Chain of Command: Normandy Game 4

Martin and I played the last game of our campaign on Sunday.

For the final game, we depicted a German counter-attack on a British-held village.

The set-up was simple: Martin held a village at one end of the table, and I entered from the other end. I managed to get two Jump-Off Points into the woods near the village, but I needed a bit of heavy support to get across the open ground.

For once I am the attacker and I managed to get some decent support in the shape of a StuG. I planned to suppress the Brits with HE fire, and then gain a foothold when they evacuate a building, then proceed to reduce another one. Martin on his end chose a second 2" mortar as his support, and proceeded to lay a sea of smoke in front of my StuG. With only 4 Command Dice and a starting Force Morale of only 5, I could not remove the smoke. At the same time, Martin's PIATs took potshots at my StuG.

The StuG makes its entrance.

A flurry of activity in the village.

After several rounds of waiting for the smoke to lift and then trading ineffective shots, I changed my plan and had the StuG drive round the woods on the left so it would be exposed to only one of the PIATs. This soon paid off as I managed to eliminate the squad in the building on the left. My infantry crested the hill, ready to charge into the building on the right once the StuG has supprssed the squad inside... and then the StuG got hit by a PIAT round and became immobilised and the crew panicked and failed to support the infantry.

Caught in the open, my infantry squad was cut down by fire, and the attack failed.

The PIAT finds its target!

I enjoyed the campaign very much, and we plan to do an Arnhem campaign the next year. This will of course require more buildings than we currently own, but I have the feeling we can use the VSF terrain boards fg and I have made but never used for the city streets.

I have just purchased some OO scale pdf buildings from Scalescenes to see if they can be a cost- and time-effective way to have a decent urban terrain done up. The kit doesn't look easy to assemble, but hopefully the result is worth the attempt.