A Learning Game for Novice Commanders
This is the game set up in the last post (here) to bring Kev (playing the Germans advised by John) and Ian (playing the Brits advised by me) up to speed with Chain of Command (CoC2).
As a learning game there was no time for note taking, and few photos, so this is very much a top-level narrative of the combat.
The Preliminaries
This was a British 'Attack on an Objective' mission, the objective being just inside the front door of the large farmhouse, 'Manor Farm'.
The Patrol Phase ended quite quickly as the German patrol markers start 20" in from their baseline and soon locked down the British patrols. The position of the resulting jump-off points (JOPs) are roughly indicated by the red and blue ellipses.
The Germans then put down any defences they had selected from their 8 support points, a barbed wire entanglement (1pt.) that would prevent any ingress through the front of Manor Farmhouse.
With his remaining 7pt.s, Kev had, as would be disclosed during the game, opted for: 1x leIG.18 7.5cm gun with junior leader and 5 crew (3pt.s); 1x senior leader (2pt.s); and 2x entrenchment for one team (1pt. each).
The Brits (Ian), with 14pt.s of support, had selected: 1x infantry section (5pt.s); 1x M3 Halftrack APC (3pt.s); 1x Flamethrower team (3pt.s); 1x 2" Mortar team (2pt.s); and, 1x Adjutant (1pt.).
The Game
As the attacker, Brits took the first phase, and wasted no time in deploying three infantry sections, one from each of their JOPs. The central section headed into the Derelict Farmyard, while one went right flanking through the orchard and the third went left towards the gap in the hedge by the wood.
The Germans took no notice in their phase and sat tight waiting for the British to come closer.
Over the next few phases, more Brits deployed onto the table with a senior officer and a 2" mortar team deploying behind the derelict farmyard ...
... and the fourth British, support, section deploying into the orchard reinforcing the right-flanking attack.
The Germans (Kev) reckoned the right flanking attack was the real threat, supported by fire from the Derelict Farm, and the left-flanking section was just a distraction. As a result, they felt compelled to act and disrupt the Brits before they could get much further. To this end, they deployed a section from their central JOP such that the MG42 (LMG team), directed by their junior leader to employ maschinengewehr, could engage the Bren team in the Derelict Farmyard.
But all they managed to inflict were 3 points of shock.
This poor shooting by the Germans turned out be just the start of what was a fairly consistent theme throughout the game.
The Brits' Lieutenant countered this by moving up to rally the Bren team and return fire. The Germans hit the dirt (they had accrued quite a few CoC points during the early phase when not responding to the British deployment and advance).
However, the British stayed focused on the plan, and with a smoke grenade to provide cover against any shooting along the road, the right flanking sections advanced out of the orchard.
And then over into the next, 'dead cow', field. At that point, to stop the Germans feeling free to concentrate on these sections, the left flanking section moved out, advancing at the run towards the German JOP by the Bureau de Poste.
John and I were both surprised to see the Germans choose to ignore this threat; Kev felt we were being overly precious about JOPs and that he would be better off sacrificing it to keep his defence compact.
Instead, the Germans now deployed a fully-entrenched section in the dirt road running down the side of Manor Farm to engage the British in the 'dead cow' field opposite.
But their run of terrible shooting dice continued, and the Brits, this time viewed from the German side (the orchard is just out of shot on the far side of the road) escaped unharmed.
In the centre the, the MG42 ...
At this point, the Brits unveiled, what they hoped would be, their masterstroke. An M5 halftrack with a flamethrower team on board, deploying on the dirt road running alongside the Derelict Farm.
At the same their two 2" mortar teams choked off much of the German defensive fire with a salvo of smoke bombs, ...
... leaving only the section facing the Derelict Farm in the clear.
With this reduced firepower, German shooting, already pretty much abysmal in this game, was largely reduced to ineffectiveness.
The M5 now raced flat out towards Manor Farm, ending up slap bang in the middle of the crossroads.
At the same time the British left flanking section captured the German JOP by the Bureau de Poste (their shock is just from running as hadn't been fired at yet).
But true to form, for this particular bunch of Germans, they missed!
At this point the game reached a very messy climax. First, the flamethrower team dismounted from the M3 to shoot at the Germans on the far side of the barbed wire (just off the left of the photo below), killing two but only inflicting 2 points of shock.
Then the infantry section (emerging through the smoke on the road in the photo before last) launched a close assault on the smoke-bound Germans in the dirt road entrenchments (see above photo). They lost and had to retreat from the fight.
The Germans then used a CoC die to end the turn to rid themselves of the smoke. A series of short-range firefights followed with the Germans generally getting the worst of it, with masses of shock pinning a section in Manor Farm, until the flamethrower team ran out of fuel.
The net result of three unanswered German phases, reduced the British to parity in terms of numbers but left them carrying far more shock than their opponents. With capturing the objective now looking impossible, Ian directed his British platoon to withdraw to fight another day.
It had been a Close-Run Thing.
Post Mortem
Kev's Germans had been convinced the Brits would come with tank support. Consequently, they had avoided deploying into any of the buildings where they could be shelled with HE, until they realised, from the other support the brits deployed, that one was not coming.
It was interesting to see Kev disregarding the threat to a JOP to stay focused on defending the objective, which with hindsight was a good call. It would've paid off sooner if he hadn't rolled execrable firing dice throughout the entire game until his triple run of phases at the end.
I was also surprised to see how close Ian got, without any armour support, something I usually see as essential against strong stone buildings. His idea to put a flamethrower team in an M5 to get it quickly into the fight was an inspired move that caught everyone flat-footed. It also threw up some bits of the rules that that neither John nor I had used before and raised the following questions.
1). What is a unit's rear when conducting a close assault? It is not defined anywhere and I thought that being out of the assaulted unit's arc would have this effect but the consensus was that it had to be directly to their rear.
2). Can passengers fire from an open-topped APC, in this case from an M3 halftrack? We reckoned the rules don't allow it but only because it doesn't say they can - but it doesn't seem an unreasonable action.
3). Do troops doing an Assault Dismount count as moving i.e. do they halve their fire dice? And, if so, can an opponent React Fire at them before they fire?
4). When exactly does one phase end and the next one start? In particular can your opponent use a CoC die to end the turn in your phase if you've used up all your actionable command dice, but they haven't yet thrown their command dice? I thought yes, again the majority thought different.
If you know the definitive answers to these do let me know.
