Normandy Action - A Chain of Command AAR

First demonstration game of Chain of Command post-release, involving a seasoned playtester, three rookies and myself as umpire. I went for a simple recon probe mission providing the OOB lists to the contenders and therefore not using the list options of the rules.

The game saw a mixed regular infantry+paratroopers US platoon supported by a Sherman and an AT-gun, fighting against a German regular infantry platoon supported by a HMG team and two Pz IV tanks in a typical Normandy bocage environment.

German and Allied players in Patrol Phase

 

Chain of Command: Poland 1939 List

Just a quick warning  post to let you all know that  Chain of Command's first army list  is available now at the TFL official blog: Poland 1939
 
The post includes a very interesting link to download the official training manual of the Polish Army in English

Enjoy!

Resume Normal Programming

End of the summer hiatus and back to normal (or at least trying to!).

On balance a very relaxing holiday with an unexpected nice 1-day tour to the medieval walled city of Avila, lots of reading (mainly Spanish Civil War related), some interesting gastronomic findings (of which more at a later post) and some good progress in my painting plans:

• 4 x '42-43 Hanomags, 
• 1 x 250 command vehicle, 
• 1 late-war Skfz 234 (all 1/72 scale) for IABSM 
• And a Vietnamese HMG team in 28mm for Vietnam.
• All this in addition to some more tracks (curves and crossings) for my road project.

No photos?  Unfortunately not, as I left the camera at the holidays place but plans to pick it up this weekend.

Other wargaming related news: I received my tablet version of Chain of Command on Thursday last week and the full bundle (hardcopy book + resin jump-off points + game tokens) were waiting for me at home yesterday on my arrival.

If the tablet version was excellent, I must say that the hardcopy version broke all my expectations! The edition is wonderful with very high quality paper, excellent photos along the book and a mnost elegant layout. I've already booked a first introductory game in my club for tomorrow afternoon, so expect an AAR over the next days. 

Future projects? More Chain of Command and IABSM playing and painting short term and working my way through some lists to adapt CoC to play the Spanish Civil War. The secondary sources that I've been reading these days and some history books provided very useful information to play scenarios about the first few months of the conflict  known as the "war of the columns". Again, stay tunned for future posts on this issue.
  

On Holidays

Invictus' Towers will remain closed for a short 10-day break starting today, well deserved in my opinion given the hectic year undertaken by this family so far. Nonetheless, I'll be  looking for a good wifi conection next Wednesday 21st August to download my tablet version of the Chain of Command rules!!. If you have not pre-order CoC. put that date in your calendars to buy the electronic version of the rules

I'll not be totally idle, however, as I'm planning to do some research work and possibly visit a Spanish Civil War battlefield site next to my holiday place; I also expect to mantain some CoC reading and painting activity these days... but without any stress!!

Road Works (continued)

As a follow-up to the previous post, I continued working on the roads during the past week-end and you can see the final result in the photo above. I painted the road strips with acrylics in buff colour, washed with chocolate brown and given some lights with a dry bush of buff+white, and finally glued some grass along the edges and the center of each piece.

Overall quite satisfied with the results of the pilot project... so now moving to industrial scale!!

Road Works Ahead

Last weekend I spent a day at my mother's summer house. I wasn't really expecting to do nothing except going for a walk in the mountains and read some Chain of Command related stuff in preparation for the September game season. However... I felt the sudden need to do something wargaming related. So I entered the house garage and decided to experiment with the materials available there.

I found some old cork tiles and thought it could be a good base to do some buildings... no wait, some roads, even better!!. You always need lots of roads, don't you?.. and in my club we have not a lot of good scenery for roads. So there I did go with an initial test before scaling to up "industrial" production 

1. Cork, metal ruler and cutter

Tactical Notes for Chain of Command

TooFatLadies official blog Lard Island published today a very interesting piece on historical formations and tactics in II WW intended to support those playing Chain of Command, although it can be equally  useful for anyone with an interest in skirmish II WW games. The article is illustrated with examples of the different tactical use when playing with a British Motor Rifle Platoon, a US Armoured Rifle Platoon and a Panzer Grenadier Platoon, due to differences in weaponry, manforce and support weapons.

A good remainder also that in the case of TFL wargames sets you can really maximize your playing experience if you bother undertaking some research about the historical conditions of the period simulated. As you know: "Playing the period not the rules"!.

From personal experience, I came only to understand Charlie Don't Surf (Vietnam) or Mud & Blood (I WW) game design in full after getting acquainted with the tactical performance of the units involved in both periods. And so far, from what I know about Chain of Command due to my involvement in the pay testing phase, this is not going to be different.

If you are interested in II WW tactics (and summer time is an excellent period for reading), I strongly suggest taking a look to Stephen Bull's Second World War Infantry Tactics  or some of the field manuals published by the British and the American Armies through the conflict and available for free in Internet (here through Mike Whitaker's blog)