Chain of Command Western Desert

To the Lenton Gamers' Club for a game of Chain of Command with Keith, James and Mike.
Keith and James provided the scenery and models so all I had to do was rock up and roll dice and shout hurrah! I was a bit tired though. so didn't shout hurrah much.

We were playing a scenario from the recent edition of Wargames Soldiers and Strategy in which a British Infantry Platoon, with supporting tanks has to capture a village occupied by Italians.

This was the rather splendid looking table - mostly James work I think, with some of Keith's buildings (and Italian flag) for good measure.

The game began with the British infantry getting a bit lost (one of the scenario rules) and arriving on their right flank. The tanks meanwhile began to trundle up the road.
Italian AT resources were a bit limited, so we deployed the gun on a roof to take pot shots at the British armour.

Inevitably the tanks soon machine gunned the Italian gun into oblivion. Oh.

So we called forth the Italian armour.

On the hill north of the village the Italians dug in.

The British threw down smoke and the Italians waited for it to clear.

Finally the Italian tank (which in CoC rules is a LOT better than the British A9s) popped one of the enemy tanks.

At about this point Mike threw this roll.

 Yahtzee!

We'd never seen five sixes rolled all at once before. So some time was spent checking what exactly happened!
(Because we had two platoons per side we were using six dice but the coloured one didn't count any sixes for turn end purposes.)

The face off continued on the hill with neither side prepared to advance over the crest.

Meanwhile in the village in scenes reminiscent of a spaghetti western the tanks plugged away at one another.

At this point I stopped taking pictures.
Eventually the Italian tank destroyed another A9 while the remaining British tank went to try and machine gun the Italians on the hill.
James eventually decided he's had enough and advanced the British infantry on the dug in Italian defenders, with inevitable (historically accurate) results.

At this point we packed up and went home.

This game looked great. Unfortunately the scenario and the rules combined to get the whole thing a bit bogged down. neither side wanted to advance over the hill and the tanks were largely cancelling each other out.
CoC can be quite a lengthy game with just a platoon a side. With two platoons (and four players) the level of detail means it takes a looong time - possibly too long for a club night.
Not really the fault of either rules or scenario - just something to bear in mind for future games.

However it did look great and the company was splendid - so a good way to spend an evening.