Home Front: Civilians and Secret Agents.

I have recently been rebasing and touching up a few figures for use with my WW2 Operation Sealion collection. Most of these figures I painted for VBCW or Pulp gaming, but are generic enough in style to be of use for the 1940/41 home front. These will be civilians (the unarmed ones) , spies, secret agents, fifth columnists and other dodgy types. I have got an idea to run a game of Black Ops for Operation Sealion, for which these figures shall come in jolly handy. 

Chain of Command Battle Report: Attack and Defend

Vlad and I got another game of Chain of  Command in last week.This time we played the attack and defend  mission. I played the US Airborne attacking Vlad's German Heer. The US were supported by three Sherman Tanks, and and engineer section (comprising of a flame thrower team and a demolitions team). The Heer platoon was supported a Panzer IV and a Flakpanzer with a 20mm cannon.

The Americans objective was to get the demolition team in contact with the 88 flak batteries (which were not able to fire- they were just an objective). Obviously the Germans objective was to stop them. This game was played out using Vlad's 15mm figures and terrain.

The Germans began the game holding a farm house with good sight lines covering the objective, and their two armored vehicles threatening the roads heading towards the 88 battery.I deployed my paratroopers in the cover of a near by farmyard, and set up the light mortar were it could fire on the Germans defenses. I was very lucky, winning three or four turns in a row near the beginning of the game.My Sherman managed to fire on the Panzer IV. It still took five shots to knock the Panzer out! never the less, with the Panzer gone, I could bring the rest of my platoon up to attack the trenches and farm house. 

I used my Machine gun teams to suppress the German infantry while my rifle teams maneuvered ever closer.The Flakpanzer was a bit of a pain, as it sat right back and used its High Explosives to slow my advance up the roads. Vlad was uncharacteristically unlucky and only managed to kill a couple of paratroopers with the Flakpanzer before my Sherman was able to knock it out. After that it looked bleak for teh Germans, as  I used my Paratroopers to suppress the Germans while I was able to bring the engineers up to use their flame thrower to clear out the defenders. All the time the Shermans and the light mortar dropped a lot of HE shells on to the German defenses.

Vlad was unlucky that I knocked out his Panzer IV before he got to do much with it, as it meant I was free to maneuver closer to the targets. I was pleased with how well able to use fire and maneuver tactics to advance through cover while suppressing the Germans. As paratroopers are Elite solders the -1 to the Germans shooting due to the effects of suppressing fire meant that it was very hard for Vlad to stop my men advancing. 

Here are a few pictures from the game...

Stalingrad Game Photos

Unfortunately I was at work on teh 27th, so I missed the All Day Game at Earlswood Wargamers, although I did pop in for a chat and to take some photos after work. I was glad I did as it gave me chance to see Big Al's Stalingrad board in action...Oh My God! 

Alas my camera ran out of power after a few minutes of watching the game, but I managed to get these shots off...Prepare to be amazed by what is possible the best urban battle board EVER! Big Al scratch built these boards himself. I am going to shut up and let the photos do the talking...

Nuf said.

Home Front: German Agents Disguised as Nuns?

Recently I have been continuing my interest in Operation Sealion as an alternative World War Two setting. Sumner 20017 saw a flurry of releases from Warlord Games to support their Bolt Action Operation Sealion supplement and these complement the original Wargames Foundry Home Guard figures quite nicely. 

Some of the figures are certainly more tongue in cheek, but I love that. I am a massive fan of Dad's Army and don't mind if my Sealion collection veers into the slightly silly or even has a shade or two of Pulp. 

The idea of German agents disguised as nuns seems to have originated in the the "Fifth Column" scares in the British media at the beginning of the period in 1941-42 when the threat of invasion looked real. As far as I am aware it was just hysteria/media hype, and no German agents ever dressed as nuns...never the less the idea fits in well with the slightly silly Dad's Army vibe. 

These figures are by Warlord and Foundry. 

15mm Chain of Command Battle Report

I managed to get a game in with Vlad at the Earlswood Wargamers last week. We played Chain of Command, using Vlad's 15mm scale figures. I played an american rifle platoon supported by a couple of M5 Light tanks, and Vlad played panzergrenadiers. 

For this game we plated on a 6x4 table and kept all ranges etc the same as they are in the 28mm scale game. this gave the game a different feel than using 28mm figures, as the perspective was altered to make the battle field feel much more open. it has other advantages to, as vlad was able to offer a vast choice of support options for me to choose from, from Shermans to M10s, to artillery and antitank guns. the low cost of 15mm tanks compared to 28mm scale means that you can pick and choose freely, so each battle will be quite different. 

