Another Crack at Neuville

 I wanted to re-run the Neuville scenario (LT Turnbull's Stand) but this time with the Flames of War rules as originally intended, to see how the scenario would work.  Pretty much the same OOB from my Battlegroup: Overlord game with Dave, except plussed up with 2 x Marder IIIs, and 2 x American infantry platoons.  The Germans have 3 full platoons - an entire Panzer Grenadier company to throw at the junction, but they are under-strength platoons of 5 stands each, but they lack heavy weapons - the only ones being onboard the Marders.

The Americans are battle-hardened, high quality Paratroopers but also lack significant heavy weapons or armor.  The Americans have a scratch force of one large platoon on the table and a small platoon in reserve.  The Company Command team starts on the table and the Americans ahve a 57mm ATG in ambush, along with a minefield.  This was held lots of surprises for both sides.

LT Turnbull scans the road - the men all hear the sounds of approaching armored vehicles from the north

The scenario is based off the "No Retreat" scenario from Flames of War and it worked very well for this clsoe scenario (when I say close I mean it.  Read until the end to see how close I'm talking here.  This was a game of inches.)

LTC Vandervoort heads up to the second floor of the large building at the crossroads.  He is greeted with open fields full of Germans just out of small arms range.  They are moving with a purpose right towards the junction.  The fight is on!

Looking to his right, he spots Germans appraoching the position from the right

Looking to his left, there are Germans in and around the Chateau.

The Germans put their platoons abreast with 1st platoon on the left moving towards the hedges.  They would have the least distance to travel.  2nd platoon up the middle as support for the Marders and the 3rd Platoon on the right.  THey'd have a huge open field to traverse.  Casualties were expected to be high...

German 1st Platoon double-timing it through the fields - you can see the chateau behind them just barely out of focus.  3rd platoon is there.

The single American platoon at the junction is feeling very lonely right about now.

The German Marders move down the road, their infantry keeping pace on either side of them (2nd Platoon).  The Americans are too far back for small arms to open up.  The Germans, smelling a trap, don't push their marders down the road past the chateau (also there are mines on the road to try and force the Germans to cross the hedges on either side of them - they dont take the bait and hence the 57mm ATG ambush is not yet sprung).

LTC Vandervoort screams into the Radio to LT Turnbill"ABLE FIVE FIVE THIS IS BLUE SIX.  GET THAT SIXTY WORKING!  THERE'S KRAUTS ALL OVER THE G**AMNED PLACE!

He spots Germans crossing the hedges in company strength now from the crossroads.  It's obvious where they're headed.

German 3rd platoon advances past the chateau.  "No shortage of targets" as he spits tobacco juice onto the wooden floor.  The men in the courtyard are setting up the 60mm mortar as their platoon mates starts to dig in.

MORTAR NUMBER ONE!  HE QUICK!  THREE ROUNDS!  DEFLECTION EIGHT ZERO ZERO!  ELEVATION ZERO FOUR ZERO!  AT MY COMMAND!

The mortars are dead-on but since it's a single tube, the rules make me re-roll the hits.  I roll 2 sixes for the re-roll and the Germans bolo both of their saving rolls (snake eyes) and the Mortar team destroys an entire squad (2 teams) in a single volley.  It's excellent shooting and it pins the German platoon by the road for the time being.  LT Turnbull will take any successes he can get at the moment.

Nice shooting men!  A case of Calvados on me at the next farm that has some.

The German 2nd platoon is pinned.  It's the only shooting the Americans can manage this turn because the Germans are still too far away.  It's also worth mentioning here that the American reserve rolls have failed on turns 1 and 2 so far.  No big deal now, but the Germans keep closing the distance.

The Germans keep making their way towards the crossroads as their platoons cross country dash once the clear the first hedge line.  The small arms fight is about to heat up.

Turn 3 the Germans reach the hedge on the American left.  Traversing his field glasses to the hedge on the right, LTC Vandervoort can start to make out the camouflage patterns on their helmets.  WHERE THE HECK IS SECOND PLATOON.

More Germans in the fields now spreading out to attack.

Still no American reinforcements (looking for a 5+)

The American reserve platoon and the ATG ambush still not yet committed.

Meanwhile the mortar section manages to pin the German first platoon moving up to the hedgeline on their right.  

Turn 4 and still no reinforcements for the Americans

Meanwhile the Germans are maneuvering to flank the junction on the right

and they've reached the hedgeline on the left near the first house objective!  Their ROF 2 LMG stands  rip into hte American squads and pin LT Turnbull's platoon.  LT T realizes it's time to spring the ATG ambush.

  

The 57mm ATG ambush is sprung from the woods - not my original plan but there is not choice now.

The gun section-chief spies the Germans through his binoculars and they're close!  Time to open fire!

I look at the stats for the 57mm AT gun and am greeted with a pleasant surprise of "NO HE FIRE" which basically means I suffer an additional +1 to hit infantry targets.  Oh good!  We wouldn't want to make it easy to liberate Europe now would we? 

Refusing the flank, elements of Turnbull's platoon move to the big house and engage the Germans who are almost at their doorstep now.

