Many Rivers-Turn 4-Farm and Forest

Myself and Graham got together at his place last Sunday week for the next game in the Many Rivers campaign. We finally had moved on to another table, this time playing the Swift to Support scenario from the 1940 Handbook. As you can see I was extremely lucky with my support roll get 19 support points. Graham ended up with 9. Both platoons were in good shape but I should note that my other 2 platoons are pretty shot up.

Forces

Guards Platoon #2 (missing 1 man)

FR 0, 5CD, Regulars

Supports (9)

AAMG 1

Infantry Section 4

4 Emplacements 4

Schützen Platoon #3 (missing 4 men)

FR +1, 5CD, Regulars

Supports (19)

Shabby Nazi Trick 1

Red Dice 2

Smoke Barrage 2

le.18 IG 4

Stuka Attack 4

Pioneer Squad 6

The Game

I got boxed into a corner with my JOP's. Graham stayed well back. The Stuka Attack resulted in the large barn being in ruins which was a significant advantage for me as this is solid cover for the British with a good LOS over the hedges.

This photo is from pretty late in the game, as I had forgotten to take photos as usual. I held off with the smoke barrage which landed right on target until I had my troops ready to advance rapidly forward. I also waited to see where Graham was to set up his defence. He eventually placed all 4 sections behind the hedge on his right flank. I used my large Pioneer Squad as the main advance. As you can see above they got quite shot up. I had a strong firing base on the hill on my left flank.

Base of fire with SL, IG, squad and 5cm mortar.

As you can see the British suffered quite a few casualties and shock from my firing base with at least 2 teams routing. Graham decided he had enough and withdrew. Game over!

Summing Up

German Platoon #3

Platoon Leader Outlook: Happy

Men’s opinion: 0

CO’s opinion: -1

German Platoon #3: 3 dead next game

German 1st Platoon has lost 5 dead , 5 missing for next game

German 2nd Platoon has lost 8 dead, 4 missing for the next game

British Platoon #2 

Platoon Leader Outlook: Happy 

Men’s opinion: +1

CO’s opinion:  -1

British Platoon #2: 2 dead, 2 missing next game

British Platoon #1: 5 dead, 2 missing next game

Next Game

I have decided that I will use a Blitzkrieg to attack the next table using my same force. The 5cm Mortar will be out of ammo and we decided that it would be unreasonable for the Pioneer Squad to be intact as they lost 6 figures, so using the casualty table they will be down 5 men for the next game.

Mockern-The Battle for Germany 1813

 

Last Saturday, 5 of us got together for the penultimate battle in our 1813 campaign.  The scenario features the Battle of Mockern and was fought in October of 1813, as part of the Battle of Leipzig. As you can see from the map below this action was fought north of Leipzig and featured the French under Jarmin defending against attacking Prussians under Yorck on day one of the battle.

Overview of the Battle of Leipzig

Victory conditions for the Prussians were to capture Mockern in 20 turns that was made up of 2 BUA's back to back. Victory for the French was to inflict 3 Suave qui Peut's on the Prussians.

GdA has a scouting phase and myself and Iannick played it out a couple of days before our gathering. The French (myself and Helge) had to decided to just field 3 of our 5 brigades and the start of the game. 

Pelleport was deployed on the yellow marker, with Lorge's Cavalry on the pink and Jarmin on light blue, despite 4 scouting attempts the Prussians were only able to identify the position of the cavalry. 

We ended up having a pretty tight deployed frontage that I believe almost lost us the game but more about that later. 

The French kept Bouquet and Joubert as off table reserves. The Prussians had no off table reserves aside from Rummel who would arrive as a reinforcement on Turn 6.

The Game

Saturday came and the Prussians (Graham, Iannick, David)  rapidly deployed their troops across the whole width of the table, I dod not remember their exact order but Mecklenberg was deployed on their right flank with Sohr on their left flank with the other 3 deployed infantry brigades in between. We deployed Pelleport on our left with the 1e Marine holding the front Mockern BUA, with Lorge next and Jarmin on his right. I will let the photos tell the story.

The table, I think it is roughly 8x5', Mockern is in the distance with the French position to the right. There was large hill on the French side, otherwise open ground.

Here are the starting positions as seen from the Mockern side of the table. You can see to the left the Prussian wide deployment with their cavalry in the distance. The French had a very tight deployment with their 3 artillery batteries deployed together in defence of Mockern with their cavalry to the rear. Skirmishers were deployed to the left of and in front of Mockern (one legere unit deployed in skirmish). An infantry brigade was deployed to the right flank to defend against a flanking manoeuvre from the Prussians.

The Prussian players;  Graham, Iannick and David

Helge for the French and I am taking the photo!

