Chain of Command 1940

Mog and I convened for what we're intending will be our lat "warm-up" game before playing the Fighting Withdrawal campaign from the 2016 TFL Summer Special.

As such we both took the forces from the actual campaign book, rather than the (newer) Blitzkrieg book versions.

 We decided on the Patrol scenario as we'd not played it before and set up the table. I took rather a lot of pictures of the table. The backdrop - which really sets it off is one our chum James painted and (handily) left behind after our Barnet game.

We've spent a bit of time building up the scenery collection (Martin somewhat more than me I reckon) and it looks great. Most of the buildings are TT Combat and some of the scatter (cars) and the greenhouse are 3D prints.

Then we played the patrol phase. In our usual inept style. Martin took four patrol markers (because you can) but I stuck with three as that's hard enough.

We ended up with the German's on the road through the small village Champ-de-Deuil on the Belgian border. This meant Martin's jump off points were handily placed for entering buildings and hiding behind stone walls. Mine we're way over on the table edge with a lot of open ground between.

In a rum turn of events I rolled high for Force Morale and the Germans rolled low. I also had decent support (in the form of a Vickers MMG) whilst the Germans had only an adjutant for assistance.

Then we set about things.

Bolstered by their high morale I deployed some plucky Tommies with only a corn field for protection

The German's countered with an MMG ready to rain down fire and death.

The Tommies were soon struggling.

More Germans appeared behind a wall.

I countered by starting to build a base of fire.

And I remembered I'd read that smoke was A Good Thing (tm)

The long range firefight started well for the Germans but once the Vickers was joined by a Bren German casualties began to mount. A couple of Junior leader hits saw their morale begin to fall.

A German mortar arrived behind the houses

The smoke was cleared briefly as a turn ended - but was soon returned to save the battered squad.

The British firing line was kicking out some leaden death.

Pour Monsieur Pamplemousse's wheelbarrow was a magnet for mortar shots.

Deciding finally to deal with the battered British German infantry began an advance.

And deployed into the village.

However we'd reached our set time limit (open ended CoC games that are not part of a campaign can go on quite a while) and with the German Morale having dropped to just four the game was probably up for the men in Feldgrey.

A really good fun game - though it did demonstrate that CoC works best with a campaign to give you a bit more structure and a focus on the game and keeping folk alive.

We think we've got to grips with CoC enough to start the campaign now - I just need to finish off my sliproad.

You can read the German version of events here.