"5th Platoon" - A CoC Arnhem Campaign #3

This is the second game of “5^th Platoon”, the Arnhem campaign for Chain of Command published in issue 73 of Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine. The first game was won by the British paratroopers, who continue moving now along the road towards the bridge at the center of the city.

In this scenario a key role is to be played by Major General Kussin, who historically was ambushed and killed when his staff car literally crashed into some British units moving along the road. In this scenario, when the officer’s car emerged from the secondary road in the North, the mission of the German units changes to save the life’s general. As you’ll read later in the report, this action had a major effect in the battle and the demise of the Germans.

 

The scenario victory conditions were for the British to put at least a unit on the German’s tactical edge by the end of a turn, indicating that they had broken the enemy’s defensive line and therefore the forces could keep on moving towards the bridge.

Countdown to Crisis (Antwerp)

Just a month away from Crisis, arguably the most important wargaming show in Continental Europe. We planned to attend this year and meet again Richard Clarke from TooFatLardies. Unfortunately, Richard is going through a personal ordeal and will be unable to attend in person.

However, there's a significant number of international "Lardistas" attending and we are trying to coordinate a rendez-vous to meet in person and not only through the social media. Murphy's Heroes a Dutch club from Delft is putting a Chain of Command game and they have been kind enough to offer their table as a rallying point, provisionally at noon. The table is located in grid g3b4 of the hall. You can find maps and ither useful information on the event here.

From Madrid we are travelling seven members of the Club Dragón and we'll be happy to meet youy out there.

Incidentally, Crisis will not be our only destination. We have planned a nice battlefield tour, arriving on friday to visit Waterloo, making Hell's Highway and Arnhem on Sunday/Monday and moving into Bastogne on Monday/Tuesday before returning home late that night...  we only pray now for the weather to be just right.

A Small Distraction: East Front CoC

We left the Arnhem campaign to rest this weekend, in the absence of one of the campaign players. And moved our troops to the Eastern Front, ahead of the planned campaign due November using the Chain of Command  scenario supplement Winter Storm.

Our interest was to test the new special rules and Red Army units included in the book and more specifically the cavalry. Today we fielded several dismounted squadrons; these are small platoons (made of 2 squads with 8 men each) that have a special activation mechanism: they use one set of (five) dice for each two units, and you have to distribute the dice between both in each activation phase.

"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.