Stolzenau, April 1945

Ron and I played a nice little game of Chain of Command on Saturday.  I've been wanting to have another go at those rules for a while and I've also been reading Patrick Delaforce's book on the 11th Armoured Division (the formation in which Delaforce himself served as a junior officer in 13 RHA).

Not knowing how many players I'd end up with, I selected 8th Bn, The Rifle Brigade's action at Stolzenau in the early days of April 1945.  This would allow me to field enough toys to be able to do a four player Big CoC game if necessary.  These were the Briefings I ended up with:

British Briefing:

Stolzenau, Westphalia, 6th April 1945.  British forces are pushing into northern Germany. If they can reach the Baltic Sea they will cut Germany in half. Only two major waterways now remain to be crossed; the Weser and then the Elbe.  In some places the advance is almost unopposed, in others the Germans fight desperately for every yard of ground. 

11th Armoured Division can claim to be one of the most effective formations in what has now been designated British Army of the Rhine. The Division’s Motor Battalion, 8th Battalion the Rifle Brigade (8RB) has crossed the Weser in assault boats and established a shallow bridgehead around the shattered highway bridge at Stolzenau.  With no ability to ferry across vehicles, the Rifles must hold their shallow bridgehead while Royal Engineers try to build a pontoon bridge behind them under shellfire and occasional air attack.

German Briefing:

Stolzenau, Westfalen, 6. April 1945. For two weeks the highway through Stolzenau was choked with soldiers, alone or in groups, POWs of various nations with their guards, foreign workers and people fleeing before the advancing Englanders. All of them express only one desire, to go home.  

Yesterday, engineers of Pionier-Sperr-Regiment 1100 blew up the highway bridge over the Weser.  Last night the British crossed the river with light forces and are holding the river bank either side of the wrecked crossing.  Your platoon from SS-Ausbildung-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 12 Hitler Jugend is ordered to destroy the enemy force north of the bridge.

I gave Ron the choice of sides and he decided to be the Germans.  I'd rolled a 3 on 2D6 for the level of support! Ron would be running a green German infantry (not Panzergrenadier) platoon with six points of support and I'd have an average British motor platoon with a measly one point of support!

The battlefield was planned by reference to Google maps and looks like this:

The Weser is off the left-hand edge.  After the patrol phase the British ended up with Jump Off Points in the brick-built shed, the black-and-white farmhouse and the semi-detached pair of yellow-rendered cottages.  As per history, the Germans would be attacking across dangerously open ground.

Post-Patrol Phase showing British (white
star) and German (black rectangle) JOPs

I didn't know what Ron would pick as his supports and I was concerned that I could be up against as many as two armoured vehicles with only a single PIAT to hold them off.  I decided to go for a sticky bomb in case that happened.

And happen it did!  Ron's Hitler Jugend would be backed up by a PzKfWg III Ausf L:

The game began quietly.  With the higher Force Morale (9 to Ron's 8) I took the first phase but contented myself with waiting to see what developed.  Ron then got a flurry of repeat phases (three I think) and began to push forward two sections towards my extreme right flank.

A lucky movement roll could have seen a German section threaten the Jump Off Point in the yellow cottages so I was forced to deploy Corporal Wiggins' section in the clump of trees alongside the cottages (there being no windows in the end wall).

I also deployed my 2" mortar team in the garden over the road.

With an MG42 and a larger rifle team the Germans would have had the advantage in the firefight but their green troops were less skilled in using cover (Green troops are easier to hit in CoC) and, assisted by the mortar team using their entire allocation of HE bombs, the British section was able to nullify the threat from Ron's left flank section.

At this point the German armour put in an appearance and started to "brass up" Wiggins' section.  Ron pretty quickly decided that firing both hull and coaxial MGs was better than the fairly ineffectual 50mm main gun's HE.

As this this was going on Ron decided to launch his second section directly towards Wiggins' weakened section in the trees.  This was risky as I had Corporal Smith's section in the yellow cottages.  Surely I'd get in a couple of rounds of firing as a German assault came on?

Well, no, not if the Germans run really fast...

With an impressive sprint, the Germans crossed the open ground and there was fierce hand-to-hand fighting in the little clump of trees.

Four Germans and three British were casualties and the Germans were forced back.  Both sections were reduced beyond the point of effectiveness and both section leaders were wounded.  A burst of small-arms fire from the British section in the cottages completed the job and Ron's Force Morale dropped to four whilst mine was on seven.

Ron now decided the time had come to push forward with his tank.  With only two small sections left I wasn't confident of victory even when further long-range fire wiped out a German MG team and reduced his Force Morale again to just three.

I deployed the PIAT team into the, now thoroughly blood-soaked, trees.  One shot sailed just over the top before a second stuck  glancing blow that ricocheted off the German armour.  The third shot struck firmly but failed to penetrate.  The tank crew must have been rattled, though, as they immediately withdrew a few yards back up the road.

