twenty or more years ago.


2 comments:

Andy Canham said...

Bit of a blow for the bally Frenchies, what! The close combat mechanism sums up the desperate gamble this type of fighting represents. Even with numbers stacked in your favour, the result is still up in the air. Makes the game result unpredictable to say the least and adds to the challenge.

Nice reports and a historical result.

Cheers, Andy

Counterpane said...

Thanks Andy!