IABSM AAR: The Assault on Crehen

[Vis Bellica]

Great to get my early war French back on the table after so long.

The game was based on the German assault on Crehen, an element of the battle of Hannut: at the time, the largest clash of armour ever seen.

Click on the link to see all:

https://www.vislardica.com/iabsm-aar/hannut-crehen-hermans-war-04

And here's a couple of pics to wet your whistles. The first is the sleepy town of Crehen before the panzers arrived, the second shows the game in full swing:

[fred]

Good write up!

I must admit I was expecting more (even more!) tanks from the teaser of the ‘largest armoured clash’

Did the French not being able to deploy units though the blinds card not being drawn, negatively affect the game? Can’t quite tell from the write up. We play ITLSU and don’t recall this being such a problem - not least as blinds can be spotted and therefore their card goes into the deck.

[Vis Bellica]

Yes: les francais were definitely sound asleep for a good proportion of the first half of the game. This meant that (a) the Germans could concentrate their fire on the units that they could see and (b) advance forward unmolested.

The problem would have been solved had we been using the Skelton Gambit variant to the rules (you can deploy units on Tea Break) but we weren't so I couldn't!

If I'd been playing better, I would have deployed my men back one row of houses!

[fred]

Yes with games I always want to deploy my troops in the front of BUA - but it is generally much better to have them back out of LoS

[SJWi]

Very nice.  I'm always after historical scenarios for my early war forces so will check this one out a bit more. I recently ran a game based on the fighting in Stonne using the Battlegroup rules. Stonne saw various attacks/counter-attacks so you can actually play several games based on the same battle.  I did a write-up for our Black Wolf Wargames blog. http://blackwolfwargames.blogspot.com/2022/09/battlegroup-match-report.html

[hayeswauford]

This looks great. I always love seeing the early war games!