Market Garden

SP popped over this afternoon for another game so I set up Market Garden for Memoir '44. It has an interesting mechanism to reflect both the Germans having been initially caught napping and the Allied difficulty in maintaining momentum. 

(I have mixed up 82nd and 101st Airborne all the way through this post!)

SP took the Germans again (I sense a theme?) and we got down to business. The Allies start out with 13 command cards and the Germans only 3. The goal is to get 13 victory banners through a combination of destroying enemy units and taking key objectives. 

XXX Corps looking formidable

The 82nd - oops, it seems one unit didn't make the dropzone!

The 101st, with three units equipped with inflatable boats. 

1st Airborne.

To start the Allies focused on activating XXX Corp and 1st Airborne, trying to open the road towards Eindhoven with the one and taking Arnhem with the other. 

XXX Corps drive on Valkenswaad.

The Airborne establish a foothold in Arnhem.

There is little progress for the Americans.

The 101st and 82nd Cautiously approaching Eindhoven and Nijmegen. 

Turn three sees the first signs of organised German defence. An armoured unit is damaged near Valkenswaad. The 101st takes casualties from air attack and a bombardment. 1st Airborne is hit at Arnhem. 

Each Allied unit destroyed sees the Germans draw a new command card immediately and the Allies discard one of theirs at random. The initial 13 - 3 card differential is now 10 - 6.

German resistance catches XXX Corps in a crossfire and blocks the road. 

101st is hit and dispersed.

German counterattacks at Arnhem: note the Tiger approaching the bridge. 

Turn four starts well for the Allies: the 82nd close-assaults Eindhoven and secures a portion of the town.

The Tiger unit is forced to retreat from Arnhem.

But the Germans reinforce Nijmegen, and the prospects of the 101st being able to take it appear remote. 

Turn five sees the fighting intensify for the Americans. More units lost, meaning our command cards discarded and more picked up for the Germans.

 The 1st Airborne are now embattled on two fronts.  

XXX Corps are still fighting their way forward.

Turn six will be our last turn, as SP has a dinner date. The card differential is now in the German's favour, something like 11-8.

The 82nd is half destroyed.

But they still hold Eindhoven.

XXX Corps is bogged down clearing enemy remnants.

1st Airborne is still holding on in Arnhem (just).

And have difficulties to the rear, with heavy enemy presence in the woods.

And the whole scene:

The Germans are leading the victory count 8-6, but the card differential is now 12-6 in their favour. We call the game for the Germans - the Allies have shot their bolt and are just holding on everywhere but in the XXX Corps sector. 

***

Well, it was another entertaining afternoon of Memoir '44. It is a hell of an enjoyable game, even when Monty's gamble fails. This is an interesting scenario, and you really feel the Allied attack stagnating as the Germans begin to inflict casualties and alter the command card differential. I would like to try this scenario again. It's certainly a hard fight for the Allies. 

Thanks to SP for a great day at the table. 

Fire and Movement

One book that I'm positive would be of interest to wargamers of all stripes is Phil Sabin's Simulating War. As well as outlining the theory and practice behind wargaming, Prof. Sabin takes the time to illustrate his axioms with numerous practical examples from designs of his own. As usual with Sabin's games, they cut fairly directly to the chase, ignore extra complications, and are often good for the solitaire gamer to mess about with.

A game from Simulating War that I've been wanting to try out for some time is (one of) Phil Sabin's take(s) on WWII infantry combat, Fire and Movement. The situation involves two under-strength German infantry companies (one mortar and six rifle platoons) being attacked by a British battalion (one machine gun, one mortar and twelve rifle platoons) across a battlefield 8 hexes wide and 6 deep.

The rules are simple: move a platoon and it is spent; shoot with a platoon and it is spent; hit an enemy platoon with fire and the enemy is spent. Spent units can do nothing until they are able to recover.

The trick then is, on your turn, to use fire to suppress as many enemy platoons as you effectively can so that those platoons cannot move or shoot on their own turn.

As the turn order is move, shoot, recover, it neatly forces players to think carefully about where and when to move or shoot - and whom to target - without recourse to complicated activation rules.

In addition to the suppression aspect of fire, there is a casualty track, and every time an enemy platoon is hit successfully, that unit takes a casualty. When the total number of casualties reaches seven, one platoon is removed from the field and the count starts again at one. The British have another problem to contend with: ammunition depletion. Every time a British platoon fires, one 'unit' of ammunition is used up. Once the total number of ammunition units used reaches seven, the last platoon to fire is out of ammunition and removed from the field, and, as with casualties, the ammunition count is reset to one.

The Germans do not have to worry about ammunition depletion (lucky them!).

