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!