All this time, Ron had been cautiously edging his third section in a right flanking manoeuvre to ty and get behind the red-brick shed.  This would potentially threaten my undefended left flank Jump Off Point.

They had been under fire all the time, however, from the British section in the black and white farmhouse.  Shock was building up and slowing their advance.  At a key moment, an unlucky burst of fire saw the two remaining members of their MG team killed.  Ron's force morale dropped to two and he decided that it was time to withdraw.

At the end I still wasn't confident that I would have won.  Yes, with only two remaining command dice it was difficult for Ron to keep his tank and his remaining section moving forward but with only two small sections left I was going to have to redeploy significantly to meet the German threat.

The big bonus was that my PIAT team had managed to find some more ammunition at the Jump Off Point.  If I got lucky and took out the tank I'd probably scrape a win.

All in all great fun and it was nice to play rather than umpire for a change.  Must do more Chain of Command.

Where did you get that tile?

Something to do whilst watching the World Cup...

 

 

Very therapeutic. When it's finished it'll be a Westphalian farmhouse for late WW2 Chain of Command games.

Somewhere in the Med

I went over to Chris's house last night to pay a first game of What a Tanker!  Four of us took a tanks each to fight over Chris's very nice Mediterranean terrain.  I had a M3 Honey, Simon a Valentine Mk2, Chris a Marder II, and John a Panzer II.

We picked up the rules pretty quickly (Chris and, I think, John had played before at Partizan) though I threw a few sabots into the machinery by assuming some rules were the same as Chain of Command.

There's only so much you can do, tactically, with just four units on the table so the game was pretty much about finding good firing positions.  This wasn't easy to do in such dense terrain.

In the end the Marder's big, powerful gun was just too much for the British.  First my Honey was knocked out...

And then Simon's Valentine was surrounded and hit in the flank at point blank range with inevitable results.

It was a fun game and I'll certainly play What A Tanker again given the chance but I wasn't so enthused that I'll be dashing out to buy myself a copy.

Oh and Chris's 28mm tank models are very nice!

Somewhere in the Known World

Tom and Rob came over yesterday and we had a game of To The Strongest using my newly completed collection of 28mm troops for the Punic Wars.

Actually this was the first time I've had to whole collection out on a table at the same time and I was quite please with the look of the troops en masse.  I'm particularly please that I've managed to achieve this in about 13 months of building and painting!

The Roman army:

And the Carthaginians with their Numidian allies:

The scenario was a straight line-up-and-go-at-the-enemy job.  I prepositioned the armies but let each player have a bit of a switch around of units before we started.  I know that Rob repositioned his elephant and moved his Carthaginian general to be with one of his two units of Gallic warriors.  This was probably a good move as a big warrior unit backed up by a hero and a general is quite a powerful striking force (or it would have been if Rob's ability to draw the wrong activation chit just when it mattered hadn't come to the fore).

Tom, as the Roman commander Marcus Gaius Piso (on the left in the picture below),  moved first and threw his Roman cavalry forward on his right flank whilst his mercenary slingers moved towards the bad going forward on his left.  His centre was a bit slow getting moving.

Rob, meanwhile, as Carthaginian general Hanno, pushed forward the Numidian light cavalry on his right wing but was unable to get the Catrthaginian centre moving at all! It seems the trumpet signal for a general advance was misunderstood as, "Let's wait here and see what happens".

I had warned the guys that this was a game in which units could melt away a the drop of a hat if things went against you. Sure enough, the first offensive action of the game saw lead slingshot from the Romans' mercenary slingers caused a unit of Numidian light horse to flee the field.  More shockingly, they left behind the corpse of Prince Arabio, Rob's allied commander!  From now his army would be far harder to control.

[In act it would have been even harder to control if I'd remembered to apply the "out of control" modifier to all of the Numidian command's troops for the rest of the action.]

The shot below shows the Gallic horse on the Carthaginian left.  You can see that I used a variety of means including single trees, grass tufts and small piles of cat litter rocks to mark out the corners of the square grid that these rules require.  This seemed to work nicely without being too visually intrusive.

Command and control continued to prove unreliable for both sides.  The Latin allied legion (background in the pic below) moved forward aggressively but the Roman legion (foreground) seemed reluctant to move.

In the pics above and below we can see the Latin allied legion nicely lined up but further forward than the Romans proper.  Also in the pic below some allied Bruttian javelin men (left) are about to clash with the Carthaginian citizen levy (right).

At last, a clash in the centre!  The Romans finally get moving and their Velites throw javelins at the Carthaginian spearmen while the aggressive Bruttians go in to close combat....

On the other flank, a confused melee develops.  Numidian light horse threaten the Roman left.

