CoC2 - Attack and Defend in 1940 France

 Another busy gaming weekend!  After the big Jhamjar game on Friday, Craig came by today for a second try at Chain of Command second edition.  This time we played the Attack and Defend scenario, which allows for much more support.  Craig's French chose to be the attackers with 12 points of support, and my Germans downgraded to a second wave platoon, which meant that I was allowed 8 points of support (base of 6 which is half of Craig's 12, plus 2 more for the difference in force rating).  We rolled for table orientation and again found ourselves playing lengthwise, adding to the challenge for the attacker, giving him further to go on a narrower front.

Here is the table Arthur set up for us.  The French attackers enter from the top of the photo.  Designated objectives for the attackers are the ruined building on the left and the lone tree on the right, both circled in red.

The patrol phase ended up with patrol markers locked down on either side of the cemetery. The French had 4 markers (the red ones with the maple leaves - originally intended for the 1st Canadian Division in Sicily but we made do with what we have!) but Craig ended up stacking them in pairs to shut down the maneuvering, to prevent the rightmost white marker (Hermann Goering Division, also for Sicily) from swinging further right.

Jump off points are a bit boring today!  We used the brown hex markers circled in red.  I have fancier JOPs but I was a bit too disorganised to pull them out.  Note that the French markers as on the wrong side of the stream, which was rated as a minor obstacle and broken ground, a nuisance for the French but not too much!

I purchased two sections of barbed wire (6" each), and Craig generously pointed out that in V2, there is a three for two deal, so I ended up with a total of 18" of barbed wire :)  I used it to block the left side of the German defences. 

Early deployments with French and German sections on either side of the cemetery.  French are already taking shock as shown by the white counters on the 'tree' beside them.

The Germans deployed a 'shabby Nazi trick' in the form of a collaborator, who redirected French troops away from the last jump off point.

More troops deployed on the board, including the French heavy tank, a Char B2 bis.

In response to the French tank, the German infantry gun (7.5 cm le.IG) deployed.

Cemetery firefight continues.  French manage to kill the German feldwebel.  It's a Bad Thing to lose a senior leader and German force morale takes a hit!

Then the Char crossed the wall and dispersed the German squad.  The rifle team hid in the small building, but the MG team was broken and fled the table.

The German section by the wall was getting shredded so they fell back to the ruins across the road, with the MG team moving to the upper floor to put fire onto the attackers.

Iggy the infantry gun is feeling a bit outnumbered.

And then the gun crew are driven off!

But then the Germans bring another section.  They cannot crew the gun, but they can lay down fire on the French!

German officer moves up to direct the fire of the MG.  His guidance allows the use of the German special trait, maschinengewehr which adds firepower dice as well as the storm of steel effect, where each '6' rolled adds another firepower die to be added, with the potential to increase firepower indefinitely as long as the firer keeps rolling 6's.

French char attempts another overrun of German infantry.

This time, however, the Germans had no shock on them and were easily able to avoid the tank, allowing them to move against the French infantry following behind the Char.

French and Germans passed tactical status back and forth.

Here is a result of a maschinengewehr roll - 10 dice initially turn into a total of 14 hits!

Germans are successful in pushing back the French past the cemetery wall.  

And the French Char struggles to turn to face the German infantry in its rear.

French officer struggles to rally his forces.  This photo is a bit deceptive, as only the French infantry on the left side of the creek are still in the game, the others are the casualties' pile! But still, there is a lot of shock that the officer needs to rally.  This was when we called the game as a stalemate. Unusually, the French were still at their initial force morale level of 10, in part due to Craig's use of Chain of Command dice to avoid FM checks, but also due to many units getting hurt, and combat effectiveness reduced, but not actually breaking.

German force morale at this point was 6, and the remaining troops were barely holding on, and they had a heavy tank in their rear.  Although the Germans had no way to hurt the tank, the tank was not able to capture the objective.  The Germans stopped the French advance by beating all the infantry and working around the tank.  If we would have played on, it's likely the French would finally have forced the German force morale to break but would not have a combat effective force left to take advantage of the result.

The game allowed us to explore more aspects of the V2 changes. Mostly we are pleased but there are a couple of things we want to look at more closely.  Storm of Steel is a nice bonus, and we remembered to use it this time.  We talked about introducing a house rule to limit the bonus to a single extra roll for each initial 6, but to not allow indefinite stacking as we had a few cascading results that seemed excessive.  We'll look at this more as we play on with these rules.  

