CoC: Closing the Falaise Gap, The Road to St Lambert

I had my first game of CoC in quite some time yesterday. This was a test for a game I am presenting at the Hobby Bunker/Boston Trained Band Games Day on August 29th. Mike kindly travelled down from NH to help me test the scenario.

I used the first scenario from an excellent privately published campaign booklet Crossroads: Closing the Gap. I recommend this campaign without reservation. Click on the link and you will see a full description of the campaign.

In this scenario the Canadians have 8 supports and the Germans 4. The choices are quite limited by the campaign. Mike elected to be the attacker, he chose a 3" mortar, a 2" mortar. I am not sure what his other 2 points were. As the defender I picked a sniper and entrenchments for 1 team. The Germans started with a morale of 8 and the Canadians a morale of 9. The Canadian base line is to the left and the Germans to the right. The red circles are where the Canadian JOP's ended and the blue are where the Germans ended up. The objective was for the Canadians to get within 12 " of the German edge.

The terrain was fairly open with plenty of hedges, walls and buildings. The hedges and walls were all soft cover and medium obstacles. The building were all hard cover. 

So here we have the game underway. I placed my first squad behind the hedge and then advanced them into the open. A little chancy, but the hedges blocked LOS until you were within 2" of them and the Canadian JOP on my left flank was well back with two intervening hedges.

The Canadian section however were able to advance fairly quickly. Each unit is still out of LOS, which is slightly different then described in the rule book but correct according to the campaign. I think this will work well for a participation game. I also had placed my sniper in the building to the top left of the photo. This was quite successful initially but I forgot he was there after a while to my subsequent detriment.  The Canadians continued their advance to the leading hedge and started to shoot at the squad in the open. I took shock but in my next phase a double 6 came up and I had a CoC dice so  I was able to subsequently ambush this section with an LMG team as well as fire with the squad. 23 d6 made short work of this Canadian section and I was then able to advance this squad to my right flank and start to make their way down the road. The LMG team was kept on the table and drew back behind the building to cover my centre and right flank as now there was no real threat to my left.

A second Canadian section is skulking behind the building while the 3rd section was in the church. Mike was able to use the buildings to his advantage. You can not see them but to the right is the German squad that just took out the Canadian section in the road covering the intersection. This covered this approach quite well.

I was able to protect my right flank with a squad in entrenchments, they were kept on overwatch. The Canadians certainly stayed away from that edge, but subsequently made their way through the gap in the 2 buildings. I also popped my remaining rifle team to their rear to act a back up to this squad.

We can see this action here. By now the Canadians have got all their supports out and are bombarding the centre with both heavy mortars and smoke. They were essentially able to immobilize the squad in the road causing them to be pinned and lose LOS. This allowed the Canadian section in the church to advance to my front with their third section while the second section who had been in the road made their way around the building and started to fire. This well entrenched German squad was now taking fire from two Canadian sections and were starting to take attrition despite being in hard cover. A double 6 came up for the Canadians, they were able to fire yet again without retort and then sent in one of their sections to assault the German squad and despite having a slight advantage in d6, the Germans lost all 5 remaining men with their JL and while the Canadians lost 4 as well as their JL. The Canadians were down to a Morale of 5 while the Germans were still at 6.

My troops in the centre and in reserve were still pinned by the barrage, I was able to end it but on the next turn Mike again got double 6's and was able to quickly restart the barrage and again hit right on target without an aiming shot.. My SL, the sniper, a full squad as well as an LMG team were all again caught in the barrage with just one German rifle team free.  The attrition started to pile up with the continued barrage so we decided to call it quits with a marginal Canadian victory being declared. I had no CoC Dice pips and it was going to a grind.

I must say it was quite an enjoyable game, and I think if I had not forgot about my sniper, I could of probably taken out the Canadian FO and won. I think it will be a good participation game and am looking forward to it. Mike suggested that I not have the 3" Mortar as an option of support but I will have to think about this.