Firefight!

Meanwhile LT Turnbull's men pull back to the big house refusing the right flank as the Germans start bounding towards the next line of hedges and into small arms fire range, punishing the Paratroopers in the house.  The bullet-proof cover helps, though, and while some saves are failed, the Germans fail their firepower checks (6 for small arms on 1d6)

Heavy American shooting elimintes most of German 2nd platoon along the road the remaining single stand fails its "last stand" check and bugs out

Meanwhile on Turn 5, a miracle as the reserve platoon finally shows up!  The hedge to their front is crawling with MG-42 teams...

The Marders have occupied new firing positions along the small road in front of the chateau.  They can see the American reinforcements coming in!

The platoon leader of the reserve platoon moves his men up at the double quick

and is cut down at the double quick!  No sooner is the platoon leader taken out - a new platoon command stand is appointed and they are taken out

one roll after another kills off much of the reserve platoon. at the top of turn 6.  They pass their "last stand" check and all 6 men hunker down in the field - pinned by vicious MG-42 fire.  They bought time for LT Turnbull's men to stay in the fight.

All that's left of the reserve platoon...

The end of the sixth turn requires a check to see if the game is going to continue on.  I completely forgot about the time requirment and the space requirement for the Germans to occupy space within 8 inches of the objective.  They have to be close - right?  I still have another turn to assault one of the buildings - right?

If the Germans aren't within 8" of the objective, the Americans win.

So the Germans bug out of Neuville and the Americans win by the skin of their teeth.  While the German units are pretty small, they are bristling with firepower especially if stationary.  If I could get the 2 remaining German platoons to work together they could have overrun the first house.  As long as they're within 8 inches of the second objective (the house is across the street) they could continue the fight.  

The lesson learned here is speed.  Similar to my 13 (!!) Ulianovo games, you have to get stuck in as quick as you can.  You don't have much time to waste softening the objective up.  This is where your mortars can be incredibly useful as a pinned platoon fires at its moving rate of fire.  I definitely took too long to get the Germans into position and 3rd platoon was in a good position to assault the first house on turn 5 but they didnt. 

This was a tough scenario but I'm finding the smaller-point games are much more tense.  There is little room for big mistakes whether in setup or in execution.  I really enjoyed this scenario and may play it again soon - but for now I think it's going to be a return to Napoleonics on the blog.  Here is a quick preview of what I've been up to lately:

Jacques - are we really back to doing 1/72 again?

June 6th Gaming DOUBLE-HEADER: D-Day and Waterloo

It's rare that I get a game in these days and even rarer that I would get not one but two games in one day.  On Friday June 6th a fortuitous doctor's appointment meant I had a day off and so my buddy Dave came over and we played my "LT TURNBULL'S STAND" D-Day scenario.  Later that evening I attended a game of Commands & Colors: Napoleonic at Brian's house in a team game of Waterloo played with Brian's exquisite 20mm collection.  

LT Turnbull reports to 2/505th Battalion headquarters as the German attack begins
"THIS IS ABLE FIVE FIVE - SIR THEYRE ROLLING A TON OF SIXES DOWN HERE.  REQUESTING AS MANY REINFORCEMENTS AS YOU CAN SEND, OVER.

First up was the Operation: Overlord game but instead of Flames of War (as the scenario was intended for) we played it with Battlegroup: Overlord which had some interesting ramifications for how the game would play out.  While longtime readers of this blog remember my penchant for Battlegroup games, I will say the long lines of sight and huge open fields on the road to St Mere-Eglise meant that there was a bunch of shooting in this game.  In fact the game played like one huge firefight with both of us making copious use of "area fire" to try and score as many "pin" results as we could to force the other to pull chits.  

Dave's dice were (as usual) on fire and he made excellent use of the Marder IIIM's gun and just punished my forward elements with round after round of super acurate HE fire.  As much as I tried to pull my forward squads back to regroup, they kept getting pinned during Dave's turn.  The Germans occupied the chateau with good firing positions and the rest was history.

 Hard-pressed American paratroopers heroically struggle to defend the road to St Mere Eglise despite their boss's unheroic dice rolling.

Dave starts the first turn (recon phase of the "Defense LIne" scenario from Battlegroup) and brings all of his platoon command groups on, ostensibly for the extra orders.  Note the yellow "chateau".  There is an American squad in there to buy time and force the Germans to deploy.

1st and 2nd Platoon HQs, 1st Company, 1st Battalion, 1058th Grenadier Regiment.

American paras prepare to make a dogged stand at the orchard.  The "1" marker is a casualty received from Dave's area fire (in BG, if you score a "1" on your save from area fire, you incur a single casualty).

Dave's rolls were kicking butt and I think he never rolled lower than an 8 for orders without counting the officers on the table.  My poor Americans, despite their "veteran" status were rolling 4s and 5s for orders each turn.  Dave quickly brings on his infantry and the Marder, greedily eyeing up the chateau.

The squad in the orchard is constantly pinned.  As soon as they unpin, Dave ends up pinning them again.  Hard luck!

