Last Thursday I met up with Keith and Matt at the newly-formed Lenton Gamers club in Nottingham for our first game of Iron Cross (Keith had managed to squeeze a game in two days earlier, but we shan't count that one...) Iron Cross had been hotly-anticipated as (a) it suggested it could cope with larger than platoon-sized forces and (b) it was only 32 pages long!
In a previous game of Chain of Command, Keith and I had realised that we had collected way too many Italian tanks to use as simple platoon support, even in 'Big CoC', so would this fit the bill?
I got hold of my rulebook a week previously on a visit to Northstar, hot out of the box. First impressions were that the rulebook layout is similar to Saga: slim, but very well-presented, full colour throughout, and with the mandatory period characters giving you tactical advice! (reflecting on my first game, I should have listened better...) I read the rules through a few times and, though I think they could have benefitted from some clearer layout (there are some lists of situations that, IMHO, might have worked better in bullet points or a table), I felt confident to give them a go.
The rules are unashamedly simple, having just five unit types (heavy, medium and light vehicles, and infantry and support units) to make bigger games feasible. The core of the rules is based around Command Initiatives - you get counters for these, which you spend to activate units, but you can also use them to react to enemy activations. There is no casualty removal - units take hits up to their morale value, which when exceeded results in immediate loss of the whole unit.
The rules contain 'Orbats' for Germans, British, US and Soviets in 1944-5 (these aren't really Orders of Battle per se, but stat lists you can use to create your force with points values. If you want to model historical forces, you'll need to research your own.) Based on these and a look at Too Fat Lardies' very detailed 'In The Footsteps of Legions' supplement, I knocked out some army lists for North Africa. We tried a fairly simple game - unusually (but due to the large amount of Italian armour we had available), we decided to play an Italian attack against a British defence line - maybe the outskirts of Tobruk?
Playing on a 6x5' table, we had the following forces:
ITALIANS (Keith and Matt)
2 platoons of Infantry, each with 4 x squadra of 8 men [the rules suggest section sizes of 4-5 models, but we balked at this and decided to play with 8, nearer to the actual size]
1 troop of Light Tanks - 4 x L3 tankettes
1 troop of Medium Tanks - 3 x M11/39, commanded by 1 x M13/40
2 x 81mm Mortar Teams (support squads)
1 Command Unit
This made a total of 19 units.
BRITISH (myself)
4 sections of Infantry [8 men each again]
2 x Light Tanks - Vickers MkVI
1 x Medium Tank - Crusader
1 x Heavy Tank - Matilda
1 x Vickers MG Team [support squad]
2 x 2 Pounder Guns [support squads]
1 x Command Unit
For a grand total of 13 units. We started the British behind barbed wire, and in sandbag defences, with the Italians on the attack.
Slightly out-of-focus shot of the start of the game: Italians at top, British at bottom.
We very quickly got down to business. Matt took the Italian left flank , commanding the L3 'sardine tins', the mortars, and one platoon of infantry. Keith took the rest, and overall command, dishing out Command Initiative counters to Matt as he saw fit! Both wings made a rush for the wire, though not without loss. I took some damage on my AT guns, but kept spending Command Initiatives to carry out a 'Company Morale Test' (this is the standard way to rally troops throughout the game - on a d6 roll of 3-5, a unit can remove 1 Morale marker, and on a lucky 6, it can remove all its markers).
The first few turns turned into a vicious slugging match between the British AT guns and the leading Italian tanks. Although some of the medium tanks had been able to advance unseen behind a low rise, the M11/39 nearest the wire quickly fell victim to the 2 pounder guns. As my troops didn't need to move - apart from bringing up the tanks to firing positions - I could spend nearly all my Command Initiatives on firing round after round from my AT guns. In the rules, you can activate a unit more than once, but you have to dice to do so, and I found myself getting lucky with most of these rolls (this is similar to the mechanic in Ancients rules
To The Strongest, where you can activate more than once but have to keep scoring higher each time).
