Fall of France: Expanding the Meuse Bridgehead

This past Thursday we had another game in our Fall of France campaign for "O" Group. P-Y brought a bottle of Pomeral as well as some Comte, so it was an overall good night.

This time the Germans were the attackers. 

Not too bad a representation, I like my new fields but I need more and maybe also need to brighten up the dark green ones. I am missing the orchard, as the trees for it had not arrived in the post before I left Salem. I also have some acrylic blast markers on the way, they are actually in Canada after arriving from the UK on Monday but they are still being carefully examined by the Canadian custom agents and have not been released!

The Forces

I had 3 companies of infantry with 2 artillery missions and one smoke mission, a MMG platoon, one IG18, one Pak36 ATG, a recon platoon of Sdfzk22x's, a Pz38 platoon and a PzII platoon. P-Y had 3 companies of infantry, a single artillery mission, a MMG platoon, a recon platoon of Panhards, a platoon of FT17's, as well a platoon of 25mm Laffly portees.

The Game

It again took us a bit of time to get up to speed, these rules have a lot of moving pieces and we still have played less than 6 times over a couple of years. As usual I took no photos during the game, was too busy stuck in the rulebook but this time we did finish the game. I think maybe we were gaming for about 3 hours and we did come to a clear conclusion. Here are some photos.

From the German edge; somehow or another our 2 recon platoons ended up in a face off  in the middle of the game and that was it for them. We did figure out how they worked though, and they did take out a few CP but mine had no luck discovering ambushes.

Again from the German edge; I was able to suppress the French 2nd company, with them losing 4 sections. Almost half way to victory1

Bringing more troops to support the right flanks with another infantry section as well as a MMG platoon. Have to be careful of those French tanks. 

The French are holding out in the village.

The Pz38 and PzII platoons, they came in early but they suffered bombardment after bombardment from the French artillery and Mortars. Spent the 2nd half of the game trying to keep them from being suppressed. They also had very poor aims!

I find it interesting that in all our games, we have never deployed all our assets as you can see below. The losses are to the right of the photo with the French underplayed forces in the foreground and the German undeployed forces in the fairground. P-Y still has his whole reserve infantry company undeployed as well as his Laffly Platoon and 2 platoons from his 2nd company. I had not deployed my reserve infantry company as well as 1 platoon from my 2nd company.

As you can see the French got 3 Fubars while I got 1 so this game to the Germans.  It is still quite close with 4 Victory points for the Germans and 3 for the French. On the last phase I really had to pull out the stops using half my HQ orders. Otherwise I would have been pummelled in the French Defensive phase.

I have to thank P-Y for playing another battalion level game, I know he is a skirmish gamer at heart. He is getting interested though in the next scenario the French are the attackers and I just noticed that he gets to play the British in the last 3 scenarios. I have to dig up some Matilda's!