CoC2 + SID Italy 1944

 It is the Summer of 1944 , Cassino has fallen, Rome has been liberated and the Allies are pursuing the retreating German forces that are falling back to the Gothic line.

Elements of the British 8th Army are being forced to fight for every river crossing be it dry or wet against the rag tag rearguard German units seeking to delay them at every opportunity.

The British are advancing up the road that crosses a dry river bed over a small stone bridge that has been destroyed by the retreating German forces. Across the dry river a small farming hamlet sits beside the road which continues up between two small rises topped with forests. 

I played this battle using Chain of Command v2 alongside the SID solo rules by Geoff Bond. Before the game started I assigned cards to a variety of German units based around a Panzer Grenadier Platoon.

 

The cards are used in the SID system to determine if a certain unit will enter the game and take action as LOS happens between the British units and the Major and Minor Jump off areas defined for the German forces.When Playing against SID we ignore the usual points allowance and give SID a number of extra units thus increasing tension in the game. You just don't know if that Tiger is going to show up and spoil your day.

The British are advancing with a standard rifle platoon whose CO has upgraded his Pistol for an SMG with a couple of M4 Shermans to provide some extra punch. At the end of the patrol phase the Brits have two jump off points setup to allow deployment of units either side of the main road.

The German jump off areas are setup with a major area in the woods on the rises each side of the road with two minor points in behind the buildings across the river and  behind some under growth on the western flank.

The engagement started with the British deploying their 2" Mortar team right on the left flank JOP behind the cover of some undergrowth.

The first section also deploy's onto the road running parallel to the dry river but were spotted by a German Panzer Grenadier section who along with a second section opened fire causing shock and casualties on the British section.

Over on the right flank a second British section deployed into the wheat field in an arrowhead formation

They manage to do this without being spotted from the German Major JOP on the top of the hill.

The British Mortar succeeds in laying down a smoke screen.

And with the Platoon Sgt joining them the survivors of the first section are able to pull back into cover by the bridge house.

Over on the right flank the second British section have been slowly advancing into the farm yard establishing themselves in cover as one of the attached Sherman tanks begins to advance through the wheat field.

Over on the left flank a "What would SID do?" result saw one squad of the German Panzer Grenadiers advance forward to cover in front of the British smoke screen allowing them to resume shooting at the beleaguered British section again. 

They do however attract the attention of the British Sherman which has reached the edge of the dry river but the shell causes little damage.

The British section hunkered down in the bridge house again come under German fire.

On the right flank the British begin to advance over the dry river bed but come under fire from a third Panzer Grenadier section on the rise above the orchard.

Now committed to the right flank the third British section moves up through the wheat field and into the farm to provide Fire Support to the Second section in the orchard.

The Sherman moving out to cross the dry river attracts the attention of the German Commander mounted in hs SdKfz 251/10. An ineffective shoot at the Sherman is soon answered with the German Commander narrowly escaping from his vehicle before it blows

Sadly at this point I ran out of time and had to call the game.
Hard to say how this would have continued. The British have lost a section on the left flank but still have a Sherman in reserve that could deploy to anchor that flank alongside the mortar while the remaining two section roll up the right flank. However although all the German Panzer Grenadier Platoon are deployed and are being whittled down there is still the opportunity from the Major JOP's that German Armour including a Tiger 1 could be deployed .There are also still infantry assets available to the Germans. Ultimately the German mission was to delay the allied advance and cause casualties and in this respect they have succeeded. 

While the outcome was inconclusive the game again proved that CoC v2 combined with the SID solo system can result in a tense , challenging game and after months of not being able to get a game in due to some health issues it was an absolute joy to field the new British platoon I'd been painting up while i recuperated. on a side note I really need to try out the ASID varient that puts the Player in the defensive role. 

 

Fireball Forward - Slims defeat, East African 1940

 It's been months since I got a game on table due to the intrusions of life. I managed to line the ducks up however and get the planets aligned and made it over to the SWWG Xmas all-dayer for an afternoon of gaming with my long time gaming buddy Nye. 

Nye had received the Fireball Forward Rules for his birthday and invested in some of the scenario supplements and we were both keen to give these rules a run as they would fill a gap in our rosta for a mid sized company level WW2  game to sit between the Battalion sized O Group and the Platoon Level games of Chain of Command. 

