The Second World War, Chain of Command, 28mm

For the second week in a row my car is in the garage, waiting for the mechanic to get cracking. So, as I couldn’t make it to the club, Sean 2  kindly offered to pop out for a Sunday evening game. He’d never played Chain of Command before, so that’s what we did. In this little “patrol scenario” game, played on a 6×4 foot table set in rural Normandy, I had the Americans, while Sean played the Germans. There was a small hamlet in the centre of the table – a farm cottage and a couple of agricultural buildings, surrounded by fields,  orchards and a dirt road.  In the photo above, the Germans began on the far table edge, and the Americans from the nearest one. We ran through the patrol phase, which Sean picked up intuitively, and we landed up with a potential front line along the road. In this game the Americans got to go first though, and with a “double 6” that meant a second phase too. So, one American squad appeared behind the farm building across the road from the farmhouse, and another appeared in the hedged field to its left.The double turn was a real boon, as it got me up to the fence of the farm, and I also got to deploy my third squad over to the right, covering a hedged and ploughed field. Sean came on in the bigger ploughed field on his edge of the table, and in the nearby orchard. The first firefight erupted when his squad approached the farm, and the Americans opened up, both from the road and the farm building on the American side of the road. Even my bazooka team joined in using their rifles. The Germans were whittled down, with three casualties and several “hits”. In the next turn they hadn’t moved, as Sean rolled lousy dice, so I got to fire my squad again. Over on the left a similar thing was happening, with the Germans in the orchard getting the worst of the firefight. In the end Sean pulled them back to lick their wounds. Over on the American right though, his third squad had got into action, and was shooting up my 3rd squad. I brought the American platoon sergeant on there, to help recover some of the mounting pile of “hits”. Not surprisionly, the BAR team and a few riflemen were no match for panzer grenadiers with a pair of MG-34s blazing away! The dead piled up. Then, I remembered my support weapon. In this game, we both got 1 point worth of supports to add to our force, and Sean wisely opted for the Adjutant. The Americans though, get three extra support points thanks to the platoon modifier – offsetting the tooled-up nature of their German opponents. Four points bought me  .30 cal team.So, I got them into action, firing in support of my 3rd squad. That made a world of difference. Now it was the Germans who were suffering, and soon their squad was pinned. That gave the sergeant a chance to make headway rallying off those “hits”.On the left the Germans had pulled out of the orchard, and regrouping. Most of my command rolls seemed to be “4s”, which meant the senior leader got activated. So, my American lieutenant took charge, rallying off “hits”, and sending the 2nd squad forward through the orchard, to keep the pressure up. So far everything seemed to be going his way. The German lieutenant was also busy rallying off “hits”, trying to get his own central squad back into the game. It lined the bogage-like hedgerow at the edge of the ploughed field, and started a firefight with my 2nd squad in the road. This time though, my .30 cal had joined the fight, and the already badly depleted German squad got the worst of the exchange.In then end, with his force morale approaching rock-bottom, Sean conceded the game. He said he really enjoyed his first CoC game though, even though the blooding was .. er …bloody!  Let’s hope he’ll be back for more!

Tags: Chain of Command