Red Eagles on a Rampage - Chain of Command AAR

My second game at Historicon was Chain of Command, which I haven't had the opportunity to play in a couple years.  

This scenario was set in 1941, after Operation Crusader. A platoon of the 6th Rajputana Rifles, Fourth Indian Division was ordered to seize the town of Shahm Alkhinzir to prevent it from being used by fleeing Axis forces. However, a detachment of 15. Panzer-Division was ready to keep the Allied forces out of the town. 

The Allied players had to either break the defending Germans or exit two units through the short edge that the Germans were defending. The Axis players (which I was one off) had to hold out and either break the attacking Indians or spend two full Chain of Command dice to end the game. The Allied players could spend a full CoC die to reduce the Axis CoC dice total by three pips. 

Since we were playing lengthwise (a personal pet-peeve in infantry-focused games), the Patrol Phase didn't see much maneuvering. The Indian players had their Patrol Markers locked out a good distance from the town, which didn't give them many options with their Jump Off Points. 

In contrast, the Germans were able to get their JOPs in the town where they would be defended by the light cover provided by the buildings. 

The Indians commenced their attack with a couple squads deploying from their JOPs. The only real cover on the approach was the wadi that ran parallel to the road, which the Indians used to push a Bren team up as the platoon's riflemen slowly advanced.

In response, the Germans deployed a squad in one of the town's outer buildings. Since this was a Schutzen platoon, that meant each squad had two light machine guns, which could spit out a never-ending stream of lead. 

A second squad deployed behind an impassible ridge, out of sight of the advancing Indians.

One of the assets the Indians had was an armored car, armed with a machine gun. To counter this, the Germans had a single anti-tank rifle team.

However, instead of keeping the armored car on the table to potentially pin down the Germans, the Indian players instead elected to gun its engines and blast it through the town, before any of the German units could respond. This gave the Indians one of their two necessary units off the short table edge for their victory condition. 

The Allied players were making excellent use of their smoke markers from their 2cm mortar team. The smoke didn't block line of sight, but it did make it harder for anyone shooting through the 3" puffs to hit anything. 

However, the Germans got lucky and managed to fill up a Chain of Command die. Rather than keep it and hope to roll more 6s to end the game, we instead used it to end the first turn (finally!). This cleared the smoke from the table and removed all of the "tactical" movement markers from the Indian squads. 

While they were reduced from the long first turn, this gave the German Schutzen squads a chance to bring their machine guns to bear!

With most of their smoke gone, the Indians outside the wadi were caught in the Germans' crossfire, sending a cascade of morale hits. 

What had started to look like a tenuous hold on the town by the Germans became a decent defensive position again as the Indians were forced to retreat. 

By that point we had reached the time limit and the game ended in a draw, edging towards a German victory. While the armored car had gotten through the German line, the rest of the Indian platoon wasn't in a position to press the attack to any sort of conclusive result.  

I'm glad that I enjoyed this game of Chain of Command more than my previous one (especially since I didn't have a head-splitting migraine to ruin the experience. I'll have to see if I can get more people to play CoC in my area. 

Foes East and West - To the Strongest! AAR

After a two hour trek from the barren, pine-filled lands of South Jersey, I arrived at the Valley Forge Casino result for my first in-person convention in almost two years: Fall In Historicon!

I unfortunately missed my chance to head down to Barrage in Maryland this year, so I made sure I had plenty of time (and money) to spend at Historicon. I had originally planned to play in nine games over four days, but I ended up cutting my attendance a little short and played seven games over three days. Not bad!

My first game was early on Thursday, and featured eight-players sitting around a massive table. 

I was one of four Egyptian commanders, tasked with winning glory for the young Ramses II. Arrayed against us on either side of the Nile were armies of Libyans and Canaanites. 

Both sides had armies of mostly the same troops - light chariots, medium infantry, and skirmishers. The Egyptians had more formed infantry compared to the Libyans and Canaanites. 

The game was using To the Strongest! for its rules, which is why I had decided to sign up. I haven't had a bad game of To the Strongest yet, and this was a chance to try a different flavor of Ancients. 

The other two Egyptian commanders had their hands full dealing with plenty of Libyans. The game broke down into two separate engagements as the Egyptians had lots of targets on either side of the Nile. 

My poor performance as a cavalry command in To the Strongest (and by extension, For King & Parliament) seemed to continue through this game, with my chariots clashing with their Canaanite opposites and losing. 

As the chariots fought on the flanks, the Egyptians and Canaanite lines clashed together. 

And without much of a fuss, my chariots were routed, giving free the Canaanite free rein over the Egyptian rear. 

The Canaanite commander was in a prime spot to hit the Egyptian camp, which would further deplete our quickly diminishing supply of Victory Medals. 

The lone unit of Egyptian Archers were able to keep the chariots off the camp for a turn. 

However, that didn't matter when a unit of Egyptian infantry was harried into a rout by Canaanite skirmishers, which placed us over the medal limit and sent the whole Egyptian force into retreat!

I didn't stick around to see how the other side was doing, but I couldn't imagine that having their backs exposed to the Canaanites while also trying to deal with the Libyans was going to end well. Looks like Ramses II was going to need to find a different target to demonstrate his military prowess. 

