Stopping the Red Horde. A Chain of Command AAR

Friday night was CoC time at the club!. We moved east and played a game loosely inspired in the defensive battles fought by the Germans in 1943-1944. So I shamelessly borrowed a map and the general situation for this battle from John de Terre Neuve's blog "Wargaming in 28mm"

The Red Army attacking force comprised a full infantry platoon with three squads, a SMG assault squad, and three T34/85 tanks plus a FOO as support units. The Germans opposed an infantry platoon supported by a HMG, a Sdkfz 234/3 (armed with a 7.5cm gun for close support) and two SPGs (Marder III). Both sides were rated “average”.  

Gaming table viewed from the north

The scenario was the attack/defence from the Chain of Command book.  The objective was a tough one for the attacker, who must conquer an enemy jump-off point located at 6’ from the defender’s tactical edge.

More Long Street Games

My gaming activity has been very irregular lately as a result of some family health-related issues with my father in-law, who is in hospital again for the thrid time this year. For this reason I had to cancel a Chain of Command game scheduled for Friday, but at least today I had the opportunity to attend a Longstreet game as (literally) a photo reporter (more later on this).

I'm not a fan of the American Civil War period so this time I defected my gaming mates and did not participate in the project; however I was curious to learn some of the basics of the new rules by Sam Mustafa given the very good experience I had with Maurice (his Age of  Reason rules set) last year.

A key aspect in the  simplification of the troops activations system and you basically need now to pay a number of cards to maneuver your troops as you wish (within some limits of course); you can also  use the content of the cards to interrupt your opponent or improve your ability to do somethings.

Overall (and as in the case of my more familiar TooFatLardies rueles sets), the rules take the back seat and the players are mostly concentrated in tactics and manouvering, probably pretty much like the contemporary generals. From what I saw, large masses of figures can be moved in a relatively short period of time and flank attacks are possible if the enemy do not react timely. That makes very fluid games! I'd say that Long Street is likely to be a success and become a reference set for the period.

And now, why I was attending as a reporter? Club Dragón was contacted bythe editors of  Breaking War, a major wargamer magazine in Spain, to write an article on Longstreet, so I helped them with the photos to illustrate the article.

I attach some pics from the game this morning. Well done mates!

Back to Vietnam: Rawhide replayed

After a very looooooong spell (our last ganme was in March this year) we decided to take a short break  with Chain of Command and to play a Vietnam game with Charlie Don't Surf this weekend. I chose to replay Rawhide, scenario 9 of the companion book to CDS called Surf's Up, following the disaster outcome to the Free World Forces of the last time. This time they played much more cautious and that payed off in the end with a double military/ political victory awarded.

In this scenario an US armoured infantry platoon riding M 113s should escort 3 ARVN infantry platoons to the fishing village of Mi-Sac, with orders to put it under the control of the Republic of South Vietnam authorities. The Viet Cong mission is to frustrate the plans of the imperialist Yankees and their puppet forces, ambushing them at least twice (main military objective) and destroying as many APCs as possible (secondary military objective).

The VC forces are made of a platoon of local cadre forces armed with obsolete rifles, supported by an HMG, a RPG and a recoilless rifle fire teams. The VC also has two mines available to deploy any place on the table.

To the Bitter End 1945 - A Chain of Command AAR

After a very busy long month, last night I finally organized a new game with Chain of Command. This time we abandoned the already familiar bocage country where most of our previous encounters took place and moved forward to February/March 1945. 

The scenario aimed to simulate the desperate fights of an overwhelmed German army now close to breaking, scrapping the bottom of the barrel in terms of looking for manpower, and defending the motherland from the steamroller Allied armies. We chose to use the Scenario 6: attack on a position to organize our game.

In the table, to the north the outskirts of a German town (holding an important crossroads) defended by the two weak infantry sections supported by a HMG and plenty of AT material. To the south, two roads converging into the town and the landscape spotted with low hedges and light woods, probably the preferred place for strolling and Sunday walks before the war for the inhabitants of what is now a wrecked town.

Battlefield view from the German side

Blog Giveaway: Palouse Wargaming Journal

Giveaways seems now a most consolidated tradition in the blogosphere, at least among those dealing with our hobby. Let me bring your attention to the Palouse Wargaming Journal run by señor Jonathan Freitag, from the US. To celebrate his first anniversary as a fellow blogger he's offering a very nice and high quality book selection to anyone signing up to his site... and the most important of all, the blog is really worth following. Thanks to Rosbiff for the headsup.

Belgian 1940 Army Lists for Chain of Command

TooFatLardies just released the Belgian Army lists for the Blitzkrieg campaign era in his blog. Now we only need the Dutch (...and may be the Luxembourg Army list too? :-)...) to have the complete picture.

Summarising, in addition to the lists published in the Chain of Command book, we have now the following armies available from TooFatLardies:

• Poland 1939  http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=1778
• Germany 1939  http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=1791
• Red Army 1939-1940  http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=1801
• Finland for the Winter War http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=1813
• France 1940 http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=1823
• Germany 1940 http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=1832
• BEF 1940 http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=1840
• Belgium 1940 http://toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=1890

Longstreet at the club

Longstreet has finally reached our club and a group of devoted testers played their first game last weekend. The scenario was Henry House Hill and was published in WSS 56, a part in the battle of Bull Run. As if history repeats it self, the Confederation troops resisted a savage attack of the Union forces, inflicting a major defeat on the latter when the reinforcements of Colonel Jeb Stuart reached the field.

Some photos of the excellent painted 28mm figures and gaming table