"Brits vs Germans, Somewhere in Italy, Late '43, Game 5" Topic

All,

We've come to the final fight of the operation. Let's review: the Brits started with a hasty attack supported with light armor, in which they did okay, forcing the enemy to fall back. This Germans immediately counterattacked, and the Brits again did okay, but lost their CO when he was cornered and forced to surrender. This was followed by a rapid attempt by the Germans to close the loop and encircle the Brits, but they ferociously fought there way out of the closing trap. The Brits immediately counterattacked, making good use of supporting armor to throw the Germans back to their last line of defense.

Lt Page spoke to his key leaders, letting them know armor support would be on hand, but that's because the German line was expected to be formidable, with recon parties reporting the Germans were well dug in.

At dawn Lt Page led his men across the line of departure, hot on the heels of the pre-assault stonk. It was mere seconds before the chatter of machine guns interrupted the early morning calm…

The Brit assault force, with a CO, a Vickers MG, a 3" mortar, an M4 Sherman, and 9 rifle squads.

The German force: a CO, an MG42, a PaK-38 ATG, and 5 rifle squads.

The Brit assault forces, at the moment they crossed the Line of Departure.

The defenders are placed: a rifle squad in the far left bunker; the MG42, the CO, and a rifle squad in the center bunker; a rifle squad on the road behind the wall between the center and far right bunker; a rifle squad in the far right bunker with a rifle squad at the wall in front of them; and the PaK-38 in the house at top right.

We've got German riflemen close assaulting British tanks…

And Brit riflemen tenaciously digging German infantry out of bunkers.

To see who came out on top of a very close fight, please visit the blog at:
link

I had a great time, playing five battles in two days (it took about as much time, if not a little more, to type all these batreps up). I am perfectly happy with the rules, with the only adjustment I need to make being to add more scenarios, which I'll work on and solicit help with.

I think it's pretty cool to be able to get in a five-game Operation so quick. I believe I'm going to transition my French Foreign Legion campaign to these rules.

If you got this far, thanks for sticking with me ;)

V/R,
Jack

Yeah, I was going to remark that it seemed you'd be spending more time actually typing and putting up pictures than it took to move the miniatures around the table and roll the dice :-)

Nicely done and goes to show that a campaign doesn't have to be a big, convoluted thing.

Ivan,

I love the rules and mentioned heading back to my Legion campaign with them , but I need your help with two things:

1. Any ideas how to represent a qualitative difference between troops, i.e., the difference between the highly competent Legionnaires and less competent 3rd world military/insurgents?

All I've come up with is 'better quality gets 1 activation per 2 units, worse quality gets 1 per 3,' or maybe 1 per 3 (FFL) and 1 per 4 (worse).

2. More 'canned' scenarios; not specific to the Legion, just more for general purpose. More tactical problems/situations with general force structures.

Simple stuff like 'mechanized attack,' x infantry and x mobile support vs. x inf and x inf support, or 'tank duel,' x inf and x mobile support vs x inf and x mobile support. I'm looking at delaying action, envelopment, double envelopment, airborne envelopment, ambush/counter ambush, need more and to figure out the force structures.

I'd love any help/thoughts on the subject.

Oh, and my stuff is always big and convoluted ;)

V/R,
Jack

Well, I'm not going to say I am working on something but I do have 19 pages of "nothing" so far, so maybe there'll be something interesting in the near future :-)

Messing with activations is the easiest way to go. Assigning them skills is the default way to go.

EDIT: Yo! Group morale. Page 61.

I'll have a scenario generator soon but i believe the riflemans guide I put on the wargamevault has one too.