Herzöge von Hazzard - Combat Patrol AAR

This past weekend was HMGS' Cold Wars, held once again in the Valley Forge Casino's byzantine halls and rooms. 

I signed up for four games over two days, and volunteered to run one (which was Chaeronea using Strength & Honour, which I've posted about a few times now) as events list was a little thin on the eve of publication. 

Overall I enjoyed the convention, and I think that the players in my game enjoyed themselves. 

I'll be posting AARs of of the four games I played over the next few weeks, so here's the first!

Early Friday morning, after a couple hours drive from Cape May, I settled down for a game of Combat Patrol, run by Gregory with the ever-present HAWKS group. 

Combat Patrol, written by Buck Surdu, is a set of skirmish WWII rules that runs entirely on a deck of cards. The cards are used for movement, shooting, dicing off; anything that might crop up during the game is squeezed into a single card. Shooting, for example, is handled by multiple card flips. You flip to see if you hit, then who you hit, and then where they're hit and if it's deadly. Unit activations are also simultaneous, unless they might be interacting with enemy units, which can help speed up the early turns of a game.

It's a fun system that takes a little getting used to, but plays quickly once you become familiar. I had played a Napoleonic version way back at Barrage, and was looking forward to trying the original WW2 rules.

Greg's game was a fight between a British platoon and German platoon in 1940. The British had three infantry squads, an HMG, an anti-tank rifle, and two Matilda II tanks. The Germans didn't have any attached infantry support, but they had a bunch of tanks! Two Panzer IIs, a Panzer I, and a StuG. 

I was commanding an infantry squad and a Matilda II to start out, opposite a German squad. 

Thanks to a random activation system (that might restart without a chance for units to activate!) this was the position my troops were stuck in for a couple turns. 

Luckily the Matilda's armor was thick enough that the StuG was unable to outright destroy my tank, but the crew was stunned over and over. I did manage to get a fireteam into the ruins, but that left them at the mercy of the rapidly increasing number of German infantry. 

My Matilda, regrettably, was the first tank to brew up, leaving the British infantry uncomfortably exposed to the German armor.

Not that the situation was much better on the other side of the table, with two Panzer IIs blitzing through the town square!

With the indomitable 40k-esque spirit, one Panzer commander ordered his tank forward into the British infantry, scattering the Tommies like a flock of geese. 

My infantry were hunkered down in the ruins, hammered by German machine-gun fire. 

I did get the chance to bring on the HMG (I just forgot to take a picture), which did discourage the Germans from assaulting the Brits in the green ruins. 

The Germans were pressing the British back, having forced my fireteam out of the center ruins. 

In a daring maneuver, the Panzer II continued its rampage through the British infantry, further scattering and stunning the soldiers as it drove past. Two Brits desperately clung to the tank, trying to get their rifles or grenades into a open port. 

After a couple more turns, we decided to end the game with a decisive German victory. The British had lost their armor, taken multiple casualties, and had a German tank doing donuts through their flanks. The only thing to do was find the quickest route to Dunkirk!

 I had fun playing the game and, had it been available to purchase by any vendor at the convention, would have picked up a copy. Alas, no one had a copy, so I'll have to grab one online. I could see this being a fun game for the club, and it's another candidate for my idea of playing the Horus Heresy without GW's rules. 

A Bridge In Spain - Combat Patrol: Napoleonic AAR

Barrage 2019 was held on Friday and Saturday of the last weekend in September. As I haven't had a chance to play many games recently, the convention was a fantastic opportunity to sit down and roll some dice with games I haven't played before.

Last year I went and took part in the L'Art de la Guerre. This year, however, I didn't want to dedicate my time to a single ruleset (and the shine has somewhat worn off of ADLG for me at the moment). Plus, I plan to take part in not one, but two tournaments at Fall In! later this year. So I went down to Maryland to take part in a few participation games. 

While I had preregistered to play in a Chain of Command game Saturday morning, upon arriving I discovered that the game had disappeared from the roster! So after perusing the flea market and trader stalls, I instead signed up for a Napoleonic version of Combat Patrol. 

The game was being run by Duncan Adams of the HAWKS wargaming club (the group behind the convention. He explained that Combat Patrol was originally designed for WWII skirmishes, but had a number of alternate versions - Star Wars, the Falkland Wars, and Napoleonics. 

The scenario was a classic wargaming scene. A few units of French infantry and dismounted dragoons had to hold a bridge as reinforcements arrived over time. A larger force of Portuguese attackers (part of which I was commanding) needed to secure the bridge before the French could strengthen their positions.  

A small walled area and a rocky outcrop made for a good position for the French to start their defense in.

The main body of the Portuguese attackers launched an assault on a lightly defended area of woods, hoping that the 4-to-1 odds would quickly see the French off.

I sent my smaller command of Portuguese into the small forested area on the right, thinking to keep the dismounted units of French dragoons occupied.

The Portuguese line infantry made good time up and over the hill to support the units attacking into the woods. 

Meanwhile, the Portuguese Caçadores squared up against their French opponents. Whoever had the chance to activate first would have the chance to fire a devastating volley.

I should make some comments on the way Combat Patrol plays. It's a somewhat detailed skirmish game - individual models in squads can take different actions when activated. In an eight man squad, for example, your squad leader can direct fire (making the enemy easier to hit), as three men fire, two other soldiers move up to a different position, and two other soldiers recover from being stunned. Even shooting is done on a model by model basis.

All actions in the game are determined by cards, and each player had their own deck to draw from. These cards do literally everything - they determine how far a unit can move, how effective a model's firing is (as well as where an enemy model is hit, how effective the hit is, and what terrain might stop the bullets), morale effects, randomizing effects, determining close combat results, and more. The cards were intimidating to look at when we first started, but thanks to Duncan's explanations (and a couple HAWKS members playing that were already familiar with the rules) I was able to quickly catch on.

The assault on the woods by the main body of the Portuguese attackers eventually wiped out the French defenders, but at a high cost.

The fighting on the other side of the battlefield wasn't going especially well (although it was only later that I realized that my Caçadores should have been firing using their Elite rating instead of the Regular that I had been using).

While one unit of Caçadores was holding the line and causing damage, the dragoons on the hill were able to hit the few Portuguese that hadn't made it all the way into the cover of the woods. A bad morale result on the cards saw half the unit flee, and then become stunned - meaning I had to spend their entire activation removing the stunned status, instead of moving them into position to support.

The French defenders readied themselves, seeing their compatriots cut off and cut down.

However, just out of shot, French reinforcements were moving in to support across the river, which guaranteed that any Portuguese attack across the open ground would be a bloody affair.

And speaking of bloody affairs, a well timed series of card draws (and the application of their Elite shooting stat) meant the Caçadores wiped out the defending Dragoons in a single volley!

By that time we had reached the end of the allotted time for the game. The group decided to call it a victory for the French defenders, as it would take too long for the Portuguese elements on both flanks to reorganize and make an assault on the bridge, which was quickly filling up with more French.

Duncan ran a fantastic game, and I'll likely be picking up Combat Patrol to add to my collection of wargame rules. It makes for a quick playing (once you understand the layout of the cards) game that would work for platoon or smaller actions. It may be something I could get the SJGA to play at an upcoming meeting.