Turn 4. The Prussian advance, as you can see they went into line pretty quickly, I believe this slowed their advance but did protect them against cannon as did the skirmishers. The French held their position aside from advancing the skirmish units on our left flank to harass the advancing Prussians. Our initial plan was to focus on our 3 batteries of artillery to weaken the enemy. The Prussian cavalry moved quickly to challenge our right flank.

Turn 6. The Prussians have advanced on all fronts and now their reserves have deployed. By now our artillery batteries are starting to suffer some attrition but we have weakened the front line Prussians.

Turn 12: Th ePrussians are now advancing on Mockern in column with their reserve. Their initial assault in line was repulsed. You can also see that Jarmin's infantry on our right flank is collapsing. The French have now brought on one of their reserve infantry brigades to buttress the right but also to be ready to support Mockern. You will notice that we have left the 2nd BUA unoccupied.  Our skirmishers have been pushed back but our cavalry is still intact.

Turn 12; a close up of the defence of Mockern.

Turn 18. A lot has happened. The Prussians were able to drive the French Marine Veterans out of one part of Mockern and only with great difficulty were one of our reserve units able to occupy the other half of the town. Our cavalry became trapped and was unable to challenge the advancing Prussians. By now, however, we had inflicted 2 Suave qui Peut on the Prussians. Before the Prussians could take all of Mockern we were able to inflict the 3rd Suave qui Peut...thus a very narrow French Victory.

Summing Up

I thought this was going to be an easy game for the French but the Prussians almost did win it. If their initial advance was a little more aggressive at the start, I think they might have got a victory before we met our Victory Conditions. Our defence was good but we had a lot of difficulty bringing in our reserves because of our narrow frontage. In retrospect, Jarmin should have been more to our right allowing our reserves to move more easily to support Mockern. I am not sure also if Pelleport should have started one of his battalions in the 2nd BUA. Certainly, his skirmishers did a good job to protect Mockern and were able to retreat in good order once their job was done. The French Cavalry, as usual, caused significant havoc to the Prussians. But a good game was played by all. I should note that around Turn 13-14, some of the Prussian players considered withdrawing their troops, Helge and myself urged them to continue the game as all was not lost. I believe we were quite correct in this and once they got "stuck in" they almost turned it around. 

There were also complaints about the actual scenario design with the one objective being stuck in a corner. I disagree totally. As gamers we are presented with what we are given, this was a historical simulation and the scenario was what it was. It ended up giving us a very good game, not an easy game but it was quite exciting.

Hopefully, we will get to the last game (Liebertwolkwitz) in this campaign fairly soon. I should note that there were 1500 18mm AB figures on the table and with the last scenario using the large OB option we hope to hit close to 2000 figures. And what will be very exciting is that we will see some Austrians.

Many Rivers Turn 3a Blitzkrieg!

 

Myself and Graham got together yesterday for our next turn in our Many Rivers to Cross Chain of Command campaign. It had been May since our last game so we were both a little rusty, I should note that this is the first time we used CoCV2 for this campaign, it seemed to meld easily with the OB and support information for the 1940 Germans and British from the Blitzkrieg Hand book. We had the game at Grahams.

Forces

Guards Platoon 2, FM 10 (fresh)

FR 0, 5CD, Regulars

Supports (18)

Barbed Wire 2

Minefields 2

2" Mortar

Pregame Barrage

Sniper Team

MMG Team

Infantry Section

Schützen Platoon 3 FM 9 (still fresh)

FR +1, 5CD, Regulars

Unchanged Supports (18)

Engineer Team

Shabby Nazi Trick (fifth columnist)

Red Dice

MG34 Tripod Mount

Pregame Bombardment

Extra Schützen Squad

IG18 IG

Patrol Phase

The JOPs are circled, not the best Patrol Phase for the Germans. Graham did a very nice table.

The Game

This was a challenging game, first because it was a Blitzkrieg, I felt it did not adhere to the rules for support generation in the campaign so we felt it best to go with the support generation as determined by the scenario rules for Swift to Support in the 1940 Handbook. I had the same supports as Turn 3 with 18, so the Brits got 18. This is a lot of supports for defence.

This was my base of fire on my left flank with a planned advance on my right. It looked pretty lethal with a 5cm Mortar, an IG18, a Schützen squad and a SL.

Graham put down an SL and a 2" Mortar in the farmyard compound. The SL had LOS so smoke started to come to block my base of fire. I have some questions about this as there did not seem much I could do about it. I will have to check with the TFL cognoscenti though as something did not seem right.