In the centre a breakthrough looked possible as a unit of Gallic warriors drove off some Roman Velites and pushed forward into the gap they left in the Roman line.  Unfortunately Rob struggled to get them to turn into the flank of the adjacent legionary maniple.

The Gauls are old Lamming 25mm models but I didn't feel that their lesser stature was too noticeable as we were playing.

The confusion on the Roman left continued and as the Roman saying goes, it came down to the Triarii.  In the picture below, Numidian horse threaten Arius Marcus Scorpio, the Tribune in charge of the Latin allied legion (foreground) whilst Roman horse threaten the Numidians' flank!

Marcus and the triarii are all that stand in the way of the Numidian sweeping into the Romans' left flank.

At about this time, the Carthaginian elephant, galled by Roman javelins, panicked and rampaged through the Carthaginian lines.  Fortunately Rob had left a space for this to happen and no further damage was done.

Throughout the battle, Rob had been taking a steady trickle of casualties.  In the centre a Roman legionary unit destroyed their Carthaginian spearmen opponents and split the enemy battleline in two.

Although Rob had finally managed to turn his victorious Gallic warriors into the flank of a Roman maniple, Carthaginian morale was faltering...

... with the loss of a unit of Numidian spearmen somewhere on the right, the Carthaginians had suddenly had enough and their army broke for the hills.

The picture below shows the final position.  On both flanks General Hanno had superior cavalry strength but in neither case could Rob manage to draw the right chits at the right time to take advantage.  The loss of Arabio to a misfortunate slingshot in the first moments of the battle was crucial. Alive, he could have led his light horse to cause chaos in the Roman read. Dead, he was an early drain on Rob's store of Victory Medals from which he was unable to recover.

I'm pleased with how the game went though we didn't really get to try out the new rules for the Polybian legion's line replacement ability and of course the fancy new units (elephants, I'm looking at you) didn't perform as advertised.  Wargaming rule number one, the newly painted unit always fails miserably on its first outing!

More terrain for Joy of Six

I've just sort of finished three more terrain modules working on the basis of property boundaries being preserved over time.

1959:

1973:

1989:

I say "sort of finished" because seeing the pics in close-up I've noticed a number of things I want to improve.  Crazy because they're meant to be seen at a distance but what can you do?

May the sixth be with you?

OK so I'm a couple of days late posting about Star Wars....

A colleague at work who's a Star Wars fan alerted my to Fantasy Flight's announcement of a second edition of the X_Wing Miniatures Game.

Now I'm not a great Star Wars geek but enjoy getting in the odd game of X-Wing and I'd like to own the main ships from the movies.  By 'main ships' I pretty much mean those I can remember and to be honest that's not that many.  I have several X-Wings and Y-Wings, loads of TIE fighters and Vader's TIE advanced, the Millennium Falcon (of course) and the fancy Lambda class shuttle.  Oh and of course a couple of TIE bombers because they look so cool.  Apart from Slave 1, there's not a lot more I'd definitely want to get.  After that it's just a case of picking stuff up if I see it going cheap.

I've no desire to play in organised tournaments.  X-Wing for me is mostly going to be a game we pull out when we have players gathered and no game planned.  Occasionally I'll plan a large, multi-player game like we did last Christmas.

So what should be my response to the new edition?  Do I want to buy the conversion kits you need to use your old models with the new rules?  Unlikely; I have ships from all three factions and at $50 per faction-specific kit that's a silly amount of money to spend.

So is the answer to carry on playing the old rules?

I can see why, apart from the commercial advantages, FF would want to update the rules.  They have rather grown piecemeal by virtue of what amount to new rules appearing with every new expansion pack.  A chance to review everything and make sure all the interactions are policed and properly integrated is probably A Good Thing.

On the other hand, with none of my regular gaming gang being fanatical X-Wing tournament players desperate to extract every ounce of advantage from minute study of "the Meta", I think we can probably manage quite happily with what we have now.  It might be a good idea to capture a copy of the latest of the First Edition FAQ though!

The new rules are promised to be (by virtue of new manoeuvre dials in the conversion kits) backwards compatible with the old ships.  FF would have had a riot on their hands if they'd done anything else! However, that doesn't mean any new ships that come out will be usable with the old rules.

So what are the chances that any new ships will come along that I'm desperate to include in my X-Wing games?  I quite like those big, tall bombers in the latest film (see, not a real geek; I can remember the names of neither bomber nor film) but you can buy those already.  Lets face it there's only a limited number of really iconic Star Wars ships.

Hmm, I think on balance I'm happy to remain blissfully old-school as far as X-Wing is concerned.



  

On the workbench - Nellie

Nearing completion - needs shields and javelin cases painting and attaching to the howdah.  Oh and then lots of tufts and static grass on the base.