Our first game is from the The East African Campaign of 1940-41 and represents an action that took place on 6 Nov. 1940 at Gallaba Fort, in Sudan. The border crossing fort had been taken by Italian forces who had built a defensive wall outside the fort to form a secure perimeter.  It was decided that British offensive operations would begin here with the aim of opening a supply route

Initial Deployment 

The British start the game with One Company of infantry and a Platoon of MK VI vickers tanks deployed in the scrub to the west of the fort, A second British Company can arrive on Turn 2 or 3 .  The Italian forces are all deployed within or on the walls of the perimeter. As we had no  referee available we deployed using blinds which would require successful spotting rolls to expose. 

As the British begin to advance they are spotted moving out of the scrub,  A firefight with an Italian MMG see's the British  MMG silenced temporarily. 

Having been spotted the British Armour dashes forward to establish a supporting firing line.

The British MMG recovers and is able to put some ineffective fire into the italian MMG

The wall means it's very hard to spot the Italian forces as they move around it takes the arrival of the British 2nd Company on the flank to finally force the Italians to reveal themselves.

2nd Platoon of 1st Company attempt to lay down covering fire,

as the 1st Platoon of the British 1st Company try to advance to the wire

On the flank 2nd Company succeed in cutting the wire and one section makes it into close combat with the italians at the wall.

Withering fire from the emplaced Italians drives the Britishadvance to the wire back

The battle concludes with the British failing to achieve any of their victory conditions within the time limit for the operation.

The bit at the end.

So for a first game with a new ruleset that went well, I think we may have missed a few bits but it's a really fluid fast ruleset in play . The card activation keeps you on your toes deciding who to activate and in what order. We'll be playing a lot more of this I'm sure (I'll take notes next time for a proper AAR), 

I'm already starting to put together a British Army force for this to go with the Soviet and German forces I use for O Group whose basing is compatible with Fireball Forward.  

Chain of Command 2 - First game

After months of anticipation the Two Fat Lardies released the second edition of their popular WW2 Platoon level rules Chain of Command. Rich Clarke said at the time that the new version would be more a bringing together of elements introduced in the 1940's and Far East supplements along with some streamlining  of the rules that years of play under version one had highlighted rather than a whole new game.  The new version would also benefit from a better layout making it easier to learn and use.

The rules have been in hand for a number of weeks now but time for a game has eluded me until Nye and my own commitments finally allowed us to get a game in at South Wight Wargamers.

We choose to play the Delaying Action Scenario with a German rifle Platoon seeking to hold up an advancing US  rifle Platoon in Italy. This would allow us to explore the new Objective rules.

The Forces

The defending German Rifle Platoon with a PAK 40 AT gun and Tripod mounted MG in support.

The attacking US Rifle Platoon with a sniper, .30 cal MMG, Medic and an M4 Sherman in support. With the new army lists in version 2 the US Squads we're a rifleman short each due to a lack of painted miniatures.

The Patrol Phase

Nye always tells me that he doesn't really get the Patrol Phase but he put his extra marker to good use in this game quickly locking down my central marker that allowed him the freedom to establish a solid Jump of Point far down the flank. 

The Battle.

The US made good use of their forward jump off point and quickly deploy forces into the fields near to the objective. 

 
The Germans responded bt deploying a tripod mounted MG in the upper story of the objective building.

  

The US responded in the next phase by deploying the.30 cal and returning fire.

Up the road the US Sherman appears to support the infantry moving up into the adjacent fields

But the Germans have the road covered with their PAK 40 deployed into cover on the rise over looking the farm and road.

With a roar a round slams into the side of the Sherman causing it to explode.

However back at the objective building the German tripod MG squad has been whittled down by overwhelming US firepower  and finally breaks out the back of the building and heads to hills

US forces swiftly move in to occupy the objective but also to shutdown the German seconf JOP.

Meanwhile US forces have continued to deploy from the rear and are advancing accross the fields towards the farm

 

With only on JOP remaing the German Senior Leader is forced to deploy to the table bringing a section with him. /thet deploy on the brow of the hill between the the PAK and the broken MG team. 

They open fire at the advancing US troops with some sucess.

Return US fire is more succesful as they wound the Senior leader and inflict shock on the LMG team

With the US holding the Objective and the Final Countdown running the leaderless German forces concede the field and withdraw.

The Bit at the End

The original Chain of Command has been a staple over the last few years , We've fought in 28mm & 15mm in a variety of theatres, I've used it for a number of solo games as well and I've been looking at using it as the base for some Vietnam games at Platoon level. So the bar is already high! 

