Approach to Mirfeld: A CoC Training Exercise

Today I hosted a Chain of Command game as a training exercise for two newish players. I advertised on Virtual Lard and CoC Facebook, and 2 players put themselves forward. Trevor joined me from Nebraska and Gavin zoomed in from Poland.

I went with The Probe scenario but ran it along the long axis rather than the short. We played an encounter which could have happened in the later stages of the Battle of the Bulge.

Things went well, I certainly enjoyed myself and the two players got their first actual game of CoC under their belts. They both did quite well and understood the mechanics of the activation, firing and movement fairly quickly. The American player Gavin took an adjutant, medic and 600mm Mortar team, while Trevor took a sniper as their supports. There were a few double phases, maybe slightly more for the Germans, but unfortunately near the end of the game so they could take little advantage of them as their FM was plunging. I decided on a marginal American Victory as the German FM dropped to zero, but the Americans had not got their requisite team off the table.

So the Patrol Markers and the 2 sets of JOP's are above. While some action shots are below.

A special thanks to Trevor and Gavin for joining me, I hope to see them both again.

Red River Gold, An ACW Sharpe Practice Campaign

This past Tuesday I had a great time playing a Virtual Game of TFL's Sharpe Practice. The game was put on by Will Hunter. Sharpe Practice is probably my least played TFL ruleset, I think because I found it a little slow and not as dynamic as say Chain of Command. I also had some problems understanding some of the mechanisms, but not withstanding I am always happy to get in a game.  I met Will through Virtual Lard as well as the Virtual Tabletop Wargaming FB group. I think he is the only other Lardie in this group.

Will tells me that he has been working putting together a ACW Sharpe Practice campaign for sometime and wants to test the different scenarios he has put together. On Tuesday, we had our game. Will hosted myself and another gamer from Michigan. Michael was well acquainted with the ruleset so that was an enormous help to me. I am sure I slowed down the game a bit but I did leave the game having a much better understanding of the rules.

Will uses a single camera setup with a spinning table. This really worked quite well and as you can see from the screenshots taken below the view was really quite excellent. We played a fairly balanced game with the usual leaders and 2 units of Skirmishers each and 2 formations of Formed Infantry.

The game was a lot of fun, and was a close run thing. I played the Yankees and I probably rolled the best dice I have ever done. I did get ahead on Morale but lost the game because the damned Rebels got off the table before I could kill them.

The game was a great experience and I hope that I get to play another in Will's campaign.

Campaign Restarted: Bloody Bucket (2b/2)

 

Myself and Pierre-Yves restarted our Bloody Bucket campaign last night, this was our first game since January as the Covid put any trips to Montreal on hold. Of all the campaigns put out by TFL for CoC this is the most fascinating to me because of it's complex set-up and myriad of choices. I have been really looking forward to restarting it.

I am playing the Germans, and they have a difficult task in this campaign as they are Green troops who are  outgunned. This is our second turn, each turn can have more than one game. In the first phase of turn 2, I attacked Table 2 with a Volksgrenadier Sturm Platoon from Assembly Point B, I got crushed as you can see in my previous report. Rather than going to turn 3, I decided to attack Table 1 with another Sturm Platoon from assembly point A. The following may help explain things.

Sturm Platoon #1

CD 5 Green FM8

1 SL
3 man rifle grenadier team

2 Sturm Squads w/JL
1 LMG Squad w/JL  

Supports (12)

MMG Team

SL

Sniper 

PreGame Barrage

Engineer Team

American Rifle Platoon

CD 5 Regular FM 8

2 SL's w/ Bazooka Team

3 Rifle Squads w/JL 

Supports

Entrenched 0.5 HMG team

Roadblock x 2

Minefield

So on to our game, so I should say first that we made some enormous screw-ups with my platoon, it should have been 2 STG-44 armed squads and one LMG Squad. Somehow another this morphed into 3 LMG squads and to make it worse an extra LMG squad got on the table somehow. So the Americans were at a bit of a disadvantage! I am not sure though how much this affected the game as I got a triple phase and a double phase in my first 3 command throws and had knocked down the American FM to 5, almost immediately before I got too many squads on the table.

