"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.

Fighting Season - A First test game

For once, I haven´t played Chain ofCommand… at least Second World War :-)

Today I have played for the first time Fighting Season, the incoming rules for Modern Warfare by TooFatLardies. Our gaming group signed for the play testing a couple of months ago but only today we have been able to put a more or less decent table (with houses, walls and fully painted minis...) to play the rules.

This is a full brand new and self standing set of rules, not just a Chain of Command with some adaptations; therefore,  those familiar with the Second World War rules won’t have (I least I didn´t have) much problem in mastering the game. However, from the tactical point of view there’s very little resemblance between the two sets.

The approach taken by the designers (Richard Clarke and military historian & wargamer Leigh Neville)  was to go from bottom up and in a full Lardista style, study the key drivers of the small/skirmish combats in Iraq and Afghanistan and then develop the rules.

Once upon a time in Helmand...

 In this sense, the rules include full new terrain features typical of the area of combat (irrigation ditches, crop fields, flat roofs in the compounds’ houses…) in addition of course to the very different weaponry. Each army participating in this conflict has its own specific chapter (not just OOBs and supports) to enable a reasonable simulation of their intrinsic fighting conditions and tactics.

 

In that sense, for example, the same terrain feature (for example, climbing a hill) affects in a total different way to the Taliban (who can move freely due to its better knowledge of the geography) than to  the coalition forces (being broken ground due to the burden of weight carried by the modern soldier). 

Ardennes 1944 by Anthony Beevor

Just finished this afternoon reading the latest book from Beevor on the Batte of the Bulge in December 1944. I bought it with some trepidation, as my gaming group is planning to vost the area in November coinciding with the Crisis 2015 event in Antwerp.

Alas, I must say that the book  is just okishh... at all  as engaging as I can remember when I read Stalingrad in the late 90s  or the Berlin book a few years back.

Truly the most interesting part for me was the description of the political mess between Monty, Bradley and Eiseinhower during the battle; specially Monty gets a beating from Beevor as he created unnecesary tension in the Allied Supreme HQ at a critical military moment, due to its ambition to put the American armies under his command. This brought huge embarrassment to Churchill personally, who had to come out in public supporting the Americans vs. the reading that some British newspapers were doing (in most cases with Monty behind the scene) and arguably eroded a lot of the political capital of the British to have a significant say in the Yalta summit and the organisation of the new world order post-conflict.

From the perspective of a military history aficionado I cannot say the book truly adds much new to what we already know about the battle, or at least no to me. The operation was doomed from the very beggining due to lack of realistic supply planning and although the Americans were caught wrong-footed, the tough opposition and the speed of reaction of the Allied armies were totally unexpected by the German high command. Unnecessary book in this sense.

As usual this is my personal opinion, but will rate it with just 2 stars out of 5, coming from someone who have read (I believe) almost every work published by Beevor so far... happy nonetheless to read other points of view.