Intro to CoC2 - Probe in 1940 France

 Chain of Command second edition was released at the end of May, and I have spent the past month learning about the revisions in the new edition.  Today, Craig brought his 1940 French over for a playthrough of the Probe scenario against my 1940 1st Wave German infantry.  We picked the Probe as it is a smaller scenario, but unlike the Patrol, it includes an emphasis on objectives and the new Final Countdown mechanism.  

Before Craig arrived, I set up the table and diced for table orientation, getting lengthwise rather than across the width, and for support points, getting a 9 for the German attackers.  This translated into 6 points for Craig's French, including balancing for the difference in force value.

Here is the table.  Germans entered from the right, and defending French came from the left.  The woods in each of the opposite corners were considered badly obstructed, heavy terrain.  The stone walls are moderate obstacles and the wooden fences are minor obstacles.  Line of sight through the orchard in the foreground is lightly obstructed.  The rest of the table is open ground.

At the end of the Patrol Phase.  I don't have generic patrol markers, so we used my Op Husky markers for 1st Canadian Division and Fallschirm-Panzer-Division 1. Hermann Göring.  Here are the final positions of the markers.  I'm getting better at the patrol phase, so I was able to place my Jump Off Points further onto the table than when I was brand new at this game.

The first German infantry move into the farmer's field.

The French infantry deploy to counter them.

More Germans deploy as their mates move forward.  A French franc-tireur managed to shut down the German JOP on the left for several phases - that was a well-chosen support choice by Craig!  The green 'trees' are a clever innovation that Craig came up with.  Each of the uprights can hold several markers - most importantly shock markers (white) but other colour coded markers include yellow (one for pinned, two for broken), green ammo used (for teams with limited ammunition like light mortars) and wound status (red for wounded, blue for stunned).  The two forward sections have moved at the double, which earned them two shock markers each, but each section JL rallied off of them.

A few more phases into the game.  The blue barrel JOP is finally usable.  Craig's FOO has called for a mortar barrage, with the white smoke marker showing the location of the ranging shot.  The nearby section in the orchard is pinned (yellow marker) by the ranging shot.  The section in the foreground is also pinned, but as a result of defensive fire from the French infantry.  As it turns out, we overrated the effectiveness of pinning from the mortar ranging shots, both with the distance from the ranging shot and how long it took the pinned units to recover.  They are only supposed to be pinned for the phase of fire and the next phase, but we ended leaving them pinned until the turn end.

This next event was unintended!  My German section advanced through the orchard but accidentally overreached, and ended up in close combat with the French!  The close combat worked out to be even odds, with 12 dice for each side.  Due purely to lucky dice, the Germans routed the French with 5 kills to 1.  The French rolled a 6 for leader, so he was luckily not one of the casualties.  Nonetheless, the French section broke and fell back 18".  V2 places a big emphasis on facing for individual figures, and the French had been focussed on the Boche across the field.

Here are the broken French.  The coloured wraps on the bases help to identify which team each figure belongs to, with the blue base for the JL.  Their 'tree' is visible, with two yellow beads indicating that they are broken.

By contrast, here are my Germans.  The LMG team have larger diameter bases, and the JL base is taller.  All of these have two dots on their bases, showing them to be in the second section (or gruppe, I suppose, as they are Germans!).

Finally, the dastardly boche open fire on the broken French squad.  This destroyed the squad, and the result was to bring Craig's force morale down to 0, giving the game to the Germans.  The d12 in the farm cart is tracking the remaining phases in the Final Countdown.  

I didn't get a good photo of the German sniper.  He must have had good camouflage!  His arrival was delayed by several phases by the franc-tireur, but once he arrived, he was a fair nuisance to the French, inflicting multiple casualties including a junior leader, as well as adding loads of shock.

I actually got so involved in the game that I forgot to take photos of quite a lot of the action.  The French mortar took several ranging shots before fixing a location he liked, and then wasn't able to get the '1' he needed to bring down the pain, so a lucky break for the Germans.  I also missed out on much of the activity in the farmyard.

