Back to the West Country - at last! (Game 1)

It's been a while, but we were finally able to have a wargaming day in Shedquarters West. Alas we were down to just the three of us, me, Chris A and Richard, due to other commitments and Phil's recent illness, but on a cold November morning, Chris loaded a couple of crates of my toys into the boot of his car, and off we went. 

Richard was very keen for us to try "Chain of Command". He's a bit of a Lardy Fanboy, me less so. Still, it's his house, so his choice, and the rules are well regarded. I watched the four "Storm of Steel Wargaming" videos on how to play, and downloaded the (6 page) QRS for reference over the weekend, so I was as prepped as I've ever been for a Lardy Game.

Chain of Command is a platoon level game, with resolution at single figure level. It has dice based unit arrival and activation, and a pre-game patrolling sequence.

Richard does layout a nice table. The wargaming surface is home made, with flexible filler on top of a plastic backed dust sheet, and surfaced with sand and flock and paint. It is rather good. The white building in the middle is home made as well.

I was early war French, defending the red-roofed farmhouse. I didn't get all of these toys. I got three squads, an HMG team and a group of rifle grenadiers. We were playing the Blitzkrieg 1940 supplement, if these things are important to you.

Here we are, with Chris and I placing our Patrol Markers in the pregame sequence. Very disappointed that Richard made us use simple blue and red counters, rather than custom made mdf laser cut jobbies. Despite doing my pre-game prep I still didn't get this quite right. No worries. We were both learning. This phase is important as it determines where you can place your "jumping off points", thus enabling your troops to pop up on the table from cover, rather than trudge on from the table edge. 

Chris got to move first, and his Germans started to sneak up the board.

I think this group was supposed to be the team earmarked to close assault the farm house. They spent a lot of time skulking behind the hedge.

This area of the board was designated "scrub", so all these figures are in light cover. The Nazis have brought up an infantry gun.

Having seen Chris bring on lots of his stuff with his activation dice I was less lucky, and only managed to get on my HMG team, which I put in the farm house.

I will re-iterate here my hatred of dice based reinforcement (and activation) systems under which one players gets to do loads of stuff, whilst you sit and watch them, before moving on one measly unit because of what you roll. At the end of the game I had a think, and I would allow players to modify the activation dice at the cost of giving any units then activated with it a shock point. (BTW this system also has another of my least favourite mechanisms - rolling dice to see how far you move. So you finally get to move a unit, after trying to roll the activation number for three turns and it rolls a 1" move. WTF. If you must do this, allocate a move distance - say 6" - and deduct an inch or two for a 1,2, and add them for a 5,6).

On my right, Chris has a section rushing forwards.

I counter with one of my squads. I can easily make the hedge line in front of me before Chris gets across the open ground, unless I am very unlucky with my activation dice.

What happens is this. The Nazi Collaborator turns up at the farmhouse door. He neutralises the senior leader I've just placed in the farm house. The rest of my activation dice are useless, and don't enable me to move anything - bear in mind I have set myself up so that I get two shots at firing the HMG in the farmhouse upper story, and don't get to shoot at all. I get some 5s on my Chain of Command dice  (which will be good in the future) but at this stage I'd really like to move some kit. This is two turns/phases in a row where I have been heavily restricted in placing or activating troops on the table. I'm a bit miffed (my temper is short these days). Have I driven 2 1/2 hours to sit at the end of a table and not move any toys?

The phase passes to Chris. As you can see, he's a long way from the hedge. However, he rolls the 3 x 6 on the dice option, plus some activations. So he can advance them AND he gets the next phase as well. And he is shelling the farmhouse with his infantry gun off to the left.

Richard at this point is going "Can you please stop breaking the game??".

So the Germans get to the hedge, and open fire on my troops standing in the field. Luckily Chris' shooting is rubbish, and I take only one point of shock. Not bad when being shot at from about 20 yards, by a team armed with a bipod mounted LMG, bolt action rifles and an SMG. How come I am not a heap of corpses in the field? 

Ah ha! My rifle grenadiers turn up. Not too effective with the first round of shooting, but it's something.

At last! An activation I can use. My senior "ranking" leader turns up with a section. He has to stand at that end of the line so he can shout at the men in the building, as I can't get rid of the Nazi collaborator. This means I can start to reduce the shock the HMG team is taking from the infantry gun, and the fire teams standing in the scrub area.

All this means I can now bring a lot of fire to bear on the Germans behind the hedge. I was also able to use a CoC dice event to bring on an ambush team and shoot them up.

This soon has them running for the table edge, cheered on by my section standing in the open. Don't look at me, I don't get it either.

The HMG team in the farmhouse are close to breaking. Loads of shock, and men dying. Funny, I have to roll to see if my officer is hit (for all the good he is doing) but not the Nazi collaborator. Anyhow, I need to reinforce the building.

I finally occupy the hedge line.

On the other side of the board, Chris has sneaked up a team to capture one of my Jumping off Points. This is a Bad Thing. I am able to spring another ambush, and shoot him up a bit, reducing the team to one man. The loss of the JoP costs me some army morale points. We have both been losing these steadily, but I've started rolling 6s when checking, which costs you 2 rather than1 point mostly.

Finally I'm able to deploy anther section, and I put them in the farm house. This is good as the HMG team has bolted. That means I can withdraw the other section from the courtyard, and redeploy them. 

Chris is them able to end the turn (?) which means my broken HMG team is lost - he was able to rally his broken section and teams as I couldn't end the turn.  This, together with some other 6s on the "Bad Things" table, mean I suddenly lose 6 morale points, and my army is broken just as I thought I was going to push on to win.

Final thoughts? I hear people say its the most realistic portrayal of platoon level action you can get (I assume this ignores things like Squad Leader and ASL). I like it more that "Sharp Practice" and "Infamy, Infamy". It has some clever nuances, and mechanisms but I still do not like the aspects I have highlighted. Not that these are unfixable, from my point of view. What do I know? These are really popular, and people like them. I will happily play them again, as it does look nice, and it passed the time without boredom creeping in. However, I won't be buying a copy anytime soon.