I placed all my resources in the forest as this is the only cover I had, P-Y placed a squad in the house. With the initial double and triple phase I was able to take this out and with the sniper I was able to take down a SL (we use the TT modifications for the ruleset, in respect to double phases, snipers and OT Mortars). I am not sure how I ended up getting 4 squads on the table and this one was placed out of cover as you can see. By now P-Y's FM was 5, so it was really a case of focussing on dropping his morale while keeping mine and driving him off the table. He placed 2 squads in the top and bottom floor of the house that provided hard cover. I sent off a diversionary attack along the south to try to capture a JOP, P-Y set up his HMG aiming south behind the house. At this point the obvious win for me seemed not so obvious, as he destroyed my squad in the open approaching the house. But I was able to keep the attack up on the house and drop the American FM to 1 while mine was still 5. P-Y withdrew, Table 1 captured. I felt bad that I somehow or another screwed up my squads as they were more powerful then they should have been, but I will be blitzkrieging Table 2 with only 2 squads while the Americans will have a full complement in place.

So a German victory, somewhat ill gained, to even the score. Rather than doing the post game campaign summing up, I decided to Blitzkrieg Table 2 from Table 1 down the road. This game will be played next Monday. I will be going up against a full American platoon, with my Sturm Platoon less one VG Sturm squad. I am sure we will get it right this time.

Pierre-Yves takes a lot of great photos and you can see his beautiful terrain and figures on his Facebook page.

Battle of Summa redux

I hosted a Winter War game yesterday morning over the internet, but this time I was the games master. I have only acted as a games master once before at a minor event some years ago at my local gaming store. I advertised on the Virtual Lard Discord Server, and got 2 players within half an hour. One player was in the state of Victoria in Australia and the other was in Massachusetts. We started at 0900h EDT, I believe it was 2300h in Australia! 

I had sent out the gaming materials through Discord, so both Noah and Will were well prepared. This was a rehash of the game myself and P-Y played a few days ago, but there were extensive changes made to the terrain with some minor changes to the OB.

In addition to the above, I allowed each player to take 2 extra points, Noah (Soviets) took a Pre-game Barrage and Will appropriately took a CoC dice. It took about 4 hours to play and aside from some minor hiccoughs with the Patrol Phase, it is a little unusual in scenario 7, things went well. As the game went along I made suggestions to both players, which I think was OK. I will post some photos of the action.

Finns attacking from the farground.

Getting ready to attack through the gulch

But the Soviets are ready

Russian trucks, one with a Quad Maxim and one with a squad of NKVD

Effective Finnish use of smoke pots to protect their advance

Finnish LMG squad in the open down to their last JL.

A well ordered Soviet defence with a infantry squad and a Maxim

The Finns decide to attack, but the Soviets are on overwatch

Strangely enough the Finns survived the overwatch fire as they charged in with Rynnäkköön!, but superior Soviets numbers eliminated the Finnish attackers and  many FM tests caused their FM plunged to zero, a Soviet Victory. 

I am hoping both players enjoyed the game, I think it was 0300h in Australia when we finished, so Noah must of been a little tired. I also have to admit being a little done in as I had played/gmed 8 hours of CoC in 16 hours! I really enjoyed the experience and I am sure I will set up some more games. As I work shifts and am usually more often available during the day Virtual Gaming has been really working for me, especially with players in other time zones to the east. I am finding it extremely difficult to play in the evenings and am limiting myself to a max of one evening game a week.

Attack on the Bridge

Yesterday, we had quite a game of CoC with an American Airborne platoon attacking a Panzergrenadier platoon. We played virtually on a terrific looking terrain that P-Y had set up in Montreal.

I played the defenders the Germans, and had a starting FM of 9. I took an IG18 IG in an entrenchment. P-Y took a Sherman and an extra squad. Scenario 6 was used with the bridge being the objective, sort of like Pegasus Bridge but with different troops. This was a very challenging game because of the complexity of the terrain but it was certainly cinematic. Some photos to illustrate the action:

JOP's

This is a photo taken virtually, amazing clarity with an iPhone fed through OBS and Zoom.

Midway positions, Americans in Blue. We have 2 squads on each at this stage. To the left is my IG gun and to the right is the 60mm American mortar. P-Y Brought on his Sherman....lesson do not bring on a Sherman within 3 range bands of a JOP. I popped on the PzShk team....3 net hits and a roll of 5....kaboom, 2 FM tests.