There is nothing like the effectiveness of the 2" British Mortar

Graham had deployed 3 of his sections as the game progressed, one on his right flank and 2 behind the fence in the farm compound. By now we had both deployed our MMGs in entrenchment. They were both destroyed by the end of the game but I was take to take out the Vickers first.

My advance squad did very poorly as you can see and ended up breaking on the next phase. 

I had deployed my last squad on the road, but by now it was too late and once the squad in the opened broke my FM dropped to 3 and I decided to withdraw. Luckily I had not lost many of my core platoon (5 figures) so the cost to the platoon was limited.

Summing Up

German Platoon #3 (Final FM 3)

Platoon Leader Outlook: Content

Men’s opinion: -3 (FM roll -1)

CO’s opinion: -2

German Platoon 3: 2 dead, 2 missing

German 1st Platoon has lost 5 dead 

German 2nd Platoon has lost 8 dead

British Platoon #2 (Final FM 8)

Platoon Leader Sociable: Affable (FM roll +1)

Men’s opinion: +1

CO’s opinion:  +1

1 missing next game

British Platoon 1 has lost 5 dead

I think I was really against it with the British having 18 supports in defence. I did set up a nice firing line to cover my advance but I could never get my advance moving along, I might of waited too long. I did kill quite a few Brits but the difference in the FM made an easy recovery for them.The good news is that I did not lose a lot of men and on the same table the British will have many fewer supports although there are quite a few fixed defences on the table. We will just have to see how it goes.

Dresden 1813 The Battles for Germany

 

A couple of weeks ago we all went to Chez Helge for the 4th game in our Battles for Germany campaign. In this game the French were again the attackers in the 2nd day of the Battle of Dresden. The scenario focussed on the Allied right flank with Ney's attack against a combined Russian/Prussian force.

Set Up

Final OB with Brigadier Quality

GdB Starting Positions

French Plan

Helge and myself had a pretty clear plan for this game. We have understood that Artillery is not effective at long range and needs to start limbered so it can rapidly advance to Effective Range before deploying. With this in mine we deployed 3 Brigades with attached artillery. Our Veterans and our Légére were deployed in Skirmish order as they are also effective at a longer range. We focussed on our left flank with the plan to batter the Russian guns with both Artillery and Skirmish foree, thus weakening them before we did a rapid infantry attack. 

Allied Plan

The Allied plan was to hold the centre and left, and possibly flank the French left. What we did not comprehend was our abysmal ADC rolling!

Game Photos

The Allied right

The allied left

Graham's movement trays again worked brilliantly.

The French centre ready for action. The légére made one move and went into skirmish order.

The Game

The Allied Commanders

The Allied Troops deployed up to their maximum zone.

Russian Battery

All Batteries within effective range of each other, there was quite a bit of counter battery in the first few turns. It did go back and forth ....... 

........but a cavalry battle on the French left seemed to sort things..........

....................with the Russians losing their cannon on the centre high ground and their second battery between the high ground and Seidnitz collapsing with the 3 French Batteries larger intact. The Allies had now lost some of their Cavalry as well as Infantry.....the outcome was clear and on Turn 9 they decided to withdraw.

Summing Up

I felt our pre-game plan of attack really was quite effective and this was an easy victory and a very quick game. It will be interesting to see how we do as the defenders in the next battle, The Battle of Mockern.

Many Rivers to Cross- Turn 3-The Village

Ten days ago myself and Graham played our 3rd game in the Many Rivers campaign. This was the Germans third go at taking table 2 and really they had to take this time. The campaign is designed so that the Attackers have increasing support for each go at a table. Also as this is the third turn, the Germans can now have heavier weapons including manhandled infantry guns as well as antitank guns. I had a very good roll and ended up getting 18 supports, which I felt would be enough to turn the tide. This was 3 times the support that the Brits would have. 

 Forces

Guards Platoon 1, FM 11 (missing 2 soldiers)

FR 0, 5CD, Regulars

Supports (6)

Entrenchments

2" Mortar

A9 CS Tank

Schützen Platoon 3 FM 8 (fresh)

FR +1, 5CD, Regulars

Supports (18)

Engineer Team

Shabby Nazi Trick (fifth columnist)

Red Dice

MG34 Tripod Mount

Pregame Bombardment

Extra Schützen Squad

IG18 IG

Patrol Phase

I was happy with the results of the PP

The Game

This game was much different than the previous 2, and the German firepower with the increased support made a big difference. Graham also had very poor dice, where mine were quite good. The game was short taking well less than a couple of hours. Graham populated the 2 buildings in the centre with a section each but with the IG18 firing with 2 squads, as well as the 50mm Mortar team and the MMG team at close range all firing, it was not long before the section in the bunker started to crumble. Both the SL and the section JL were hit with the Bren team being wiped out. This cumulation of FM tests brought the British FM down quickly and Graham decided to withdraw. Finally the British were pushed out of The Village.

