The Second World War, Rules of Engagement, 1944

Colin Jack came up with this game, set in Southern France in the late summer of 1944. Given the terrain, the battle was dubbed “Teddy bear field”, or “le champ de nounours”. This is Colin’s account of what happened;I rolled up a scenario for a force of Canadian paratroops versus a force of Falschirmjager – the figures I had at my beck and call. Like most Rules of Engagement games, this was a skirmish using about a platoon per side. The result was what was known in the scenario generator as “an Escalating Engagement”. This involved both core forces advancing on to the table, and then steadily being reinforced throughout the game. The objective was to try to cause the maximum casualties to their enemy, and the minimum to themselves.Both sides advanced fairly cautiously to start with, and Bill’s left flank Germans quickly took up good defensive positions from which they could launch opportunity fire.  Hugh on the other flank was taking a more aggressive line, with a section making a wide sweep around the tabletop, under the guiding eye of the platoon commander and his headquarters.  Meanwhile, Dave’s Canadians were trying to do the same to Bill – he sent a rifle and sten-armed section sneaking forward on his flank, covered by his Bren Gun section.  My section had quickly raced forward to seize the central building, and we now had a commanding view over the landscape.  The German MG42 section caught the Canadian mortar team almost in the open, and inflicted the first casualties of the game. This ensured that the Canadian paratroops would have no mortar support for the rest of the game – and in Rules of Engagement mortars are particularly useful assets to have. The flip side of this was that the MG42 team had now given away it’s position, and it immediately came under fire from both Canadian Bren Gun groups. At that point the Canadian reinforcements arrived  – a rather useful Sherman tank. It managed to score a direct hit with it’s first shot – so scratch one Falschirmjager machine gun. Dave’s paras now reached the line of hedgerows in the middle of the battlefield  and sprayed the hedge with their stens. At this critical moment Dave rolled 19 dice, got 4 shots on target and caused just 1 casualty against the experienced Falschirmjager! While all this was going on Hugh had worked his section up close to the Canadian-held building and launched an assault. The Canadians however, had all the advantages, won every combat and completely destroyed their adversaries. We ran out of time here but after that close combat success the Canadians definitely had the upper hand. We need to be more familiar with the rules but they do seem to work well. The Dave mentioned above by the way, was Dave Cooper, from the USA, a reader of this site, who found himself in Edinburgh for a few months. At heart he’s a horse and musket man, but he seemed perfectly at home sneaking along the hedgerows with his paratroopers.

Tags: Rules of Engagement