Off to the Western Front with NQM

I have been looking at the Northamptonshire Regiment during the Great War over the last few months. Previous posts have looked at the making of sandbags for trenches and the mass basing of trees for "blasted" woods. My medium term aim was to do a display game for the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society for our display stand this year. After my initial research I had more or less settled on the action in Trones Wood on the 16th July 1916. I had a couple of goes at trying to set it up on my table, but couldn't get it right for reasons I won't get into here. I then decided to look at actions in the 100 days, and settled on 18th Division's role in the Battle of Épehy in September 1918, on the way to the Hindenburg Line. The Division was tasked with capturing the village of Rossnoy, which covered the right flank of the more high profile advance undertaken by the Australians and Americans. I was able to find the 6th's War Diary on line, which includes the initial operational order as well as the unit's AAR. Maps have been more of an issue, but there are snippets of the official trench map on line and there's a sketch map in one of the formation memoirs.

I was still struggling with getting the playing area sorted out. I couldn't make it work with my hex cloth, so resorted to using 6" squares. Everything then became much more straightforward. It was easier to overlay the square grid on the contemporary maps. I resolved on 50 yards to a square, more or less, with one company to a square, made up of two bases (i.e. eight bases to a battalion). The game area has ended up being 4' x 6', or 8 squares by 12.

I made some rough notes on what needed changing from basic NQM, but carried most of what I wanted to do in my head. Then I ran it as this week's Monday Night Group game.

We had a full house, and I decided to run it as a semi-cooperative game, with Chris in overall command. As you can see it was a chance for me to put out my full Great War British Artillery Brigade. There's two more guns off to the left (I left the limbers in the box). This was one of the reasons I wanted an eight square base line. I put out blast spides to represent the allied side of the creeping barrage.

Here's the attacking Brigade. Front line was the Royal West Kents, on loan from the 55th Brigade. Next came the 2nd Bedfords, then the 6th Northants on the left and the 11th Royal Fusiliers on the right. At the back is the Brigade Mortar battery and some tanks. All the figures are Minifigs. The line was held overnight by a battalion from the 53rd brigade, but I decided not to model that.

We don't know much about the German dispositions, so I allocated them to various trench lines and buildings. A full strength German Regiment  is similar in size to a regular British brigade. Adding the extra battalion from the 55th to the attack made it 4 battalions taking on 3. That's tough. The British did have two tanks and superior artillery, however, as you can see above. 

The hex-side trench sections seem to work okay on squares.

There was a lot going on, and I forgot to take photos for the first half and hour or so. Here you can see the creeping barrage has made it to the edge of the village. Chris tried hard to hug the barrage, which enabled them to overrun the initial German positions. They did encounter some tough resistance, so in places they lost the barrage, and got caught in machine gun fire from the strong points on the left.

On the right you can see Brigade HQ holding a quick O group with the battalion commanders in the sunken road. He has brought up the trench mortar section and is deciding where to allocate it.

Here's a close up of the left hand end of the attack. The German company in the trenches is proving intractable. With no unit identifiers on the bases the British have got their attack lines mixed up. However, they have cleared the wood and taken a lot of prisoners.

The O group continues.

The second phase begins, as the barrage pivots to screen the MG posts to the left. The Northants and the Royal Fusiliers are now in action, storming a strongpoint.

I need to go and re-read the original briefing to make sure I have got this right. I may have the Northants and the RFs the wrong way round, as the Northants ended up fighting in the village.

One of the fortified buildings in the village was proving hard to crack. Luckily the armour had finally arrived.

The attackers had been caught in a crossfire from one of the other buildings. Losing the barrage was proving costly, but the Kents and Beds finally secured the main street.

And in the same turn the second strongpoint was captured, and the attack halted and consolidated on the position.

A similar outcome to the historical one, so that was pleasing. Everyone was engaged throughout and enjoyed themselves. I need to put a proper time line on the game. This should be possible from information I have on the creeping barrage and from the various orders and reports. I need to go and find the RWK War Diary and those for the other units if I can, and ask around some more for the trench map. They're supposedly on a Canadian University library website, but they wouldn't download when I tried.

I also need more spiders and unit labels, and my tanks need tidying up a bit and painting with 1918 recognition stripes.

And some explanatory notices for the edge of the table. Need them too.

And I have to codify a play sheet for what counts as Light/Medium/Heavy and why.

But that's a good start.