The Red Die is very powerful.  I used it last week, and Craig had it this week.  It really gives a great benefit.  We aren't sure if we should limit it, in a similar way to how we limited Green and Elite troops in V1, or possibly to rate it to be more expensive than a 2 point cost.  Perhaps we'll come up with a house rule to limit the use of the red die.  The 1940 sourcebook requirement that you need a minimum of three support units before you can pick a red die is a good start point; we may want to clarify that further - for example, maybe require that the three supports should be a minimum of 2 points each, so that a medic or wire cutting team don't count, only supports that can take offensive action.  Another thing for us to discuss further! 

A thing that has irked me for a while, not new to V2, is that roadblocks, minefields and barbed wire have the same value, even though minefields are more difficult to deal with as they take up a bigger piece of ground and are harder and more dangerous to clear.  On the other hand, I have less experience in dealing with either, so I should play more games where they are involved before taking too strong of a stance.  Barbed wire worked to my advantage in this game since it pushed Craig to concentrate on the other side of the table.

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!

Chain of Command - Sicily

 Wargames Soldiers and Strategy magazine's recent issue (WSS131) has an article and scenario by Too Fat Lardies' Nick Skinner for a British platoon in Normandy.  While I don't have any figures or terrain suitable to Normandy in 1944, I realised that I could easily set up this scenario using my figures and terrain for Sicily in 1943!  Sam from Trumpeters has been interested in playing more Chain of Command, so Arthur and I set up the table, and invited Sam over to try out the scenario.

I read up on using real world fire and maneuver tactics using Chain of Command, including an article by Len Tracy in the 2023 Lard Mag.  With this research in mind, I decided to take the Canadian platoon.  Sam as a result took the German defenders.

Here is the battlefield.  The Canadians have been tasked with clearing the Germans from the orchard and farmhouse in the foreground.

Canadian platoon.  Two senior leaders (lieutenant and sergeant), three sections of infantry, engineering mine clearing squadron, mortar FOO and Cobault the Sherman tank. 

German reduced strength platoon with senior leader, two squads, tripod-mounted MMG, sniper and Panzer IV (although Sam chose to take the Stug III instead).  Germans also get a single minefield.  

Patrol phase (click on the photo to magnify):  the patrol phase ended up in the centre of the table.  With lots of cover on the table, we were able to place our jump-off points closer to the middle of the table than in many other CoC games that I've been in.  Canadian JoPs are visible by the bend in the road, tucked into the sharp wall corner and tucked against the table edge.  German JoPs are at the rear of the orchard, inside the farmyard wall and in the farmhouse itself.  There is a fourth German JoP at the far table edge.

Close up of a couple of the German JoPs in the farmyard and farmhouse representing the primary targets for the Canadian attackers.

Canadians start off by deploying two sections from their JoP (the CMP truck).

First time this has happened for me!  Four sixes for a random event.  We ended up with 'Jabos' - overhead aircraft had everyone hitting the dirt for two phases.

 

Cobault enters the table.

First Canuck section is pinned, while the sappers try to clear the minefield.

Canadian sections move out of the line of fire of the sniper, but not before the corporal and sergeant are both wounded.

Sappers finally clear the minefield, as Cobault and the unpinned section move up to push the Germans out of the orchard.

Only to have the Germans spin around and take up a position on the other side of the barn!

Canadians capture one of the German JoPs, as well as the German medic who had been left behind when the infantry withdrew!

Third Canadian section moves up to support the advance.  Beside the barn, you can see the PIAT team trying to line up a shot on the Stug.

What's this?  The German leutnant takes a depleted German squad on a wild chase for the Canadian JoPs!

Faceoff between the Stug and the Sherman!  The smoke behind the Stug marks the covering fire that the Canadians had just set on the German MMG.  

Amazing armour save by Cobault!  

While the tank vs Stug battle goes on, Canadian third section lines up to attack the farmyard.

Brave German officer occupies two Canadian JoPs but can't for the turn end to get rolls on the BTH table.

PIAT team takes out the Stug.

Canadian third section assaulted and wiped out the second German section (no photo, sorry!) then moved to capture the JoP in the farmyard.  That was enough to take the German force morale to zero and a victory for the Canucks.

This was a tough, close fought game. The dice gave some crazy results.  Sam got a crazy number of double phases, but then was cursed by bad results when rolling to hit or damage.  There were lots of shots by the two armoured vehicles that either missed, or caused either minimal or no damage.  Sam's sniper missed an unlikely number of shots.  

I was disappointed not to have my usual 2" mortar.  On the other side, Sam's Germans had no anti-armour capability other than the Stug.  I only had limited success with my attempts to use the fire and maneuver tactics, so I am eager to try again to see if I can figure them out.

Thanks Sam for a great game!