There are a couple of other things I should mention. Firstly, if a platoon is fresh and adjacent to an enemy, it can perform an assault attack. Assault attacks cause three casualties rather than one, and so are dramatically more effective if you can manage them. Secondly, the Germans start the game dug in, and if they remain dug in, said platoons can ignore one casualty per fire attack, meaning that they can really only be damaged by assault. Some terrain (farms) has the same 'ignore one casualty' effect.

Thirdly, firing units can target units in two hexes that are adjacent to each other if the firing platoon has line of sight to both hexes. This provides a significant incentive to spread platoons out in an effort to lessen the effects of enemy fire.

Fourthly, both sides have a mortar crew off table to call on, and the British have a machine gun team on table. Both mortars and machine guns are rather more effective at hitting the enemy than your standard rifle units, but mortars must have a fresh platoon on table to spot on their behalf.

Lastly, platoons can stack up to two deep in a hex, but if the hex is hit, both platoons are affected, so it's better to spread out if you can, unless in dead ground or, perhaps, when gearing up for an assault.

So there we are with the rules. Fairly short, fairly direct, and quite clear in what they want players to do. The difficulty for the combatants of course is to combine all of these simple rules (and ideally some favourable dice rolls) so as to get your chaps into a winning position. When determining the victor, the Germans get one victory point for every British platoon broken by fire and one point for every friendly platoon still on board after twelve turns are up. The British get one point for every German platoon destroyed, plus one for each friendly platoon on an enemy baseline hex at game end.

The Germans always move first each turn.

Interestingly, the board terrain is diced for before the game. Having a copy of the old Avalon Hill classic Battle Cry to hand, I decided I would use this for the board, as it has most of the terrain features readymade.

Here is my battlefield. Unfortunately for the Brits (I'm actually using Americans, but hopefully you can't tell in 6mm!), the field is very open and there is absolutely no cover for them on the advance.

After deployment, the Germans will dig in in these positions as shown (though using foxholes rather than abatis, one presumes!).

The British start with only two companies and the machine gunners on table. A preliminary bombardment is marginally effective, so they advance as quickly as they can, and bring on more troops.

This is the table after turn two.

On turn three the British deploy more reinforcements as they push forward on the left and and the right, leaving a clear lane of fire for the machine gun platoon in the centre to assist in suppressing targets.


After turn three.

The British are able to advance on the right by suppressing the German squad in the trees with the machine gunners, but the attack is stalling on the left due to deadly accurate fire which pins down the bulk of the British platoons.

Casualties are starting to mount, and ammunition shortages are forcing careful conservation of attacking resources.

After turn four.

A failed assault on the British right leaves the advanced German platoon intact but under severe pressure. With no one able to support it, it seems like it's just a matter of time before the British have their first success.

In the centre, the British gunners and mortars are able to suppress key support units in the centre, but the German right is causing steady casualties to the British left. All the British reserves are now on table, so from here on they must make do with what they have.

After turn five.

It takes two more turns before the British on the right can work the Germans out of their position. The tactics now are set: suppress with the gunners or mortars, advance two platoons into assault position, and then assault with both to inflict six casualties, break a unit, and force the position.

But in the time it is taking to do this the British left is being cut to pieces, and those platoons that can still move are now moving backwards, not forwards.

After turn seven.

(Showing some of the targeting as each side look to cut down the other's options)

With only five turns left the British need a miracle. They are able to hop forward on the right and take another defended position, but time and casualties are against them. The German mortar crews buy valuable breathing space by suppressing the British Vickers gunners, who are thus unable to help cover the advance on the right.

Attacking and defending lines.

Assault, advance, suppress - and advance again.

On the final turn the British make a desperate attempt to assault the central strongpoint, but they are repulsed by determined defensive fire. Exhausted by casualties and ammunition depletion, only three British platoons are left on table, and so the British lose by ten points to three. 

Final position.

Well, I thought it was a cracking little game to play solitaire. There are some lessons for me to digest and some tactics to go over, so I think I'll be playing this one again. It's not one that you'd take down to club night week in and week out, but the simple rules reveal a clever little game of - to coin a phrase - fire and movement (thank you, I'll be here all week!).

And if you've got this far, thanks for reading.

Ukraine '44 game wrapped up

Preamble

Over the last couple of months, Kevin over at the Zhodani Commando blog and I have had a game of MMP's Ukraine '44 on the go. We played using the VASSAL engine and the Ukraine '44 module (which Kevin performed a bit of magic on to make more user-friendly), taking turns recording our respective moves in a VASSAL logfile and then sending them to the other fellow to roll dice, take casualties, etc. It's a brilliant way to play over distance, and the way the turns are broken up means that you don't need too large a chunk of time to do your moves. The most time-consuming thing is working out how you want to approach the board situation.