Scratch one M11/39...
Keith then had some shocking (but funny
) luck when he tried to drive two of his medium tanks through the wire. On consecutive turns, both got stuck, resulting in the crews having to jump out and push (at least, that was my excuse for deploying my large collection of Italian tank crew figures for a photo opportunity!) This delayed the Italian advance somewhat and allowed my Matilda time to drive up the rise and begin taking out the L3s. This section of the table became something of a turkey shoot, as the Matilda gunner had a field day firing into the flank of the 'arrigoni' tankettes. As the lightest-armoured vehicles can suffer damage from MGs, my HMG and Vickers tank also opened up, adding to the carnage.
Push, Salvatore, push!
The Matilda makes short work of the L3s
Despite winning the tank battle, my luck was turning. The Italians now concentrated their fire on my infantry and support squads. The two mortar units rained bombs on my sandbagged positions; mortars become more accurate firing repeatedly at stationary targets, and by spending all his Command Initiatives on this, Matt destroyed several of my infantry sections in one turn. Looking back at the tactical advice offered in the rulebook, I should really have tried to interrupt this mortar fire with some rallying attempts, but was far too fixated on blowing up all the Italian armour!
Italians pour through gaps in the wire created by the tanks.
Suddenly I found myself with most of my infantry units broken, and both AT guns lost. Not only that, but an Italian infantry unit had managed to sneak up the side of my Vickers tank and take it out with grenades (infantry have a low AT value that they can use against the flank or rear of vehicles at point blank range).
Goodbye Vickers MkVI !
Having freed it from the wire, Keith sent his Italian commander's M13/40 tank round the side of the hill, where it failed to hit the Crusader and was promptly blown up by another display of accurate British shooting (the modifier for moving and shooting is a minus 2 on a d10, which can be a killer if the enemy is lying in wait - as happened in this case. There is no 'overwatch' rule, you simply spend a Command Initiative and make a dice roll if you want to interrupt your opponent and fire first).
The Crusader takes out the Italian commander's M13/40 - the gold counters at the side are Command Initiatives, showing he has activated twice so far this turn.
However, the game was up. We decided that the surviving tanks couldn't hold the ground without infantry support, so the Brits withdrew, leaving the ground to the Italians. (There are 4 scenarios and some ideas for force break points in the rule book, but we were quite happy working these out ourselves).
A (fuzzy) shot of the end - the British positions (sandbags to left) have mostly been evacuated, and the wire is breached in two places.
We were all agreed we'd like to play again. Iron Cross does indeed provide a quick game - our battle between 32 units on a 6x5' table had taken about two hours, including looking things up. It feels like you have a lot of Command Initiatives at the start of the game, but you have to think carefully about where to use them, and when to interrupt your opponent's turn. If you over-focus on one area of the battle (as I did with the AT fire, trying to take out all 8 Italian tanks), you will fail in another (not rallying morale at the critical moments). The damage system is refreshingly simple - all units just take Morale markers, which affect their ability to carry out orders - so there's no faffing around with vehicles having 'broken track' or 'gunner dead' results.
Although I don't think the authors have been as clear as they could be about game size, your minimum is probably a platoon of infantry plus some tanks, but bigger is probably better, especially if you want to get lots of tanks on the table. There isn't a lot of 'granularity' with the infantry (all units in the suggested Orbats are the same with Morale 5, though it wouldn't be hard to reduce unwilling Italians to a Morale of 4, or put highly motivated Kiwis on a Morale of 6 as a special rule), and much of the detail (such as it is) is in the tank rules - so you probably don't want to play Iron Cross as a purely infantry vs infantry game.
But it's most certainly something new in the WW2 market - a big game that feels plausible without being bogged down by too much detail.
I look forward to more material for Iron Cross being published and getting some more games in!
Game over - although the tanks have come to grief, Italian infantry are flooding through the wire.
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May 06, 2024, 12:23:34 PM
August 24, 2015, 12:45:28 PM