"Bocage in the 20th Century" Topic

So Last night was a club game asked for by a friens, fighting in Bocage. Finding a suitable map was hard but I did fing a very small JPG of a Normandy map at 1/25000 with field boundary's marked.. I arbitrarily picked a section with a road junction in the midst of a 1km square. This let me than produce at least a credible map. In sorting through I did find some wargame maps but to be honest the folk using them seem not to have understood maps, the hedges were far too far apart to be realistic.

So here is a 1000m square based on a real map.

link

To KISS all boundaries were immpassible to vehicles but thay could go in position so they could see 45 degrees either side of the hedge normal line. Nobody could see through a hedge they had not specificaly moved up to see through.

It proved to be a fun game but the other guy was ex military so it helped he had an idea how to deply and act in these testing conditions.

Some interesting thoughts we had no Mortard but they may not have been much use. The field boundaries in meny cases were inside danger close so the observer would not be in a safe position if he called the fire in: does this seem credible?

Troops could only move in SLOW through the Boundary's.

I forgot the forrest bases so the hedged denote the woodland boundaries.

Well I see M113s and BMPs in Normandy – sometime in the past century, ok, huge leap of the imagination, but we move along.

Did you use hidden location and movement?

This is one of the saliant features of fighting in the bocage – compartmentalized LOS, which effects command decision-making, and influences the ability of the advancing force to call in indirect supporting fires (which often neutralized the attackers use of artillery support/superiority).

You had a map plan, so could you have prepared maps for the players to locate and manage their movements to contact on their own game maps? This would allow for a more realistic encounter.

Before you reply – recognize you're doing a club-setting game, more than likely with a limited time to pull it off – does this influence the game features and mechanics you might be able to manage or control – like having unseen map movement, then determining LOS occurrences from hidden map locations and moves to the game board (and then back and forth again), and then placing located units to the game board when LOS is established or firing encounters occur?

A large part of the German (ah, Soviet's I guess here?) fighting power in the Normandy bocage came from their pre-zeroed mortar support, and these strikes could immediately shut-down Allied movements – all the while, with the enemy FOs unable to be observed and countered – very demoralizing.

Have you seen the effect on players in games where they realize they're getting stonked [repeatedly], and they don't seem able to even locate the observing vantage point that's directing the artillery fire from – though that's very realistic for the tight killing-fields of Normandy?

Gaming realism is relative term UshCha, and then you have a game to pull off for the clubbies…..you might even want them to enjoy it, and come back again……

STONK

Still, nice to see you posting on a game you've presented, so be prepared for those honest impressions too.

Hidden movement, its always tricky. It depends on honesty, and capability. Our middle ground as its easy to verify is to mark stuff on the map at the start, then the nominal attackers moves his bit on table to make it easy. The defender cannot move until somebody sees stuff and then if it's elsewhere the information has been up and down the command chain. Otherwise its when you get within 10m or he shoots and you see him shoot. If you did not see him shoot but have some comms about him you are, aware and its easier to spot.

Bottom level, some folk find even this halfway house too daunting so they do the same except hidden units and sometimes not always some dummies are placed.

At the top level its the same as the mid level but stuff obviously out of sight can be moved on the map. As this is not usually too many elements it is manageable. It makes life tough.

We work on the 80/20 rule you can get 80% of the job in 20% of the work, the remaining work takes 80% of the time.

Our mid way from experience for us is the optimum typically. Myself and the author are a bit more flexible and trusting so we can do a bit more even than the top level but not much.

I dodged out of artillery as we were late starting and its very one sided. It would mean the attacker (me) would need a lot more kit and that would make for a slower game. My opponent was disappointed, no Claymores, or barbed wire either but again speed of play can be an issue.

We have tried multiple sides hidden movement and both sides moving real and dummy markers. If you had a really good umpire it would be perfect but speed of play even then could be an issue. The technique above is for us the 80/20 solution quick and dirty but gets most of the way without undue effort.

Fortunately (or beacause they see our games and decide its not for them) we don't have Mini Freaks who will not hide models on principal. Well the club has them but we have no common ground so they play their game and we ours. Multiplayer all in games are I suspect not a Brit thing generally. One of our past Chairman tried to encourage it but it fell flat it just did not have general appeal.

Back on track, this game was top level, my opponent was ex military, no idea of the rules but they work near enough to his experience we give him a rules advisor to translate ideas to rules. he can't make it that often so learning the rules is not really practical and the "gentlemen" lets be polite, regularly beats us despite having to have an advisor for rules

Sounds like a nice game.

Not too realistic, the whole premise of the Soviet's in Normandy all fantasy.

Maybe some Mini Freaks there in the club can lone you some WW2 kit, and you can start over proper?

Have to agree with FlyXwire, the preplanned 120mm and 60mm mortars were absolutely feared by US troops in Normandy not to mention the frustration of their own observers because of limited line of sight.

Don't think of bocage as limited to Normandy or parts of the UK. You can find it in many areas of more traditional and historic farming areas world wide.

In addition many areas can have similar geographic limitations such as canalizing of agricultatural areas due to rock and stone walls, ditches, culverts, bunds, dikes, paddies, orchards and vineyards.

If you look at many battles in the Italian campaign, they had a lot of those canalizing terrain features with the addition of hills but often had better ability to see a bit further or more.

The US came to the conclusion of only two ways of dealing with bocage. Keep shoving fresh forces until attrition wears down the enemy or simply go around them.

A few months later, the Hurtgen Forest reminded them again.

troopwo you are correct. I used Normandy WW2 as it was easy to find a representative map. I could have looked round the world on Google maps but that would have taken even more time. Indeed there is still some Bocage in France but less than before and no site was pointing to an actual physical location. I find particularly with an unfamiliar terrain type a real map keeps it real, imagination cannot sometimes hold a candle to the real world.

Not Fantasy if you believe some of the Media about Putin not stopping at Ukraine .

Oh, now you're talkin' Ush, but that would be the 21st Centuary.

Really depends on which part of Normandy too.
The more northern and central areas where the British, Canadians and Poles were could be a lot more open than the southern reaches.

All the parts west of Caen, say Bayeux to Argentan and west of it are a lot more thickly wooded/hedged.