In the Last Ditch Again

Last night Doug and Legion came by to try out Through the Mud and the Blood.  Doug recently  finished converting some Renegade Miniatures early war French into Belgians and wanted to try them out.  So I looked up Too Fat Lardies' 'Play the Game' compendium of WWI gaming resources, and picked out a scenario entitled 'In the Last Ditch Again' featuring an allied delaying action against the German onslaught.

This is a fairly simple scenario - as written a British platoon has deployed around a farm, as a German force advances along the road toward them.  We substituted the Belgians for the British and got on with things.

The table is pretty flat and open.  As it turns out, a bit too open.  If we try this again I will add more hedges to break up line of sight, and rate the crops to make it a bit harder to spot the troops on blinds.  Note the blinds on either side.  The German flags are fine, but since I didn't have any Belgian blinds available, I provided the Russian blinds instead.  I figured these would be ok as Russia and Belgium were allies in WWI!

In addition to his Belgian infantry, Doug also brought this fancy truck to transport their ammunition!

German infantry appear after the Belgians spot their blinds.

Having identified the Germans, the Belgians opened fire, revealing their location in the process.

German forces take hits, and their numbers are quickly depleted.  Note that this group started with 19 soldiers!

Behind the Belgians, you can see Doug's shock marker.  Depending on which edge is aligned with the section, it signals how many shock that unit is carrying, from one to six.

More Belgians deploy and rain rifle fire on the Germans!

I needed a way to show that one of the Belgian sections had quickly dug in, so these gabions represent that.

Meanwhile, Legion's Germans shelter behind the hedgeline as they return fire.

The central German section was forced to fall back, as the number of shock points exceeded the number of remaining soldiers!

Shock also accumulates on Germans behind the hedge.

Another couple of glamour shots of the Belgian truck!

The game ended up a bit one-sided, as the Belgians easily spotted the Germans, taking them off blinds right away.  This meant that the Germans started taking shock, which ended up stopping them and allowing the Belgians to continuing whittling them down.  One of the reasons for this is that I'd made a mistake when I assigned Legion his command - each of the four German sections was meant to be 2 groups of 9 plus an NCO, but instead they deployed as 18 men plus an NCO.  Probably would have been better if they could have deployed with separate 9-man units, so that the Belgians would have had to slow down each of the half sections. Sorry Legion!  Another factor was the tiffin card that kept showing up very early each turn, keeping many of the German sections from activating.  As units that didn't activate could still shoot, this meant that the Belgians had no trouble pouring fire onto the stalled Germans, while the Germans were not able to rally or reorganise.  

At any rate, it was nice that Doug was able to field the Belgians, and that they were successful in their first outing!