There were couple of things we realised after the game that we missed.  In addition to the mortar rule mixup I mentioned above, we forgot about the new Storm of Steel rule.  Craig's V-B rifle grenades were very effective in the game, but if we'd remember SoS, they would have been deadlier!  Since SoS also applies to the German special maschinengewehr rule, it gives a good reason to use it more often. 

We had a great game, and are looking forward to having another one soon!

Battle for Husiatyn - WWI Eastern Front

 Lisa, Arthur and I played scenario 6 from the historical campaign she's preparing based on the service of the Royal Navy's Armoured Car Expeditionary Force on the Eastern Front in 1917.  Today's game is based on action at Husiatyn in Galicia.  The Russians and their British allies want to stop the Germans from crossing the bridge and capturing the town.

We used Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles for this game, same as with the others in this series.

Russians and Brits start on the road across the top of the photo, and the Germans on the lower side of the photo.  Germans want to cross the river, which can be done at the bridge at regular speed or they can wade the river, treating it as difficult terrain. The airplane represents an observation balloon, which the Germans can use to call off-board artillery strikes.  The observer called in shots turn after turn until late in the game, when the Pierce-Arrow armoured car finally knocked it out of the sky.

The day was a foggy one, so every turn a die is rolled to see if the fog settles in, restricting vision to half range.  If it is already foggy, then a test is made to see if the fog lifts.  The fog came in early in the game, which allowed the forces to advance unhindered by their opponent's actions.

Here the German MG has crossed the bridge, but had to deploy quickly, without taking cover, to respond to the Lanchester AC that appeared through the mist.

Other German forces attempted to wade through the river. The two-man sniper team was eliminated by Russian and British fire before it was able to get into position.

In a rare occurrence, the German flamethrower team was able to fire its weapon, at its extreme range.  They only had minimal effect, adding a single point of shock onto the Lanchester. The car immediately returned fire and wiped out the flamethrower.

A firefight developed, between the MG, infantry and two British cars.

My photography was a bit off here - the Russian cavalry charged and eliminated a German infantry unit, and were then driven off by rifle fire from another unit. 

As the Russian cavalry regroups, an infantry unit moves to keep the pressure on the Germans.

After the Germans wading across the river were defeated, the focus turned to the remaining forces at the end of the bridge.  The smoke puff represent shock.

Russian infantry quite sensibly use the Rolls Royce as cover,

Only to be dismayed as the car is taken out by an off-board artillery strike!

Meanwhile the Russian cavalry regrouped, then charged and wiped out an infantry unit and the MG that was adjacent to it.

Glamour shot of the Russian infantry.

Victorious Russian cavalry!

RNAS Pierce-Arrow Armoured Lorry.  This was quite a beast, porting around a 3" QF field gun.

Thanks, Lisa, for writing a great scenario pack.  Looking forward to playtesting the final scenario soon!

WWI Russian Reinforcements

 As my WWI Russian cavalry had a slightly off-putting 9 cavalrymen, I placed an order to North Star Miniatures to top up the unit to a nice, round number of 10.  But of course I can never order just one thing!  So I added a couple extra packs, and here they are.

First up, here are a pair of generals from Crusader Miniatures Boxer Rebellion line.  I had an idea that Boxer Rebellion would be close enough to WWI, especially for officers.  The officer in the great coat fits in well for WWI, but the chap in the tunic and cap didn't match my other WWI Russians.  On the other hand I thought he was a good fit for my 1880-ish Russian general!  So I gave him a white coat and red trousers to match the Russian forces for Central Asia.

Copplestone identifies these as 'Cossack Standard Bearers', but in my mind the flag poles can just as easily be lances, so two of these are lancers.  The miniatures in the pack are in a mix of uniforms so I painted one to match the WWI cavalry, and the other two to match the Circassian cossacks for Central Asia.

The great thing about the unchanging nature of the uniforms worn by these Circassians is that I can justify using them any time from the mid-nineteenth century right up to WWII.  The black-yellow-white tricolour flag, however, is a bit more specific.  It was phased out in the 1890s in favour of the white-blue-red tricolour of Peter the Great.  So the standard is great for the army conquering Central Asia, but not so much for WWI.