Covered by the gun from the Marder, Dave confidently starts sending infantry towards the Chateau on the right.  That Marder stayed there almost all game.  My bazooka team was in the rear and Dave outranged me, anyways.

Dave spots the Americans on my right and continuously keeps them pinned.  My turns are spent drawing chits (which I can scarcely afford).  American breakpoint is 22 and the German is 26.  

The American squad at the chateau is destroyed and Dave overruns the chateau and orchard.  He crams the building full of MG42s and infantry right around when the American reinforcing platoon shows up along with my AT guns and extra officers.

Americans flood the crossroads but their breakpoint is getting close!  I wasn't even getting the orders to to get the AT gun into position!  Not a good day!  

If i didn't take a picture of it, you'd never have believed it.  Dave scores "6" after "6" with the Marder, hitting my infantry with HE shells at long range.  This was turn 4 of Dave rolling a "6" to hit an infantry squad.  Each turn he spots and hits with frightful precision.  If it wasn't for my saves and "Veteran" status, this game would have been over already.

American squad finally able to bug out to regroup behind the reinforcements.

Dave with the M43 field cap. We eventually settled into a protracted firefight between the chateau and the fellows on the east-west road to the south (left in the picture).  Dave eventually would lose an MG42 team and my Americans would break off after surpassing their breakpoint.  Ugh this was a tough one.

Following an afternoon Doctor's appointment, I was ordered to redeploy to Brian's house for a refight of Waterloo with Commands and Colors armed only with Christopher Plummer and Rod Steiger quotes from "Waterloo" where I got to play alongside the French commander (Mark will always be the French commander to me after he bested me in a campaign a few years back playing the role of Napoleon and I as Blucher).  I commanded the French right.  Brian provided dinner and refreshments and the group got down to the serious business of re-fighting Waterloo without the Prussians (as God intended).

After a brace of "left" section orders, Mark pulled off a spectacularly successful 5 card drive against Hougomont and his dice rolling matched Dave's from earlier in the day.  The real winner of the show however were Brian's re-based 20mm Napoleonic troops which I could not stop snapping pictures of.

View from the French side.  I commanded the right and Mark D commanded the left. Not many "right" cards to start.  I was keen to form a Grand Battery with 2 of my Artillery Batteries and was desperately scanning for a card that would let me do that.  

French center-right.  Opening up a lane for my Cuirassiers I became enamored with the idea of forming a hex-to-hex grand battery on the forward slope of the ridge...

gratuitous eye-candy of the minis.

Cuirassiers

  "Those men on grey horses are terrifying"

"Are these Amazons all Wellington has to offer me?"

Brian re-based his 20mm to accomodate his Hexon terrain, but they still have that great "diorama" vibe to them.

The unit that needs no introduction.

Heavy fighting on the French left/British right as Mark pulls off a successful attack first against Hougomont and then against the ridge.  While he's eventually pushed back off the ridge after numerous British counterattacks, Mark would secure Hougomont and make life difficult for the allies for the rest of the game there.  Note the unit in square - Brian used some of my old 20mm HaT guys to make square markers.

The British right/French left - 

        

Mark's Light Infantry in Hougomont - a hard won victory banner here!

In one of the most dramatic turns of the game, a British counterattack around Hougomont is stubbornly beaten back by the French Horse Artillery in a stunning 4x hit roll the British line are wiped out.  Battle honors for these gunners and I will ensure they are mentioned in Despatches.

  

Meanwhile the action starts to shift to my right as I gather up the Young Guard and an Infantry Brigade to seize Papellotte.

The allies reinforce with a unit of Dutch-Belgians after the Young Guard move into Papellotte.

The British launch a counterattack on the French right and attempt to overrun my guns on the forward slope of the French ridge.  The attack is beaten back.The destruction of the Dutch-Belgians around Papellotte sees the French clench the game.  This was a very hard-fought game too with the British launching numerous spoiling attacks.  The fighting really occurred in the right and left sections with the center staying mostly quiet.

Cavalry attack against the French artilleryon the ridge.

This was a fun game and each side made very good use of the tactics cards in addition to their 6 x card hands.  One funny item that came out of play was my attempts at forming a "grand battery" which bestows some advantages when firing (I think you may combine dice of the units in an attack if memory serves).  Anyway, when I finally had the cards to move units around and form the "Grand Battery" I inadvertantly (read that as stupidly) set up the Battery astride the Center and Right section.  Hilarity ensued as I needed a card that ordered *both* the center and right section in order to use the grand battery.  Shoddy staff work!  

We imagined what Napoleon would have said but Brian captured it better than anyone when he turned to AI to have a picture (or 2) commissioned to commemorate the occasion - note the "line" on the battlefield denoting section boundaries...:

"Apologies, Sire, but you are in the right section and we are in the center section.  Your card only orders your guns to fire."  Or more to hte point "What idiot forms a grand battery over 2 sections of the battlefield???"

A wonderful day of gaming with friends.  Thanks to Dave for sharing a precious day off with me to game, and thanks to Brian and the gang for a great evening of Commands and Colors Napoleonics.  I will be updating my "Battle Honors" page with the French Horse Artillery soon.