This was a great first game and really got me excited for the rest of the convention. And as ever, To the Strongest remains my preferred set of generic Ancients & Medieval rules.

Painting Update - Warmaster

I'll be heading out to Historicon tomorrow, so here's a quick look at the last two parts of my Daemons of Chaos army for the Warmaster tournament. 

The second cavalry brigade for the Deamons is a mix between Chariots and Cavalry. While I could have taken Daemon Hounds to support the last couple Chariot units, I decided to use Cavalry instead, since they get 4 base attacks and a 5+ save in combat. 

And to round out the army, here's another brigade of three required Daemon Hordes and another Daemon Swarm to take any incoming ranged attacks.

So that's it! 18 units, with a Breakpoint of 9. We'll see how the Daemonic Instability rules and the Summon Daemons spell work against each other. 

Get ready for plenty of Historicon posts over the next weeks!

Fording Onward - General d'Armee AAR

With Historicon coming up in a couple weekends, Ted invited us over to help refresh his General d'Armee knowledge with his go-to convention scenario, the Battle of Gilly. 

You may recall that this isn't the first time I've refought this battle; Ted ran this game at a previous SJGA meeting.

The original battle took place in June 1815, at the start of Napoleon's Waterloo campaign, with a Prussian rearguard force hoping to delay the advancing French. The bridge at Gilly offered one of the only clear methods of crossing the Sambre River.

Chip, one of the Prussian commanders, was allocated two swamps to place alongside the river that cut the battlefield in half. These swamps were impassible for infantry, cavalry, and artillery, while skirmishers could cut through. 

As a French commander, I was given a ford to make crossing easier (as the only way the cavalry could cross the river at all, apart from the bridge in the town, was over the ford). I placed it on the opposite side of the town to the two swamps. 

Chip and Steve elected to put one of their infantry brigades in the town to defend it.

Steve commanded a brigade of Landwehr reservists and cavalry on one flank. 

And Chip took command of the other two infantry brigades (including the one that was guarding Gilly. 

Ted had control of an infantry brigade and a cavalry brigade.

And I commanded the other two French infantry brigades. 

The scenario's goals for the French were to cause two Sauve Qui Peut results on the Brigade Command table, or three Retreats on the same table. The Prussians had to hold out for 10 turns. However, if the French managed to land a Sauve Qui Peut result, the game's turn limit would be increased!

The game started rather inauspiciously for the French when a Prussian artillery salvo sent two regiments of the far-left infantry brigade retreating back to safety. 

Everywhere else, the French advanced in their classic attack columns. 

As soon as I could, I launched an assault on the town. After the first round of combat resulted in a draw (despite 2:1 odds against the Prussians!) I gambled on three units being able to displace the defenders. The bet paid off and the French controlled Gilly for the rest of the game. 

On the other side of the town, Ted was launching his first assault across the river, in the face of multiple Prussian regiments and artillery. 

With the Prussians temporarily pushed back from the outskirts of Gilly, I was able to move an infantry regiment out into the open. 

I could tell you that this was a masterfully planned move to bait Steve's cavalry into charging the infantry and end up in range of my artillery units, but that would be a lie. 

I also messed up and moved my infantry into lines far too early, before they had even crossed the river. The meant I had to spend several turns slogging across the river, instead of moving at a brisker pace in column formation. 

With the Prussians moving forward to bottleneck the town, I started to swing my infantry regiments around the outskirts. I figured it would be faster to move through the Sambre than it would be to try and force the Prussians back with sporadic fire from the town's defenders. 

Meanwhile, Chip had set up a well-defended position to contest Ted's river crossings. As the cavalry could only cross at the ford, a traffic jam was quickly forming. It didn't help that any cavalry unit that tried to move across the ford ended up being fired upon by multiple infantry regiments and supporting cannons.

As my infantry brigade slowly made its way across the Sambre, I had to fend off repeated cavalry attacks from the Prussians. The charges themselves didn't hurt much, but they forced my infantry regiments to form square which made them perfect targets for Prussian return fire.

Ted had again mustered his troops for an advance across the river. In an astonishing example of how fickle the dice can be, one of his cavalry charges against a line of Prussian infantry - having failed to get into square before the cavalry were upon them - was rebuffed! The French cavalry were forced back once again as the infantry soldiered on. 

By this point, it wasn't looking good for the French. Bottlenecked in Gilly and stymied on both sides of the river, it didn't seem like they would have enough time to cause the needed numbers of Sauve Qui Peut or Retreat results before the end of the game. 

And then, a lucky break (or unlucky, depending on which side of the table you were on)! In the previous turn, a French artillery barrage had sent one of Steve's cavalry regiments fleeing, which meant he had to roll again on the Brigade Command table. He rolled a Retreat and decided to use an attached ADC to try and get his soldiers back in order. 

And then - sacre bleu! - a dreaded Sauve Qui Peut was the result instead!

While we didn't get a chance to finished the game, the extra time allotted to the French gave Ted and I the chance to get into a more advantageous position. It was unlikely that Steve's Landwehr were going to last long in the face of a full French infantry brigade, and Chip was too busy fighting off Ted's troops to assist. 

We decided to call it after around three-and-a-half hours of game time with an expected French victory.