Many Rivers to Cross CoC campaign Holland 1940 (updated 19 07 22)

[TacticalPainter]

After finishing the Bloody Bucket campaign last year it was our intention to have a short break from CoC before returning with this campaign - Many Rivers to Cross from the Lard Magazine 2018. Dave, my regular opponent has a force of early war Germans and had added a Dutch platoon that he was keen to see in action and so we had decided that Holland 1940 would be our setting. Covid lockdowns then got in the way and threw our gaming schedule completely, but I'm pleased to say we got there in the end and the campaign started last week (although I should add since we played this game both Dave and I have tested positive for covid, as have four others from our club. Fortunately we are all vaxxed and so are not as sick as we might otherwise have been, nonetheless I write this from isolation and not feeling my best!).

The full AAR for the first game is now live on the blog and you can find it here http://thetacticalpainter.blogspot.com/2022/03/many-rivers-to-cross-scenario-1-village.html

It wouldn't be blitzkrieg without the obligatory Stuka (this one from Airfix, one of the lovely new tooling in 1/72):


A Dutch Kazemat - this one a slightly embellished MDF one from Blotz:






A diminutive Carden Loyd carrier is minute in 20mm, I'd hate to imagine how small a 10mm model would look like!

[BeneathALeadMountain]

Excellent thank you for posting Tac, I will follow this with interest. I don’t have any early war and it might be my next WW2 project after the pacific. I hope you (and your opponent/club members) are ok and back up and running soon.

Stay safe and look after yourself

Andrew
BALM

[Vanth]

Always loved to read your AARs: unfortunately in the last week my internet provider decided that the whole blogspot domain is not secure, so I cannot access it any more... 

[TacticalPainter]

Always loved to read your AARs: unfortunately in the last week my internet provider decided that the whole blogspot domain is not secure, so I cannot access it any more... 

Really? Given it’s run by Google I would have thought that’s unlikely to be an issue but I’m no IT expert. That’s the first I’ve ever heard of that happening, what a shame, so many great blogs are on blogspot.

[Sgt_T]

Great AAR!
I have a painted 28mm Dutch WW2 platoon and happen to be a Dutchman so I'll follow this campaign with great interest.
I didn't know the 2018 Lard special contained a pint sized campaign for early war Holland (the descriptions on the website are not always that clear), but I've put it on my to-buy-list

T.

[Daeothar]

Great AAR!
I have a painted 28mm Dutch WW2 platoon and happen to be a Dutchman so I'll follow this campaign with great interest.
I didn't know the 2018 Lard special contained a pint sized campaign for early war Holland (the descriptions on the website are not always that clear), but I've put it on my to-buy-list

T.

Basically all of the above (except replace 'platoon' by 'squad'  )!

Always interested in anything to do with Fall Gelb and the Dutch defense

[7dot62mm]

I didn't know the 2018 Lard special contained a pint sized campaign for early war Holland (the descriptions on the website are not always that clear), but I've put it on my to-buy-list

It's not really set in Holland. It's a generic 1940 campaign and you can use any army in the 1940 Blitzkrieg Handbook, and the campaign can be set in any of those countries. It's quite handy because you can use what you have.

[Sgt_T]

It's not really set in Holland. It's a generic 1940 campaign and you can use any army in the 1940 Blitzkrieg Handbook, and the campaign can be set in any of those countries. It's quite handy because you can use what you have.

Thanks! Knowing what to expect helps.

T.

[vodkafan]

Nice to see another CoC campaign. I commented on the blog, but I will say the same here: It seemed a major initial mistake on the part of the Dutch to not have that first squad occupy the terraced houses facing the Germans.

[TacticalPainter]

Great AAR!
I have a painted 28mm Dutch WW2 platoon and happen to be a Dutchman so I'll follow this campaign with great interest.
I didn't know the 2018 Lard special contained a pint sized campaign for early war Holland (the descriptions on the website are not always that clear), but I've put it on my to-buy-list

T.

As others have said the campaign is flexible for anywhere in France or the Low Countries where there is fighting over waterways, canals or rivers. We chose Holland because my opponent had recently painted a Dutch platoon. I did some research to try and find a suitable historical setting. I wanted to use a German Schützen platoon from a panzer division and this made the research a little easier as 9th Pz was the only armoured division operating in Holland. The action around Dordrecht seemed to have the right situation to match the campaign, but to be honest the campaign is more about capturing the flavour of the historical situation - Germans driving to capture the next river/bridge and the Dutch hastily trying to block them. I think it will end up doing a good job of that but there's no reason why you couldn't make it more historical if you wanted to.

[TacticalPainter]

Nice to see another CoC campaign. I commented on the blog, but I will say the same here: It seemed a major initial mistake on the part of the Dutch to not have that first squad occupy the terraced houses facing the Germans.

Thanks, yes, saw your comment and replied. It may not have appeared as though it was but the jump-off-point was more than 6" from those buildings and so it would have required at least two phases for the squad to occupy them, which is not to say it wasn't possible to do (although only two of the three were safe to occupy given one was unstable).

[MaleGriffin]

Great looking terrain!

[TacticalPainter]

Not another AAR (yet) - we hope to play the next game later this week now that we've both got over Covid. This is just a background post on pulling together some of the terrain for this campaign. You can find it here https://thetacticalpainter.blogspot.com/2022/03/getting-ready-for-many-rivers-to-cross.html

[Grumpy Gnome]

Great work on the terrain, especially the windows on the shop.

[Daeothar]

The kazematten and the store are perfect for a Dutch setting (I love the shop window too), but the windmill is of a decidedly non-Dutch configuration. Which makes perfect sense when wanting to re-use terrain pieces in different settings of course, just thought I'd mention it.

All pieces are looking great though!