Chain of Command-Going with a Bang-Retreat to Dunkirk

Getting behind with my posts, but here is a brief report of a CoC game myself and Graham had about 2 weeks ago. This was Graham's 3rd or 4th game of CoC and from previous games I had appreciated that he had rapidly learned the general concepts of the game so I set up a bit of a challenge. 

Most players feel that the Going with a Bang scenario from the 1940 source book is a bit of a challenge for the defender. Knowing that Graham had almost finished up an Early War British platoon, I thought a retreat to Dunkirk might offer a good game. 

I have started setting up terrain tables before deciding on a scenario. This works sometimes and sometimes it does not. I feel it gives a more realistic approach to the game as generally aside from some maps, foreign armed forces were not too familiar with the terrain they fought over in WWII.

So I put down the terrain, and decided that the scenario would be represent the fighting retreat of the British to Dunkirk in 1940 being pursued by the Germans. We played the scenario exactly as set up in the the 1940 book. 

Here is the terrain the German approach was from the right with the Brits held up in the village.

As you can see the British had lots of hard cover. All the hedges and walls were minor obstacles offering soft cover in respect to the hedges and hard cover for the stone walls. None of these linear obstacles blocked LOS. All houses were stone.

As you can see I made it pretty difficult for myself with little cover on my right flank and no cover on my left flank as I approach the village.

Graham completely stymied me in the Patrol Phase. I was hoping to get a JOP far up on the left table edge, as you can see I did not even come close. You can just see the 2 culverts that the Brits had to blow, one is on the road just in front of the field. The other was on the road transversing the village in the farground.

Forces

Germans

3rd Wave Grenadier Platoon

Shabby Nazi Trick

PreGame Barrage

Ig18

British

1940 Regulation Rifle Platoon

2 Engineer Teams

2 minefields

1 barbed wire

As usual, at this point I stopped taking photos, aside from the one above. I set up most of my forces on my right flanks with 2 of the squads being deployed on the road. Graham put most of his forces behind the stone wall running from the church. He made good use of his 2" Mortar team. He also put one of his sections in the houses on the right side of the road running through the village. This gave him quite good LOS as well as hard cover. A long range firefight took place and of course cover makes the difference here.

Anyway a poor Patrol Phase and maybe some poor dice resulted in a clear British Victory. I should say that Graham did an excellent job of placing his 3 fixed defences, forcing me to make my advance down the centre or the right flank. We usually play this scenario as a failure of Morale on the Attacker's force gives the Defender a victory. The Brits were unable to blow either culvert but the German advance stalled when their FM dropped to 0. A well deserved victory for Graham.