The game is based on Hube's pocket, in which the surrounded German 1st Panzer Army managed to break out of the encirclement and rejoin their comrades. I deliberately didn't read up on the historical action because I wanted to work out things for myself, so apologies for going light on that aspect!

One interesting thing about the game is that all unit strengths are hidden and strength is only revealed during combat. Consequently, there is a fair bit of guesswork going on early in the game as one gets a feel for where the enemy has concentrated his strength.

The objective for the German player is to break out of the pocket or, failing that, to prevent the Soviets from taking three victory cities while also destroying more Soviet strength points than he loses himself.

The Germans have a number of advantages, including that they get better movement rates than the Soviets, and that their mechanised units get to move again after combat, allowing these to attack from an exposed position and then retreat back to the relative safety of the main lines. They also have force multipliers in the form of two units of tiger tanks which can be attached to any armoured unit and give a very useful 1-3 modifier to the combat die roll on both attack and defence. The Germans also have 'combat superiority', meaning that should they convincingly destroy an enemy formation in any attack, the German force involved is able to ignore the combat attrition that it would normally have suffered.

The Soviets can win by preventing a breakout and by killing off German strength points, with any German strength points out of supply at the end of the game also counting as eliminated. The Russian player can also claim an auto victory if at any time he controls three of the game's four victory cities.

In their favour the Soviets have three things: the number of units, the strength of their tank divisions, and the +2 artillery combat modifier that applies if they elect to do their attacks before they do any movement. But most of the Soviet infantry units are relatively weak in defence, and are therefore susceptible to being monstered by determined German attacks, provided that the German attacks the right units (which, given hidden unit strengths, is not always certain!).

Each side must therefore play quite differently.

Anyway, I took the Germans, Kevin took the Soviets, and we were at it.

The action

This is how things started off after Kevin's first move.

Opening moves
(note that my units' strengths can be seen because the module is showing the game from my perspective)

You can see that Soviet armour (red units) has already seized the key road junctions between the German forces and safety to the west.

Over the next few turns Kevin attempted to complete the encirclement, squeeze the Germans back towards the river, and reduce the German garrison in the victory city of Ternopol in the North.

Turn 3

The Germans tried to kill as many front-line Soviet units as possible, first by giving the armoured units a bloody nose and then, once they were cautious and wary, by directing attacks against the weaker infantry units. Meanwhile, the Soviets attacked a second victory city in the north and threatened a third in the south.

Turn 5

It was only now that I saw Kevin's plan - suck up losses elsewhere, and aim to take the victory cities for the auto win. I did not have enough troops to do much about this; I had not seriously considered this strategy on his part. The cunning blighter had me!

Turn 6

By now the troops in the pocket were relying on supply from the air and were operating at reduced effectiveness. When combined with the advance against my victory cities, the situation looked hopeless. I was ready to call the game at this point, but Kevin encouraged me to continue, and he was right - I had misread the reinforcement entry hexes, and with a bit of luck a counterattack was launched using said reinforcements, keeping the Soviet advance units isolated and out of supply and enabling the recapture of the second of the northern victory cities

Turn 7

With Berezheny recaptured but Chernovtzy in the south about to fall, all depended on whether we could hold Berezheny long enough for the next round of German reinforcements to arrive. In the centre, 1st Panzer Army was on the verge of breaking out, but we needed to hold in the north for two more turns to save the day.

Victory!

But it was not to be. Although almost at the limits of their strength in the north the Soviets retook Berezheny, and with Chernovtzy in the south falling in the same turn, Kevin had the three victory cities he needed to triumph. A mighty success - well done sir!

Conclusion.

The game was, for me, a lot of fun, even though I badly misread Soviet intentions. From the German player's perspective, the actions needed to try to weaken the encircling cordon were great fun to play out, but I don't think Kevin enjoyed the Soviet infantry units being so weak! Nevertheless, despite the desperate efforts of 1st Panzer Army, clever planning and nerves of Red Steel saw Kevin through to his thoroughly deserved win.

I would certainly play this again, but my German strategy needs a bit more work, I think!

Aside from being a strong player, Kevin was an excellent sport and a lot of fun to play against. VASSAL is a great tool, and if any readers like boardgames but lack for local players, I would encourage you to look into it.

Europe aflame!

There hasn't been a huge amount of gaming going on here of late, but I do have Europe Engulfed on the table and have been playing through 1939 in a (very) desultory fashion.

So far the poor old Poles have been wiped out. It was not unexpected, but they took such a hammering that the French behind their fortifications bestirred themselves and attacked the Rhineland.

Unfortunately, an offensive spirit did not bless them with a great deal of success, and there will be hell to pay once the panzers get back from Warsaw...

