"5th Platoon" - A CoC Arnhem Campaign #2

We resumed the game started last weekend in which you may remember the situation was more or less tilting towards a draw, with two lines of British and Germans respectively facing each other in the woods to the left of the map.

However, at the conclusion of the game the Germans had suffered an outright defeat and left the battlefield nose-bleeding. Reasons? A major mistake in the initial German move and a strike of lucky British dice.

Italian Theatre Lists for Chain of Command

Worth taking a look to this post in Tiny Hordes blog. He's made in collaboration with a Spanish wargamer (not me!) an exhaustive research to put army lists for all nationalities involved in the Italian campaign 43-45: US, British, Commomwealth, Germand and Italian.

In my view, a must-read... and with my German Paratroopers project about to start, I see Monte Cassino looming in the horizon. :-)

Snipers vs Half-Tracks in Chain of Command

An interesting situation emerged in the game yesterday that I believe is worth commenting and having your views too.

You may remember that a German half-track was knocked just just before we stopped playing. This action brought a major (tense?) discussion among the players, as it was a combination of the combat effect of a sniper and a PIAT.

First some background before dealing with the reasons for this discussion.

Morale is a key component of Chain of Command, by means of a simple but effective mechanism. The fighting efficiency of the combat units decreases not only as a result of casualties but also by accumulation of “shocks”: when shocks are equal to the surviving men in the unit, it is pinned (forced to take cover and fire is halved); when shocks are more than double the men the unit is broken and routs (becomecombat ineffective).

The Chain of Command sniper rules give some interesting bonuses to this support option including doubling shocks when successfully hitting a target but not achieving a kill.

"5th Platoon" - A CoC Arnhem Campaign #1

Coinciding with the week of the 71^st anniversary of Market Garden and just a few weeks to visiting the battlefield site in November, we decided to start the autumn-winter 2015 season with an Arnhem-based game for Chain of Command. Sometime ago, Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine published a special issue (number 74) focused specifically on the operation; TooFtaLardies boss Richard Clarke wrote a short campaign called “5th Platoon” that we started today.

As described in the magazine:

“It follows the actions of 5 Platoon, who were the spearhead for 3 Para’s advance on Arnhem down the Utrechtseweg, one of the three key routes that 1st Airborne were to take into the city. The period of time covered by these actions is relatively short, lasting just a couple of hours at most, and geographically they covered about a mile of that key stretch of road.”

The British win by emerging victorious from the four games, which allow them to control a key crossroad at the Koude Herber Inn. The British Paras must progress at all costs towards the objective their main advantage being an elite force; the Germans had all type of second rate troops (clerks, staff officers, training personnel, etc) to be thrown in the path of the British.