"CoC Bloody Bucket campaign Turn 7 Skyline Drive" Topic

Deja vu for the Volksgrenadiers as they make their third attempt to dislodge the Americans from the crossroads on Skyline Drive in our continuing Bloody Bucket campaign for Chain of Command. It's a tough table to attack with much open ground but we now enter the second day of the campaign and the German support levels increase even further. Can this heroic American platoon hold out once more? The full AAR is here: Campaign Turn 7 Skyline Drive

This one was always going to stand or fall by your success with the bazooka team – armour is not the best aspect of CoC. On the other hand your opponent may have hoodwinked you on this one. I assume he used a CoC Die to interrupt your bazooka team's disappearing act? I'm pretty sure that's the only way it can be done but also fairly confident you can only interrupt once in a phase.

I really enjoy reading these! Great looking games. They made me understand HOW the rules actually work and the subtlety to them.

Very well done!

Thanks

John

This is an interesting campaign to follow. Back in 2016, I played in a 6mm game covering 2nd Panzer's initial assault on the town of Marnach in the opening stages of the Bulge. My friend, Scott, is well versed in the Battle of the Bulge and had even visited the area a while back. He designed the scenario.

This one was always going to stand or fall by your success with the bazooka team – armour is not the best aspect of CoC. On the other hand your opponent may have hoodwinked you on this one. I assume he used a CoC Die to interrupt your bazooka team's disappearing act? I'm pretty sure that's the only way it can be done but also fairly confident you can only interrupt once in a phase.

I think you may be right although it's possible to argue this both ways. The rules section covering an ‘Interrupt' makes no mention of using a CoC dice this way during an ambush. It does, on the other hand make it very clear that there can be only one interrupt per phase. The section on Ambush says this:

"If the player's opponent has troops on Overwatch covering the area from which the ambush is made, they may fire after the ambushing Team has fired and before the ambushers are removed at the end of the Phase. Likewise, the opposing player may choose to use a Chain of Command Dice to interrupt if he has troops who can fire on the ambushers before they are removed."

That could be read to mean a player can use a CoC die in place of having a unit on overwatch and if several units on overwatch can fire, why then could you not use up several CoC dice to have more than one unit fire? However I think the answer probably lies in the last sentence and use of the term interrupt (to get pedantic, you could argue whether it means an ‘interrupt action' as per the rules or it is simply using the term interrupt to express the action of firing before the unit can escape?). In the end I'm not sure it would have made a big difference to the overall outcome but I suspect that second shot should not have been permitted.

I agree, if only TFL had capitalised ‘interrupt' the same way as ‘Overwatch' then it would be pretty unambiguous. Likewise, as you say, it probably only accelerated rather than changed the final outcome. Thinking about it some more, the decisive event was probably the reinforcements failing to get through; a Sherman and two more bazooka teams would really have tested the Germans.

Thinking about it some more, the decisive event was probably the reinforcements failing to get through; a Sherman and two more bazooka teams would really have tested the Germans.

It wouldn't have changed this game. Reinforcements arrive from the west and initially can be allocated to maps 4,5 & 6. Once there they need to wait until a later turn to move to maps 2 & 3 and then another turn before reaching map 1. So two reasons why they wouldn't help – it would take too long to get there, but more significantly, with the German capture of map 2 in the previous turn any route to map 1 is now blocked, so that platoon was always going to have to fight with what it had.

Thanks, I obviously hadn't read it properly.
Good luck in the next fight, not that I want his campaign to end.

Once again, a most interesting read, thanks for sharing.
Rule wise, I'd tend to agre with BillyNM's interpretation. That clarifies a very interesting point for me on ambushes (hopefully I'll get a game of my own soon).

I'd also like to ask you a question : do you take your photographs during a game, or do you do a photo session after it? Your pics are exceptional, so sharp, well-balanced colours, without any game clutter left on the tabel, that I'm wondering whether you take the time to reshoot them after the game itself.

I'd also like to ask you a question : do you take your photographs during a game, or do you do a photo session after it? Your pics are exceptional, so sharp, well-balanced colours, without any game clutter left on the tabel, that I'm wondering whether you take the time to reshoot them after the game itself.

Not the first time I've been asked this! All pictures are taken as we play, no "re-enactments". We like our tables to be clear of clutter, nothing breaks the immersion more than that sort of thing. In fact I rely on the photos as much as my notes to remember what happened and in what sequence.

All pictures are taken with an iPhone 11, the game room is lit with cool white bulbs, other than that I may occasionally manipulate an image if there's too much shadow but the vast majority are straight off the phone.