Summing Up

German Platoon #3 

Platoon Leader Outlook: Content

Men’s opinion: -3 (FM roll -1)

CO’s opinion: -1

German Platoon 3 Intact

German 1st Platoon has lost 5 dead 

German 2nd Platoon has lost 8 dead

British Platoon #1 

Platoon Leader Outlook: Affable (FM roll +1)

Men’s opinion: -1

CO’s opinion:  -1

5 dead, 2 missing next game

Well that was a very plucky defence by the British holding The Village for 2 turns with a single platoon. The Germans have now seen 3 of their platoons in action. Fortunately, Platoon 3 survived this combat with no losses, the CO has ordered them to Blitzkrieg the next table. This will see platoon 3, with the exact same supports, advance without delay to the Farm and the Forest. 

Many Rivers to Cross-Turn 2-The Village

Forces

Guards Platoon 1, FM 8 (missing 2 soldiers)

FR 0, 5CD, Regulars

Supports (10)

Barbed Wire 2

Extra Infantry Section

MMG Team

Schützen Platoon 2 FM 8 (fresh)

FR +1, 5CD, Regulars

Supports (15)

Pioneer Wire Cutting Team

Adjutant

Shabby Nazi Trick (fifth columnist)

Red Dice

MG34 Tripod Mount

Pregame Bombardment

Extra Schützen Squad

Patrol Phase

Patrol Markers

British JOPs

Well spread German JOPs

Fixed Defences

Bunker status

Allied left protected

Allied right protected

Allied centre protected

Game

This was my second shot in trying to take this village. In the first game I concentrated most of my resources on my right flank, this time as you can see from the Allied fixed defences, the only real choice I had was to attack equally on both flanks. Again, I only had light weapons so the key to my advance was probably the Pregame Bombardment as well as a Fifth Columnist. My JOP's were in much better position now with choices of deployment on the extremes of each of my flanks as well as in the centre. The Allied JOP's were heavily concentrated on their left with a single JOP on their right, but positioned thus so they were unable to deploy forward into the fenced area in front of the barn. I rapidly deployed all my forces in the first 2 phases. with 2 squads to the left with the MMG team, the mortar team and a SL all within command range. I was also able to deploy 1 squad half way up the field on my right in a tactical position that they were already half way across the table. They were covered by another squad behind the hedge.

Sounds good so far, but the Allies actually then got 4 double phases in a row and were rapidly able to accumulate CoC pips. It took them awhile to deploy but they got a lot of chances to do so. I probably should have advanced early then I did but I was able to get to a rifle team off the table on the right by splitting them off from the LMG team under command of their JL. I was able to put covering fire down on the side window of the building on the far left Allied flanks as well as put a smoke grenade down to protect the LMG team in the field. The rifle team was able to rapidly advance once out of the field to the edge enemy edge. The 2 men left got within 3" and were about to be shot when I was able to interrupt and get them off the table. First victory condition met!

While all this was happening, I was firing with 3 squads on the building on the Allied left but to absolutely no effect due to the hard cover provided. It is difficult without heavy weapons. My focus here was due to the fact that I could win the game if I could clear the right and left Allied flanks (2 foot squares) I would meet the 2nd victory condition and win. Graham had yet to place anyone on his right flank so that square was already open, all I had to do was knock that one section out of the left Allied flank. But by now my FM was falling due to the attrition I was receiving on 3 of my deployed squads. A SL got killed, my FM was down to 5 and by now my fire power was much reduced and Graham deployed his last section on his right. I had no chance to win so I withdrew.

As you can see below this battle cost me dearly in men and in Mens Opinion, my leadership has categorised as Dangerous. I am now a murdering officer!

Game Photos

My right flank taking a pounding again

I should have been more aggressive with my left flank

I was able to drive this section out of the destroyed house on the Allied right

The Allies liked being in the houses

Summing Up

German Platoon #2 

Platoon Leader Outlook: Sad

Platoon HQ Leutnant dead, HQ now consists of 2 Feldebel (SL’s) 

Men’s opinion: -4 (-1 on FM roll)

CO’s opinion: -2 

8 Dead, 4 missing next game

German 1st Platoon has lost 5 dead 

British Platoon #1 

Platoon Leader Outlook: Affable (+1 on FM roll)

Men’s opinion: +3 (+1 on FM roll)

CO’s opinion: +2  

1 dead

Graham played well in these first 2 games, he has decided to hold the village in the next turn. It is going to be tough with the limitations as noted above.