Meeting at Longlier - CDTOB AAR Part 3

We completed the Meeting at Longlier scenario some weeks ago, but I have only now managed to edit the photos and write the game up. I am such a slacker! Anyway, this is the final part of the scenario write-up. Part 1 and Part 2 were posted some time back on the blog. At the end of the last turn, the Germans were pushing hard on their left flank and things looked grim for the French on that side. The town of Longlier was hotly disputed in the centre with both sides occupying half of it. The battle on the right was much more open and the German cavalry had broken round the flank and were aiming to capture the French regimental command.

The situation at the end of Turn 7

How it looked to us

As the French cavalry chased the German cavalry, a French company was dispatched to intercept the Germans, Meanwhile another French company captured a village near the railway bridge and a third company of that battalion was moving to capture the village on the ridge, but it was going to have to fight through a German company in the woods first.

French infantry move to intercept German cavalry

The battle in Longlier saw the Germans pushed back and taking losses, while two French companies closed the pincers on the town to ensure that the Germans would have nowhere to go but into the bag. Artillery and machine-gun fire were doing a good job of suppressing the Germans to ease the French advance.

Longlier from the south (The beige markers show pinned German units. The French are on the left of the photo)

Longlier from the north with the French on the right of the photo

On the French right flank, it was a completely different picture. The fight in the woods had heated up and lead was flying everywhere. The French 75s were working overtime to try to suppress the Germans, while the battalion commander was busily rallying one of his companies. The Germans were starting to take heavy losses here too, but the French definitely had the worst of it with damaged and demoralised companies trying to hold the line and give the artillery time to escape.

The battle for the southern woods. Beige markers show pinned German units. The other pin markers are French and the red and green markers show demoralised French troops

Fortunately for the French, the German infantry had found the whole affair too hot for them too and their entire left flank became pinned down. At this point, the German commander decided to cede the day to the French and regroup his troops. There was be time enough another day to assault Longlier.

French losses

German Losses

Notes

French losses in this game were very light, as the photo shows. The Germans took horrendous losses. This was one reason why Steve called it a day and ceded the game to me. I got lucky in that his morale rolls at the end of turn 7 were terrible, resulting in a very large part of his army pinning. His morale might have held out better had this not happened, because he could then have driven home against my battered troops there. This would have freed up his left flank to relieve Longlier. He would have had between 1 and 5 turns for this, depending upon the game end die roll, so it could have been feasible. Having to rally and regroup his troops first meant that he probably would not have had time for this.

This was a good fun scenario. It worked well as a training scenario to teach Steve the new rules and to remind me of how Command Decision works. I am now keen to play the rest of the scenarios in The Death of Glory, but I also wonder about reducing them in size. They are all really too large to suit the available time we have for gaming, so we need to consider how best to reduce the size of the forces and still play an interesting scenario.

Grand Admiral: Castles of Steel - WW1 Naval Game

We played Grand Admiral: Castles of Steel last night. I have been looking for a fast-playing naval wargames rules set for WW1 for some years now and found this to be interesting, so I bought and downloaded it. Previously I have played a lot of General Quarters 2. GQ2 is a fine game but it does not play quickly enough for the size of game I want to play, i.e. Jutland.

Anyway, it all began many years ago, when I bought a Conflict Miniatures (formerly Knight Designs) 1:5000 fleet set with all of the ships required for Jutland. These tiny beauties ranged in size from approximately 10mm in length for a destroyer to 20mm for a battleship and I have always thought that they must be 1:10000 and not 1:5000 scale. For their size they are brilliant. Individual classes of ship are recognisable with the larger models and I was quite taken with them, but I always found naval wargaming to be a bit sterile. Still, I painted them all and they languished in the cupboard for years awaiting a willing opponent. Then last night I finally persuaded Steve to play. Yay!

The British squadrons are at the bottom of this picture. Light cruisers are on the left, battleships in the centre and battlecruisers on the right. The German battleships are steaming at full speed down the centre, while the two battlecruiser squadrons are manoeuvring up top left.

I quickly put together two small battle-groups of three squadrons each and offered Steve the choice of sides. He picked the Germans, so I wound up with the British. We set up our ships and set to. It was a simple engagement that saw both of us steaming towards each other, although my own efforts to cross the T were slightly subtler than Steve's plan of steaming right into the middle of my ships with his battleships while his battle-cruisers lagged behind. The net result was that I was able to concentrate fire on his battleships and sink them all before engaging his battlecruisers and sinking enough of them to win the game. Steve severely damaged several of my ships and sunk a few, but the advantage was definitely mine.

The game itself played rather well, although it took longer than I expected. The key mechanic of the game is the card draw for movement and firing. A deck is constructed consisting of Ace through Six and two face cards in different suits for each side (we used hearts for the British and spades for the Germans). Each player holds a hand of three cards at the start and plays one card from that hand when it is their turn. They then draw another card. Play continues until all the cards have been played and the deck is then reshuffled ready for the next round to begin. When a player plays a number card (Ace to Six) all ships of the side associated with that suit whose speed is equal to or greater than the number may move. When a face card is played, all ships of that side may shoot. Players are not allowed to discard or pass, so they must, at some point, play cards that let their opponent act. The key is to work out when this is most advantageous for you. I like this mechanism, because it adds a bit of planning ahead to the game and introduces some uncertainty. Both of these are things I like in my games.

For shooting, the game uses the bucket of dice approach which we enjoy, but it also provides an optional single die resolution system. With the bucket of dice you roll for hits first based on being at short or long range, and then you roll for damage for each successful hit by rolling equal to or greater than the target's armour value minus your gun's penetration value. Damage causes ships to first become crippled and then to sink. Thus, ships have two floating states which amount to full strength and half strength. There are no critical hits or other fripperies, because this is intended to be a fleet level game played in a reasonable length of time.

Grand Admiral is designed to be played on a hex grid but we just counted one hex as two inches and worked everything out from there. The only way this affected the game was that our squadrons would have been deployed in one hex each and could have turned as a squadron on one movement card. The way we played, they needed several movement cards for the whole squadron to change direction while remaining in line. This slowed movement down, but felt about right.

Overall, we enjoyed the game and will play again at some point. I shall certainly try to get Steve to play General Quarters too, but that will have to be for smaller games because of the extra detail in those rules. Now that I have used my ships, I think I may rebase them to be more user friendly too. At the very least, they need names that are visible without having to pick the ship up or have an encyclopaedic knowledge of ship profiles from the period. It might also prove useful to base them on small hexes to aid with working out arcs of fire. I look forward to the rebasing and hopefully playing with these figures that I have bought over twenty years ago now.

Some photographs from the end of the Great War

With the centenary of the Great War coming up, and my plans to refight elements of it, I was reminded of some photos from the period in the family album. The only definite date I have for any of them is 1918. I thought I would post them, partly because I am too busy to game at the moment and I don't want the blog to get too quiet, but also because I thought they might be of interest. Also, I have little information about a lot of these so if anyone is able to glean more information from them, please let me know.

I have no idea which unit this is and family stories tell me nothing

The rugby team

My great-great aunt (or thereabouts) met her husband in this hospital

Or possibly in this one

My great-grandfather and great-grandmother in France in 1918 according to the writing on the back of the photo

When in France on holiday, one buys postcards of big guns!

It is important to have your photograph taken with the subject of some of your postcards

Once also buys postcards of ruins

 

And of destroyed forests with a crashed plane in them