I had an entertaining, if slightly one-way, game of ww1 Chain of Command this evening with Sam DownOrder. We got out my collection of French and Germans (not seen much action since the Verdun project of 2015-16). I discovered I had no barbed wire or German light machine guns (these both having departed with Paul Scrivens-Smith to the USA, very inconvenient 😀), but we managed to string a game together.
Playing The Probe scenario with the French attacking, I rolled 11 points of support whereas Sam’s Boches rolled a mere 1; I decided to be sporting and only picked 8 points of support. I also decided to keep barrages out of it to keep the game simple. Mistake number one!
Having read Mark Freeth’s excellent article about CoC the other night, I elected to draw up a plan involving a feint on one flank and a decisive breakthrough on the other. It was so cunning that my decoy unit was shot to pieces in the first fifteen minutes of the game by Sam’s slightly outrageous dice rolling, but I should probably shoulder some of the blame for having stranded the poor sods in the open in between shell holes.
Like the Great War, the game then dragged on as I threw various brave French units into the fire to try to force the decisive breakthrough. My bold Hotchkiss machine gun team had some limited success while being bolstered by the brave Lt Maurice, but eventually was silenced by German firepower. My fantastic sniper was clearly using an air rifle for all the good he did, though I did finally manage a heroic if futile charge towards a German forward position.
Anyway, good fun, and it’s definitely inspired me to play again soon.
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April 18, 2024, 03:30:10 AM