I painted the other Copplestone cavalryman to match the uniform worn by the horsemen I got from Siberia Miniatures.  The Copplestone horse and rider are a bit bigger than the Siberians, but with the same paint scheme they fit together pretty well.

Mixed into the unit, he and his mount are visibly larger, but for my purposes he fits in well enough.

To round out the order, I picked up a Copplestone Castings field gun.  

The base is a funny, wedge-shaped bit of wood that I had in my bits box.  I suppose I could have trimmed off the pointed end, but it does no harm as it is.

Here is the Copplestone field gun next to the Siberia miniatures field gun with navy crew.

Maximilian 1934 Playtest

 Last night at the Trumpeter's monthly meeting at Bonsor Community Centre, Corey led us through a first go at Maximilian 1934 (aka Mad Max 1934), a game which is basically Car Wars using 1920s-era racing cars.  

Our motive for trying these rules came from our WWI games, and the question of |"What else can we do with our WWI armoured cars?"  So right from the start our approach stretches the concept of the game, as we brought heavily armoured, big and clunky vehicles compared to the sleeker racing cars that the game designers built the game around.

The basic idea we had was that we would only use vehicles we already had in our collections.  This was supposed to be limited to WWI-era armoured cars, but I stretched that a bit by bringing my Afghans on motorbikes.  

In game terms, we rated the  Pierce-Arrow Armoured Lorry and the two Armoured Autocars as 'Junkers' - the largest class of vehicle in the game.  The Ford Model T Armoured Car was rated as a 'Jalopy', which is the base car style in the original ruleset.  The bikes were, naturally, rated as 'Bikes', although I did rate the RPG as a 'rocket', and we allowed it to fire at the same time that the bike was moving at full speed :)  We didn't count any points, just assigned values to the cars based on what it looked like they were carrying.

For the scenario, we did a slight variation on Scenario 2, the Death Race.  In our game, the racers started between the pair of palm trees at the top of the photo, and they were instructed to drive past the near palm tree and return to the top to complete the lap.  No weapons were allowed until cars had passed the first quarter of the lap.

To start the race, the smallest vehicles went first, starting with the two bikes, followed by the Ford.  The Ford driver (Corey) tried to 'fang it' and immediately accelerate to speed 2.  Unfortunately he failed his test and burnt out his motor.  This allowed the Arthur's Autocar (who successfully fanged it) to ram him from the rear.

Despite being bashed earlier in the game, the Ford used the push to speed up to take an early lead.

My Autocar managed to catch one of the bikes and bumped it.  The damage from this was one crew member, so the passenger with the LMG fell off!

So we swapped out the model for a bike with driver only.

Pierce-Arrow catches up to the Ford, and side-swipes it!  The turn doo-hickey combined with the Fate/Fortune rolls resulted in lots of fun results, with cars skidding into other cars, bashing each others' armour and paint.

The biker pushed ahead and opened up his lead!

Arthur tried a shortcut through the rough terrain.

Race around the halfway mark!

Pierce-Arrow skids around the turn.  Lisa avoided the Ford, but still slammed into the big rock.

Legion's biker opens the throttle, accelerating to Speed 4, which we celebrated with a cloud of dust for those behind him to choke on!

Having cleared the rough ground, Arthur's Autocar slides into Lisa's Pierce-Arrow!

Legion's biker, having dropped his passenger much earlier, speeds across the finish line!

The other bike gets ready to jump, Dukes of Hazzard-style, across the toe of the hill slope.

The Ford wins second place!

The second bike (with the RPG) takes third, then the Pierce-Arrow is fourth.

The game was fun.  I don't know if it will be a regular part of our gaming rotation, but if we try again, I may push to rate most vehicles as Jalopies rather than Junkers, and we will pay more attention to things like extra armour, and balancing points (vehicle costs) to make things a bit more fair. And now that we have an idea of game mechanics, I can put more thought into scenario design, although even with the improvised scenario in last night's game, we had some fun narratives emerge.