Vlad's scenery was lovely too, and this was the first outing of Vlad's complete set. 

We played a strait forward meeting engagement, with my infantry platoon advancing up a lane in Normandy, and running into the Germans coming the opposite way. 

Here are some photos...

An M5 Light tanks moves rapidly up the lane, scouting out potential German positions...

 Sneaky Panzergrenadiers emerge form a french farm house ready to sping an ambush. 

Having spotted movement in a ruined farmhouse the Yanks deploy along the hedgerow. 

German MG's pin the Yankee gun team in place while a squad of Panzergrenadiers assaults their position breaking their moral and driving them off.  

A German NCO directs fire from the ruined farm house...

The lead M5 uses its co-ax MG to rake the Panzergrenadiers behind the hedge. But what is this coming around the corner of the lane?

A German Panzer IV comes in to view and opens up on the M5....the plucky little tank is damaged but continues to rake the German infantry with MG fire. 

The American GI's move up to support the tanks, one team throws smoke to try to protect the M5 from the Panzer IV.

One of the American GI sections breaks under sustained fire from the Germans. 

The M5 was eventually knocked out by Panzerfaust, having survived two shots from the Panzer IV and a Panzershreck from the Panzergenadiers command section. 

This battle ended in a victory for the Americans...but only just. The American force was down to one force moral when the loss of a junior officer drove the Panzergenadiers force moral to zero...you couldn't get a close fought battle. 

Ardennes, December 1944

 The 16th of December 1944 was the start of the German offence that became known as the Battle of Ardennes in America, and the Battle of the Bulge in Britain. It was a daring, and desperate gamble by the Germans as they attempted to push through a weakened american sector in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium, to cut the Allied advance off and secure a sea port. History tells us it was a failure, but it was a much closer run thing than hindsight might suggest. The surprise and force of the German attack shattered many of the American units stationed in the Ardennes, and it was only the heroic efforts of a few American that managed to stall the Germans long enough for Monty and the American Generals to rally and reinforce the sector. 

Big Al had long dreamed of playing the Battle of the Bulge, and with the Earlswood Wargamers taking to Chain of Command it was decided that now was the right time (and 28mm was the right scale). These photos are from last weekends game. Most of the scenery is made by Big Al, with a few bits and bobs of mine. We ran two games simultaneously, one for beginners and one for sightly more experienced players, so that we could learn from each other. Al and I acted as 'tactical advisor/ tutor' to help teach the rules. Young James took command of my Fallschirmjagers, and Vlad commanded his own platoon of American Motorised troops. 

An important river crossing in the Ardennes forest, 1944

This was the battlefield. The river was fordable but cost a dice of movement. The woods and hedges were soft cover and the barns were hard cover. 

The Wrecked M5 was just a bit of colourful scenery and not an in game casualty. I assume it was a scout vehicle from Vlad's Mechanized platoon that was taken out by enemy fire, causing the Infantry to debus and attack the Fallschimjager on foot. 

Fallschirmjager seize the initiative and cross the river to try to capture the American Jump Off Points

James played the FJ aggressive, which I think suits their style. In the first turn he sent a  platoon sergeant with a fire team over the river to try to seize on of Vlad's jump off points. It was a bold move, but on that was to prove vital .

Other FJ teams set up in the barn and in the woods with excellent sight-lines across the fields and river to the American Jump Off Points

  Americans tried to outflank the German proposition using the hills as cover but came under fire. They panicked when the FJ sergeant lead his men across the river towards their jump off point and ran back to assault the FJ in close-quarterer battle. It went badly for the Americans, who lacked the close range fire-power of the FJ and were routed, along with their senior officer.  The FJ's captured the Ami Jump Off Point and from there on it was a bit of a crap shoot. The remaining American Jump off points were exposed to fire from two FJ sections, so Vlad's reinforcements were coming on into a hale of fire form the FJ MG43s  As always James rolled amazing, and his lucky dice hammered Vlad's Yanks (at one point James rolled 11d6- needing a 5-6 to hit- and got 9 hits!).

  James's superior position and fire-power meant that Vlad was struggling to bring troops on as they were coming under terrifying fire as soon as they came onto the board. Vlad's machining gun section, with its two 30mm MMG did worry James for a bit but after a load of lucky dice that was soon pinned too. Eventually Vlad was forced to concede, with two squads broken, and one pinned there was little else he could do to drive the FJ out of their positions. 

