AAR: Chain of Command at Wyvern

This week i made it to Wyvern again for a game of Chain of Command against Ade. This had my US Paras (first outing!) attacking and objective: a rather fine radar station. The board looked dauntingly open, with a chateau dominating one flank. 

Despite the attack advantage, a rapid and aggressive patrol phase resulted in:

I didn't quite make the chateau, though the placing of the patrol markers meant Ade was able to get a jump-off point right by it, whereas two of mine were a fair trek away. 

The US paras pack a hell of a punch but lack numbers, so I spent my supports on a regular US infantry squad, with the change going on a pre game barrage. I kicked off with a quad towards the chateau, hoping to deny Ade. Then, the barrage did its job and stopped Ade doing the same, so they edged right up to the walled garden. 

Unfortunately, Ade managed to flip the tables, rolling a turn end then double phase, pushing a squad into the chateau and setting overwatch. Curses - that gate was one to avoid. Meanwhile, i put a considerable firebase along the hedgerow to lay down supporting fire when more Germnan defenders appeared. The regular infantry pushed on towards the radar station.

Hearing the Germans occupying the courtyard, the paras approaching the chateau made a u-turn, over the hedge and up the road: three phases to me. I closed down the turn to claim Ade's JOP: first blood to me without a shot fired. 

With my regular infantry threatening the radar station, Ade laid down his supports: entrenched infantry. With the precious German senior leader there, these would end up being a nightmare to shift without more ordnance.

These entrenched troops put a world of hurt on my infantry in the open, wearing them down and 

stalling their advance in the cover of a copse. 

With my assault being ground down and two exposed squads, I gambled it on a desperate assault against a battered but unpinned German squad. Using a turn end to get rid of Ade's overwatch, a para squad assaulted a German section. 25 dice vs 17, too close for comfort. Neither of us rolled well, but I managed to rout Ade's section and threaten the objective.

The game bumbled along for another couple of phases: we called it as too finely balanced. Victory would essentially depend when the turn end came and morale rolls came crashing in. On the face of it, the Germans were worse off, with a routed squad and two captured JOPs, already being down a few morale points. But realistically, I had two squads on the verge of being routed or destroyed, the third a long trek from their objective facing a reasonably fresh and well-led German section on the objective and a second embedded in a fine firing position in the chateau. Both forces could realistically have quit the field. 

All in all, a great game of Chain of Command once again. The start was very cagey and I got 2/3rds of the way across the table before a shot was fired.  The game swung a lot: we each had runs of phases to turn things around. I had the firepower but Ade was a devil for 'no effect' damage rolls. I rolled a lot more kills on my men, including a dramatic 8 of Ade's hits doing 4 kills 2 shock in one round of fire, against troops in hard cover!

Even without lots of toys on the table and using a scenario from the book, Chain of Command posed lots of challenging situations. There were plenty of times when I thought of alternative ways of doing things, one of the joys of the ruleset is that it offers a toolkit of how to use just vanilla platoon without overloading the table with toys.

Cheers to Ade for being a good sport and offering a great game. Until next time!

The club was pretty busy and had great looking Russo-Japanese game put on by Stu using Through the Mud and the Blood as well as Paul's French regulars getting hammered at Muskets and Tomahawks. 

Now for Something a Little Different: 15mm WWII

Are you sick of deserts yet? Yes, a brief interlude to normal service here as I've spent the last couple of weeks ploughing through a WWII platoon for Chain of Command.

I settled on US paras, finding a Flames of War box of Greatcoated paras at a ridiculous price on eBay - something like £8 with postage.

They were prepped months ago in time for the challenge last winter but the sat, undercoated and based on my painting table for months.  I undercoated them Army Painter Leather brown, serving as the colour of the greatcoats, intending to pick out details in the appropriate colour then given them a good wash of strong tone ink and a few highlights. Every so often I'd pick them up and start to pick out the details, but with 15mm being an unfamiliar scale I too often found that I'd just shove them away with barely any progress and return to the mound of  28mm minis. But I've had so much fun playing Chain of Command up at Wyvern Wargamers that i was gripped by the enthusiasm of pushing through and getting them finished.

This is the core US Parachute infantry platoon, assembled according to the CoC list:



Two infantry squads of junior leader, an M191A4 MG with three crew and a rifle squad of eight riflemen. While I've multi-based on FoW medium bases, junior leaders are mounted on UK pennies. They are well-led with two senior leaders, mounted on UK 2ps.

The platoon comes well supported with a 60mm mortar squad and a bazooka team. 

They are Elite, with 6 Command dice and are Aggressive troops - both very handy. They lack numbers though with just two squads (albeit of a fair size at 12 men), so will need to be carefully used. For elite troops, their platoon rating (which will help determine what support elements are available to an opponent) is surprisingly low at +1.

As I'm using multi-basing, I've made up some combined shock and casualty markers using Minibits dice holders.

Naturally, having a selection of support elements will come in handy. With a few small add-on purchases I've added two sniper teams, a Forward Observer and a third squad, this time of regular infantry with a BAR. This gives me a fair choice from lists three and four.

I think the third squad may be the basic 'go to' option as bulking out the platoon will come in very handy to have enough troops to seize and hold objectives.

And finally, armoured support. I settled on an M8 Greyhound armoured car. I had a lot of fun painting it, inspired by a recent trip to Bovington Tank Museum (where I took a few too many photos of tanks). I'm unfamiliar with painting vehicles, but enjoyed trying some weathering with sponge, powders and a gooey mud-paste, though that doesn't come out so well in these photos.

The markings are water slide transfers, I've not used these for years but found some appropriately sized ones that I think were meant for a 1:72 scale half track.

This is perhaps a first for me - an entire project done in one fell swoop! Here's hoping I can get them on to the table soon. With one project finished, might this open up enough space in the painting queue for another...?