Lost in the woods

Club last night and I managed to beat Julian to the corner table, we have been having a contest recently and have only just resisted camping overnight. I thought I would try a Chain of Command scenario this time from the TFL 2019 magazine.

Briefly it involves some confused fighting between American paratroopers and elements of a Kampfgruppe around the town of Best during Market-Garden. There is an 88mm gun guarding a bridge and the Americans have to destroy it to win, they are also unsure of just what their force make up will be due to the confusion. With not a lot to do and customers slowly becoming a rarity in the PO, weather, coronavirus or my grumpiness who knows, I got everything ready, typed up OOB's and orders, sorted the troops out and then promptly realised when I arrived at the club I had left the 88 on a shelf in the PO. My first chance to use the model and I blew it. We do not have American paratroopers, Rob does but he wasn't there, so we used my British.

Right from the start it looked like it was going to be an uphill struggle for the British, the patrol phase basically pins them at the eastern edge of the table with the gun at the western edge, between them and the target the German player can very quickly set up a defensive line then sit and wait. Simon put all of his troops in one area of the woods expecting to push through but of course this allowed me also to put my squads right in his path. During the shooting match which ensued one of my squads broke but it had no effect on the defence as it was quickly replaced, the British meanwhile began to lose teams and take shock which hampered their movement. When the clock struck it was obvious the gun emplacement was safe (Stuart loaned me a 37mm to stand in for the lost 88mm).

Fake 88.

"It's a long way to ......."

Real 88.

What about the game, as I said above I think it is a big ask for the Allied player, all his supports are teams and require a 1 on the command dice, they can of course be activated by a Senior Leader but we both only had one of these, so they were very busy men as we both had Junior Leaders reduced to one activation due to wounds. The German squads get one man with a rifle grenade but as the minimum range is 18" and visibility in the woods was 12" this was pointless. My forward squad got hammered with shock, I wanted to pull them back and recover but as the shock comes off your movement I would have had to get 10 - 12 on two dice to move a couple of inches, not enough to get them out of harms way, the next phase found them in even more trouble as they were pinned, and you cannot move at all if pinned which is absurd as the only choice is to sit there until you break. The Germans won but not really as the British in our game had no chance of carrying out their mission.

I finished my latest vehicles, some AA cover for the British and a couple of little cars for my commanding officers, nice kits but I found the Schwimmwagen a bit fiddly. I got a couple more the other day a 251/1 halftrack for the Germans which means my Panzergrenadier platoon is now all armoured with more 251's carrying support weapons. My Russians got a truck, they might get another at some point, these two are now in the painting queue along with my two SS LMG's which seem to be taking a back seat.

The only things left on the horizon are some extra artillery crew and maybe some terrain additions, I am thinking of a couple of ruins or a small industrial type complex, a guy in the village cuts MDF buildings and other stuff and gave me a lovely model of that tower which lowers the cage into a mine.