Start of my gaming week

We have a bit of a break this week, so I've gone for something of slightly longer duration that usual.  Not sure how far through I'll get, but we'll see...

6mm painting guides: WWII infantry

German infantry.

Undercoat the figures Mr. Hobby Color Spray No. 117, RLM76 Light Blue.

Paint weapons black.

Paint helmets Hobby Color H32 Field Gray 1

Mix two different washes, one based on Field Gray XF-65, and the other on a H32.  Apply washes in different strengths to different figures.  Finish up with a strong XF-65 wash and use that to paint the bases of the miniatures.

Dab flesh areas with Turner Acryl Gouache Apricot.

Paint gas mask cases H36 Dark Green.

Paint entrenchment tool handles and pistol holsters Turner Burnt Sienna.

Paint jackboots, officers' gloves and entrenchment tool holders black.

Highlight trousers and officer caps in Turner Neutral Gray 5 or Tamiya XF54 Dark Sea Gray.

US infantry.

Undercoat the figures Mr. Hobby Color Spray No.70, Dark Green.

Paint weapons black.

Dab flesh areas with Turner Apricot.

Paint helmets XF-62 Olive Drab.

Paint webbing XF 60 Dark Yellow

Paint webbing, entrenchment tool handles and pistol holsters Turner Burnt Sienna.

Paint trousers XF-49 Khaki.

Paint every 3rd or 4th tunic as a  jacket using XF-57 Buff.

(Figures are all from the Heroics and Ros ranges)

Sunday Crossfire

Luke and Pat came down for a game of Crossfire on the weekend and we ended up getting through two battles.   I umpired, but probably did more to confuse things than to clarify them!

The table was not of a very high standard as I don't have dedicated 6mm terrain (yet), but being gentlemen, Luke and Pat tried to downplay that as best they could.

The scenario we used was taken from Steven Thomas' site, and pitted a company of attacking US troops against two platoons of Germans.

The first game was a bit of a write-off for the German player because I read the victory conditions wrong and the US had an easier time of taking the objective than they should have.  That said, I don't think the result would have changed; the boldness of the attacker rushing the objective under cover of smoke paid off against the defender's concern to reinforce his north flank and defend the objective with fire rather than occupancy.

All photos courtesy of Pat Hirtle.

In this shot (looking from the east) we can see the objective in the middle ground with a platoon of Germans lined up on the crest to its right as the Americans in the distance steel themselves to make their assault.

This shot (looking from the north) shows the result of the attack - the Americans have taken the hill, and although they've been somewhat cut up in the north, the diversionary attack drew off the German reserve and left no one available for a counter-attack.

For the second game the German employed a more central defence.  He occupied the hill with a squad, platoon commander and forward observer, put a platoon in reserve behind it, a squad covering the field to the south, another the crest to the north, and the HMG in a field to the rear covering the approaches from the south east.

This game was much tighter.  The American rushed the field to the south of the hill and got badly mauled by the single squad of Germans behind it.  The defenders pinned one squad with reactive fire, suppressed another, and then killed the close-assaulting third squad and platoon commander in close combat.  Not a bad effort from those men.

This photo shows the attack through the field: a textbook approach confounded by the dice heroism of the German squad.  Their heroism was not enough so save them from later American fire, however!  But leaderless and exposed, the remaining two squads from the American platoon now began to take fire from the German HMG.

Meanwhile, the American commander remained undaunted by the close-combat prowess of the Germans, and ordered his second platoon to assault the hill in identical fashion.  This time his close assault was more successful.

Here you can see the Americans attack, again under cover of smoke.  The Germans were quickly swept away by the assault, but the defenders behind the hill then began to lay down some effective fire.

Although time was running out for retaking the hill, the Americans were very near their breaking point, and on the last initiative of the game the Germans were left with the task of killing two suppressed squads to win.  The first squad was killed, but the second, on the last roll of the game, survived the fire of the deadly HMG.

It was a torrid battle, and I think really showcased how well Crossfire works.  The rules are fairly simple, but the results are believable - as are the way that we get to them - and the players are able to concentrate on gaining (or squandering!) advantage through tactics rather than by applying the rules better than the other fellow.

That said, there were a few murky areas in the rules when we got into some unusual situations, so some house ruling might be required here and there.  We were also a little iffy about how direct fire with mortars worked (though I may have read the rules wrong here) so a wee tweak or two might be in order with this, but we shall see.

Thanks to my comrades in (miniatures) arms I now see that Crossfire should work fine for solo play as well, so I'm looking forward to a few more sessions, and perhaps even a campaign.

So, a great day had, and many thanks to Luke and Pat for making the trip down.

But I really do need to get some better terrain...