Allied Armour

With the publication of Big Chain of Command, I thought I would get my allied armour in order. This update allows the addition of extra infantry and armoured platoons while using the same basic mechanic as the platoon based game. It is pretty simple and really just delineates some changes in the terrain size, how the patrol phase and order of play is modified. There is also some modification to the morale table. With my 20mm army I, think I will be fine with the addition of an armoured platoon or infantry platoon in respect to my 6x4' playing surface.

For my initial forces, I bought several boxes of PSC AFV's but generally painted just one vehicle or tank from each box. The update for CoC also gives an outline of basic platoon structure for several nations, so I thought I would start going through what I had and get the glue out. The recent addition of an Iwata airbrush that actually works made things easy.

First up I thought I would do the British/Canadian platoons. These were my weakest forces in respect to armour, and were far out done by the Soviets and the Germans. I had a box of 76mm Shermans as well as some Universal Carriers and had just bought a box of Churchills.

Here we have some Canadian troops in a Universal Carrier Section. This is post 1943 organization, with a sergeant in command of 11 troops. They have 3 Carriers, 3 Bren guns, a Piat and are all armed with rifles. There is 2 Mk2 versions and one Mk1 version ( the lighter shade). Main difference is front fender and headlights.

Vehicle marking indicate that they are in the 1st Canadian Division who saw service in the Netherlands late in the war. I am sure my chaps will see service in Normandy as well. Slight colour variation, I had previously used BF Late War British Armour, the newer vehicles have been initially airbrushed with Vallejo Russian Green. They are a List 8 support. 

They of course are from one of the most famous Canadian regiments the Royal 22nd colloquially known as Vandoos and officially now known as Royal 22é Régiment. They are third in order of precedence in the Canadian Army. 

Next up we have a couple of Churchills. I have gone with the MkVII version, as these tanks are for Normandy. They have thicker armour then previous versions but have the the same 75mm gun. 

A close up of my latest method for doing rust, it is a little too thick here. Essentially I paint on some diluted PVA. I then apply a liberal coating of Secret Weapon Dark Earth pigment, followed by a dash of their Terracotta pigment. This is followed by Citadel Necron Metal Dry paint applied carefully on the tracks.

These two monsters belong to the 4th Royal Tank Regiment, in the 34th Independent Tank Brigade. They have a support rating of -1 in the Big CoC lists with just 2 tanks.

Lots of extra stowage from Value Gear. I am hoping all the markings are correct. Generally the British had 3 tanks in each Heavy Tank Platoon, so this is slightly understrength, I suspect I will be adding a tank.

Last up is a platoon of Shermans, again they are understrength, I will be adding a Firefly. They are presently +1 Supports. The markings are for the Trois Rivieres, 12é ATR They landed in Normandy as part of the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade and fought through out Northwest Europe until the end of the war.

Again some variation in colour. I suspect the individual tank names are wrong for a Quebec regiment!  

Again more stowage added. These are very nice tanks. The decals are from Aleran.

Slightly better effect here

These three units all served in the 1st Canadian Army, with the R22éR and the 12é ATR in the II Canadian Corps with the 4th RTR under the XXX Corps. The 1st Canadian Army was the largest army ever commanded by a Canadian General with around 450,000 soldiers, a little more the half Canadian with the rest being British, Belgic and Polish troops.

So it is going to be very tempting to bring these 2 platoons up to strength. I think PSC sells sprues which would be good as I need only one Churchill and one Firefly. I suspect I will add a platoon of anti-tank vehicles, those Achilles from Armourfast look very nice. But next up I hope to post my Soviet armour, of which I have quite a lot.

Chain of Command: Canadian Force

I have just finished my 2 forces for the about to be released WWII skirmish game from Too Fat Lardies. Chain of Command is much anticipated and from what I understand from the Yahoo site, there have been over 1000 preorders, which I believe is pretty good. The release date is August 21st.