Chain of Command: Battle of the Bulge

We ventured into the Ardennes Forest for the first time down at Earlswood Wargamers, trying out my freshly refitted Fallschirmjager against Keith's Yankee riflemen. 
We used Chain of Command (CoC) for the first time, and it was a very interesting experiment. We both did a few things wrong (I have subsequent discovered by rereading the rules) but it was good fun for the both of us. The rules are nothing like Bolt Action  (BA) and are far more tactical and probably a lot more realistic (or simulatorary). The flow of the game is a bit  more random, or at least less predicable than BA to, and that is probably a matter of taste. In CoC you usually start with your whole force in reserve, and by the end of the game you might not have even deployed everything you have, and sometime you might not get to do anything with all of the things you do have already on the board, depending how you roll. That might seem a bit frustrating but I think it is a neat way of simulating the natural 'Fog of War' over the battlefield. It forces the commander (player) to think more tactically about the battle, and to view the terrain more like a platoon commander and less like an omnipotent flying eye. Bolt Action, on the other hand, if probably 'fairer' than CoC, and better suited to a competitive game, as there is less randomness to the turns- you know everything is going to get to act eventually even if you don't know what order it will be. It is also less challenging for the player as there is less to think about, and so could be considered more 'fun'. I guess that it all comes down to taste. 

Our game featured a platoon of fallschirmjager contacting a US rifle platoon in the ruins of a small hamlet in the middle of the Ardennes forest during the winter of 1944. A paved lane ran through the village from north to south. A stone wall ran almost the entire length of the west side of this lane. The ruins of a farm occupied the higher ground to the east of the lane.  The Germans were moving in from the east and the US were trying to push in from the west. 

 During the patrol phase the Yanks managed to explore the territory up to the stone wall, while the Fallschirmjager seized the higher ground to the east. Apart from the hill, the terrain to the east was rather open,consisting of snow covered fields, and did not afford much cover to the Germans.  That meant that my jump off points were clustered behind the hill, or on the board edge in an area deprived of useful cover, while Keith's were along the wall, giving him a good firing position from the start of the game. 

Fallschirmjager moving cautious through a snow covered field

Fallschirmjager digging into the ruins on the hill

The Germans began by deploying a section into the ruined house on the hill, and bringing another section on from the board edge to make their way cautiously up the open flank to another ruin at the bottom of the hill. They were moving slowly, making the most of what little cove the undulations in the field could offer. The section in the ruined farm house on the hill set up their MG 42 and went into overwatch, scanning the gloom for any sign of the 'Amis'. 

The US MMG adds serious firepower

American GI's setting up behind the cover of the stone wall

When the Americans appeared the were greeted by the buzz of the MG42 and a clatter of bullets, forcing them to take shelter behind reassuringly solid stone wall. Two sections of riflemen took up positions to the west of the lane, along with a 60mm mortar and a Tripod mounted MMG.  They opened fire on the Fallshirjager crossing the open field, forcing them to dive for cover but failing to inflict any casualties.

 

The US riffle section sprinting across the field is cut down in a hail of MG 42 Fire. Four out of eleven men survive the crossing. 

Initially the Americans had the upper hand, and could concentrate their fire on the Germans as they tried to advance into the ruined farms along the lane, but as the Germans reached their solid cover and dug into the rubble of the farms the tide of the battle started to swing. The Americans started to dread the mechanical buzz of the MG42, as the Germans superior fire-power began to dominate the battle. One Fallschirmjager team was wiped out by the sustained fire from the Americans, but it was immediately replaced by fresh reserves held back behind the hill, and soon their machine guns were adding to the fire pouring onto the American positions. The American officer rashly sent one section sprinting across a field, but they failed to make it to the safety of a farmhouse on the opposite side. Caught in the open they were sitting ducks for the German MG42's, which cut the section to ribbons. Seven GI's were killed outright in one terrible storm of bullets. The remaining 4 GI's staggered to the ruined farmhouse, but the fight had been knocked out of them by the carnage and played no further part in the battle, leaving the America flank vulnerable. 

Fallschirmjager reserves move up to plug the gaps left by their casualties. 

The American MMG team was then wiped out  after receiving the fire of four MG42's for two rounds. The loss of a section and their MMG left the American on the back foot when it came to fire-power, but they still held a a strong position behind the stone wall, and the Fallschirmjager now had been whittled down so much that they lacked the will to push forward and to take advantage of the situation. The US mortar continued to rain down on the German positions. At the end of the day both forces withdrew, battered and exhausted. Tomorrow they will have to do it all again.