We are now getting stuck in, the American advance a squad through the fields in the north as well as a squad  to the road, they throw a treble6, all overwatch is removed and over the next couple of phases both the German squad and the PzSchk team break back down the road. I rush a squad along the stone wall towards the bridge, while I send a 2nd squad to take the a JOP. My FM is 4, while P-Y's is 5. It is really touch and go. He moves up a squad to finish off the routing troops, but throws another treble 6. My squad routs off the table, which is good for me as their JL had been killed so no FM test.

P-Y then advanced a squad on the bridge but to the north side so I was not in LOS as I was below the bridge. This gave me an opportunity, as I was now down to a FM of 3 while he had a FM of 4 with a CoC dice in reserve. I got a 3 on my CD roll, I launched Handgranaten! So in a hail of grenades the PzG's went in. We both had a SL, but the Americans had shock.  I am not sure of the actual dice count for the throw but I had 13 kills and 5 shock while P-Y had 9 kills and 4 shock. We actually messed the calculation up....I think I got overexcited. So we called the game a draw, but I think if we did it right, I would have had at least 2 FM tests while P-Y had 3, he could avoid one with his CoC dice but all his troops were killed, including 2 leaders,  so his FM would have dropped below 3, so a draw was reasonable.

Well it was quite a game, we really have to find a universal method of crossing major obstacles as the rules are slightly unclear in respect to how many men can cross in a phase, the terrain made it a little difficult to interpret the movement as there were so many major obstacles as well as narrow passageways. But truly cinematic......thank to P-Y for setting up the coolest table I have ever played on.

Well in an hour I am hosting a CoC Winter War game between 2 guys one in Australia and one in American, I better get a move on!

Battle of Summa-February 1940

I hosted my first Chain of Command game over the internet this week, we started Wednesday night and finished off this morning as I had to work early Thursday morning thus abbreviating the game. We played my favourite theatre in WWII, the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union. Most of the games I have played during this period were set in December and January 139-40, but this time I want dto play the Soviets as regulars against regular Finns. I chose the Battle of Summa, the scenario is as follows. 

I used my standard 4 cam set up, with me embedded in to one of the overview cams.

Central overview shot, the Finns were attacking from the right. As it was an Attack-CounterAttack scenario  there was an objective for each side which had to be captured to gain victory. The objectives were the 2 houses.

I took the Soviets, letting Pierre-Yves choose the Finns. I usually play the Finns so I was good with it. I started with FM of 9 while P-Y had a 10, thus he was the attacker. My plan was to advance the Quad Maxim up the road to provide heavy fire while I kept the NKVD in the forest near the house so I could deploy on the road or behind the house. I placed 2 infantry squads on my right flank to advance around the hill to get into a position so I could launch both squads using the National Characteristic of Urraaaahh into an assault on the objective. I put the Soviet Characteristic Wrath of the Gods to good use making it difficult for the Finns to get on the table. P-Y's plan was to advance on his right flank with 2 squads, and send 1 LMG squad up the road to get cover by the road block (which had been placed half way up the road) with the other behind the fence near my objective with the MMG team. Despite getting multiple double phases he had significant difficulty getting his unit on, by failing to roll 5+. I was able to shoot up one of his Rifle Squads, but he took out the Quad Maxim pretty early. By this time I was still in good shape with most of my force intact while the Finns had taken some attrition. We called it a night.

This morning we restarted the game, and before I knew it because of absolute horrible dice rolling, I was down to a FM of 3. Every time I had to check to see if a leader was hit I rolled a one and then every time I rolled on the Leader Table I rolled a 1! By now the first turn had ended so despite having much less firepower and with a lot of double phases my troops ended being shot up with multiple squads on the verger of breaking. I got the Finnish FM down to 5, but it was just not enough so we retreated. A Finnish victory. Here are a few photos.

Well it is great to get into playing CoC. I am getting in another game tomorrow night this time being played in Montreal and I am acting as a games master for the first time with a modified version of the above scenario on a different terrain on Tuesday morning with a fellow for the US and another from Australia. who says Virtual Wargaming is not fun.

The terrain for Tuesday morning