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.