Rich's stated ambition was to not replace the rules but rather to tweak, improve and streamline then to provide a core for moving forwards with further expansions. He also wanted to improve the presentation of the rules to make then easier to learn and to reference. Has he succeeded? That's a yes on both counts.

We spent a good deal of time looking up and double checking things to make sure we weren't assuming things hadn't changed. The new book is far better organised, each chapter dealing with one topic and the index makes it easy to jump straight to the information you want. 

It's all easy on the eye with clear illustrations and lovely images, Important tables of information are clearly separated from the the body text. 

For the rule changes, well we're still exploring those but the new objective and final countdown mechanism we liked. 

Your opponent gaining CoC dice points when you start rolling multiple sixes is great as well and we liked the ability to activate the different positions in a vehicle crew using rolls of 1 on the command dice making armour a bit more flexible and unpredictable.  

Being able to spend CoC Dice Points to carry out actions rather than having to accumulate a full dice before you can use is going to be interesting as we play more games.

"Get to the Chopper!" A FNG:Unconventional Warfare Game.

FNG:Unconventional Warfare is a supplement that expands on the concepts in FNG: Tour of Duty for running Special Forces in the Vietnam Conflict. It adds additional detail to shooting and modifies how PEP's are deployed on table among other features that enhance the characteristics of your SF troops, It includes unit lists for all the Special Forces that emerged during the Vietnam Conflict.

For this game I deployed an Australian five man SAS team equipped mostly with L1A1 SLR's ,and a couple of LAW Launchers. 

The team objective to traverse the table to an open hill from which they could make the call to be extracted by Helo.

The game begins with only two VC PEF's in Play but that can quickly change.as we track Enemy Activity Points which are affected by in game actions that can raise and lower this score . As the score rises so more PEF's will be added to the table.

The SAS begin the game by slow moving to the wall that surrounds the old plantation boundary

Maintaining good fields of fire they move over the wall in good order.

Using the wall as cover they cautiously advance down through the plantation trees

As the first PEF closes into the far side of the plantation the SAS troopers nearest freeze and level their weapons but in this instance it just the local wildlife disturbing  the undergrowth. The stakes are raised now as all future PEF checks will use 3 dice increasing the chance of contact.

The SAS team gradually make there way down through the plantation and prepare to cross the path separating the wall  from the dense undergrowth  at the foot of the hill.

When everyone is ready the Sgt and RTO break cover and move across the open path into the undergrowth

Breaking cover causes the EAP to increase. The remaining PEF is still in play and keeps moving around in the area between the village and  the hill. Eventually the rest of the team move over the path

To reach the hill and make the call for extraction the team need to move over a clesring and up a path. Deciding that speed is more important than stealth they move out at normal speed maintaining their fields of fire. 

The EAP again rises and this time the howl of dogs can be heard and another PEF is added to table right behind were the team crossed the path.

This PEF moves forward into LOS with the team in the clearing , It resolves to a squad of MFVC .
The two SAS back markers win the insight tests, quickly pull up their weapons ,and with 3 rounds rapid from each kill the VC squad leader with head shoots and knock two other VC fighters out of the fight with wounds. 

With shots fired the lead troops of the SAS squad rush to the hilltop as the back markers pull back maintaining their fire arcs behind the group.

The RTO makes the call and gets through, the helo is inbound and will be there shortly.
The rest of the team make it to the LZ. The VC forces they engaged are still shocked from the deadly fire they received but more dogs can be heard and another PEF enters play.

 They await the arrival of the Helo nervous that it's noise will bring Charlie upon them.

No incoming AA fire is directed at the Helo as it enters in view and comes to a hover above the LZ

The SAS Troops quickly move to load up on the aircraft as it lands.

The Pilot fails to apply enough power on his first take off attempt as the VC squad from earlier close on the LZ.

With some extra throttle the Helo rises and the VC squad duck back as it passes low over their heads and is away. Mission Accomplished. 

Conclusion

An interesting game, the way that EAP rises and falls is reminiscent of the the alert tracker mechanism in 0200 hours and once it starts to add up and starts affecting the number of PEF's on the table makes for some tense moments.  The Helo rules from FNG were superb and make the aircraft an integral part of gameplay rather than just a prop. Pilots need to roll against their rep to carry out any actions and failure could be catastrophic. I think next time I bring this to the table I may do it as a series of linked tables covering Insertion, Recce or a Raid , Escape & Evasion and finally an Extraction.