All,
Greetings, hope all is well! Just a quick update on what the boys and I have been getting up to. We played a game, but I shouldn't really call this a battle report; there's not much much in the way of a narrative, or a real scenario, or a plan… hell, there's not even many photos! What we did have was lots of learning and lots of fun, which is a great thing to report, and should lead to some actual batreps.
Last time we played on a 3' x 3' table using a skirmish version of Warlord's "Bolt Action" rules, whereas this time we used a modified (simplified, by me) version of Bolt Action version 3. The simplified piece consists of a few things I changed to speed things up and/or season to my tastes, but the guts of the game are still there.
The table, again somewhere in Normandy. Let's say it's June 8, 1944, on the eastern edge of the Allied bridgehead. Ground forces have linked up with British 6th Airborne Division, which is now attacking south against 21st Panzer Division. North is left, buildings and stone walls are hard cover, fields and trees are soft cover, attacker comes from the left and mission is the village at the crossroads (center-right), a super simple "attack-defend" scenario.
You can see I've "opened" up the table a bit, hope it looks more like a conventional Bolt Action/Battlegroup/Chain of Command-type table this time. Last time it really felt like I had too much terrain on the table, really more suited for skirmish gaming rather than reinforced-platoon level gaming (at least in my humble opinion).
The British assault force:
-a three-man command element
-4 x eight-man rifle sections
-a two-man PIAT team
-a Vickers MG team (three men)
-a 3" mortar team (three men + two-man FO team)
-2 x Sherman and 1 x Firefly tanks
I made the Brits, played by my younger son (who played Germans in the last fight), keep two rifle sections and all three tanks off-table to begin the game, coming on when an appropriate dice was pulled and they past an availability check (4+ on Turn 1, 3+ on Turn 2, 2+ on all turns thereafter). There were a lot more failures to come on than I predicted, which led to quite a bit of laughter (at least by me)!
Despite "opening" up the table, I was still worried that it was too much forces for too little table, was worried it was going to look like a Napoleonic attack going in with troops shoulder to shoulder, so I only used 8-man squads/sections (also because I wanted to see what 8-man companies in Rapid Fire Reloaded would look like). In the event, I was quite happy with the troop density, I thought it looked right' and never had the feeling that stuff was crowded or too close together.
The German defenders, played by my older son:
-a three-man command element
-3 x eight-man rifle squads (each has 2 x panzerfausts)
-a two-man panzerschreck team
-a three-man sMG-42 team
-a Pak-40 ATG with three-man crew
-2 x Stug-IIIH
The Germans were required to keep one rifle squad and the two Stugs off-table to begin the game.
A couple action shots:
The Sherman (top left) and Stug (bottom right) continue trading ineffective shots as the German reserve squad comes on and dashes up behind the rear building (center) and the MG team hops a wall and moves up to the next wall (at the intersection). Meanwhile, the panzerschreck team (center top left, just visible on the other side of the wall next to the far building), prepares to dash through the gap between the building and chicken coop, looking to smoke the Firefly…
But as the German panzerschreck team dashes forward (between buildings at top left) they are spotted by the Vickers MG team (in building at bottom center right), which promptly opens up and mows them down!
A young PIAT gunner trying to win himself a medal.
To see more photos and read a bunch of blathering about rules, tactics, and game planning, please visit the blog at:
link
And I'll throw this in here on the off-chance that all of you don't visit the blog ;)
Now I need a good mini-campaign to run; still not sure what they're called or how exactly to describe it, but you start at a central geographical location and move back and forth in a linear method based on who won and lost the previous battle. KISS Rommel did it like this:
Start at Tobruk, move left or right based on winner of previous battle report.
Track: Tunisia – El Agheila – Benghazi – Gazala – Tobruk – Mersa Metra – El Alamein – Alexandria – Cairo
I'd like to work mini-campaigns that have maybe five locations, and are much more tactical than that, I.e., you could probably do a five-step mini-campaign just for Gazala, Tobruk, or El Alamein, right? Or Stonne, or Dunkirk, Sicily (either the British track or American track), Salerno, Anzio, Caen, St Lo, various Market Garden locations, the Bulge, probably a million of them on the East Front, right? Anyone have any ideas?
Anyway, thanks for taking a look, I appreciate it.
V/R,
Jack