The Battle of Mariefort

 After a week off from running a Monday Night Game I was back this Tuesday, with something old and something new.

Jon's experiments with using two cameras, and the fact I found my old non-auto focus camera on a shelf behind something else, inspired me to make a change from my normal single high camera angle to two low level cameras on the corners. I have two table top tripods (or at least I thought I did, - I could only find one when I set the game up) so this seemed a good option to try. Plus the PC has a built in camera I can use if I want to talk directly to the players.

For the game I went back to WW1 and OHW, again bolting together two scenarios, this time for the German 1918 offensive. These were scenario #4 "Take the High Ground" and scenario #10 "Late Arrivals". The Germans were the "blue" army in the former, and the "red" army in the latter. The board looked like this: 

I called the mountains in one of the scenarios "brick stacks", and again shifted it all onto squares. There were some extra minor rule tweaks. Shooters get +2 for enfilading, armour can move and shoot, and artillery don't half hits when firing at armour.

Turn sequence went 1st Regiment (Richard), 1st Brigade (Will), 2nd Brigade (Ian) and 2nd Regiment (Jon). Will had an infantry unit in E1 and artillery at D5, Ian had a Heavy Infantry unit at J3 and a standard one at K3.

And in further news, my SLR was back from the repair shop!

The playing area is as wide as the marked green cloth, and as deep as the ends of the roads. Germans to the right, British to the left. You can just see one of the camera stands top left.

Richard led the way with an advance up the main road, with much agonizing over how to avoid being enfiladed. Will opened up with both infantry and guns.

Ian effectively had to pass his first turn as Jon wasn't on the table yet. Jon was then at him, full throttle.

Richard continued to advance in the face of withering fire, losing a battalion.

Turn two, and Ian has reinforcements on the table. Jon immediately opens fire with his artillery and an infantry unit on the tanks. Ian's MGs on the ridge have caused a lot of execution, but taken some stick, too.

In spite of heavy losses, Richard presses on, bypassing Will's troops in the wood. Sort of like stormtrooper infiltration tactics almost.

The view from behind the German lines. Ian tries to ram his tanks right down the artillery throats, and takes some more hits. The tanks are close to being lost, but Jon chooses to fire his infantry at the ridge, ignoring the armour. He kills the MG unit, but he might have got this wrong, as we will see.

The wave of Germans bypasses the British artillery, and heads towards the objective. Will has withdrawn his men from the entrenchments in the wood, to attack the rear of the advancing Huns. Will now has some reinforcements. Inexplicably he puts one in Mariefort, and then deploys one in an open field.

The tanks lumber round Jon's open right flank, and enfilade his artillery. Ian brings up more men to reinforce the hill line. There's casualties piling up everywhere.

The Germans swarm round the artillery, and pour fire into the infantry in the open. The game is tipping in Richard's favour. If he can get troops into Mariefort before Will's last reinforcements arrive, he probably has a victory in the bag.

Will is forced to pivot his artillery, which takes them out of their entrenchments.

The armour finishes off the artillery, and prepares to roll up the German line. One of Jon's battalions has gone and hidden in the woods.

Will has lost the infantry in the open, but the troops from the wood are starting to have an effect.

The armour rumbles on. Their ability to move and fire makes them lethal. Jon is probably now regretting not finishing them off earlier. (For future games I will give them a penalty for firing when they move). Jon is gamely pressing on with the attack, despite now being outnumbered.

Corpses a-plenty around the village, and the defenders are taking damage.

Another German unit gone, but a chink of light for them. One of the British units on the hill has been destroyed. If only Jon can get a foothold.

Ian swings his armour round to deal with the potential attack on the hill.

Will's final reinforcements arrive, and his cavalry swing round to attack the artillery in the flank. The unit in the village has been destroyed, and Richard has taken control. It's three units aside, and only a few turns left.

On the other wing it is also very tense. Ian has one unit on the objective, and his tanks are hunting down Jon's infantry in the open. 

Some serious shooting does a lot of damage to Richard's troops in the open. There are red dice behind those German guns by mistake.

Two more bursts of fire, and the Germans are down to one unit in the village. But is it too little, too late?

Ian withdraws his infantry out of range of Jon's men from the woods. His tanks have destroyed the other German infantry. Victory is within his grasp, then Jon hits the armour with a 6, giving him the last 3 hits he needs to destroy them.

Last turn on the Mariefort flank, and Will just can't muster enough firepower to evict the occupants. A victory to the Germans.

With the last move of the game, Jon storms his weakened troops up onto the ridge, to dispute ownership. Ian and Jon have fought a very bloody draw.

So, over all, a winning drawn to the Germans. Holding both objectives was the victory conditions for both sides, leaving the Germans agonizingly short of total victory.

Thoughts? Well, the rules continue to give a quick and sometimes frustrating game. They are improved by using the squares - in my opinion - and work well for a video moderated game. More minor changes will be made, as noted in the narrative.

The scenarios gave a really close game for all players, and it could easily have gone either way with some simple changes of decision. Despite the simplicity of the combat system - and, let's face it, the completely random firing mechanism - the outcome looked to me to be driven by player decisions.

Playing another 3 - 5 turns (maybe less) could have changed the outcome completely, probably giving Ian victory, and denying Richard, so I think they're well balanced scenarios.

I don't know if Neil Thomas played all of the scenarios with all of the armies across all of the periods with all of the combinations when he prepared the book. There are 30 scenarios, across 9 periods, with 36 opposing army combinations for each scenario, so that's nearly 10,000 possible game combinations, so I'm thinking it's unlikely. Regardless of that, he seems to have a knack of balancing the scenarios nicely, even if he does admit to stealing some from C S Grant, and if you're going to nick stuff, you might as well nick from the best.

My final thoughts are that the double scenario game works well, and should be continued with. My main challenge is pairing scenarios in a way that will work and look plausible. NT has quite a few involving river crossings, but not all of the rivers line up from scenario to scenario, so there's a some work to be done there, I guess.

And if you were interested, here's some shots from the two corner cameras:

And I found that other mini tripod this morning, too.