Race to the Sea

 Yesterday, I had Kevin over to try out the 'Race to the Sea' scenario from TFL's Stout Hearts and Iron Troopers scenario pack.  Rules were a slightly improvised variation on Cocking up Mud and Blood, modifying Chain of Command for World War I.   

The scenario is set in 1914.  The big initial battles of the war blunted the thrust of the Schlieffen plan and now the armies are racing to out flank each other.  A German infantry force supported by a troop of Uhlans is in a race with a BEF infantry force supported by an armoured car to reach the bridge over the canal.  The canal is too deep to ford, too wide to jump. 

                                       

Rather than using the typical CoC Patrol Phase, I ruled that each phase, each side will get a group of soldiers as per the scenario description.  No Jump Off Points were used:  the reinforcements arrived at the point where the wall reaches the road, as you can see on the left in the photo above. 

The scenario is written for Through the Mud and the Blood, which is based on card activation.  Reinforcements were to have been allowed for by allowing them to appear on a certain card.  Since CoC has no card activation, we experimented with a double 6 triggering the reinforcements.

Kevin rolled well for Force Morale, so his British force got to take the first turn.  And then Kevin's first roll included a pair of sixes, so he had both a double phase and a check on the reinforcement table!  Kevin's officer led his first section to run as fast as possible for the bridge, and checking on the reinforcement table, he got an unarmoured scout car (a tender for the armoured car squadron), which quickly dashed forward to cross the bridge.

My Germans (not seen off the right of the screen) were able to shoot at the scout car, causing the driver to panic and drive the car off the road.

The scout car allowed the first section of British soldiers to follow up, along with the armoured car.  We agreed that for purposes of shooting, the armoured car counts as hard cover, with a single MMG (so 10 dice, rather than 6).

The second British section moved up to the fence and provided covering fire for their comrades.

After the British seized the bridge the Germans tried to catch up.

The Brits dug in effectively, blocking the approaches to the bridge.

Two German squads tried to make best use of available cover while their reinforcements came up.

Uhlans made a wild charge against the dug-in British, with predictable results!

Under time pressure, the German infantry also tried to push out the British, and were also repulsed.

German morale finally collapsed after multiple attempts to dislodge the Brits.  Too many bad things happened, and German force morale collapsed.  The British were able to hold the canal crossing (for now...).

I enjoyed the game.  It was interesting to play around with keeping the command dice from CoC, while playing around with the deployment rules (i.e., no patrol phase and no jump off points).  I had considered using Xenos Rampant for this scenario, which would have been quite a different game, as XR has fixed movement and some automatic activations.  With CoC the player often needs to decide which troops will be activated, while being force to leave other units idle.  The randomness of the dice can sometimes give an advantage to one side, but eventually those advantages even out.  (despite our gamer superstition insisting that the dice favour the other guy!)  Anyway, looking to find more opportunities to use these WWI figures!