Being Set Up

The Ronssoy 1918 game is the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society's display game for this year, so you'll be seeing it at Campaign and Partizan. This requires it to be stored in a transportable box and put up and taken down in half an hour for each. I do a fair amount of prep to make sure this can be done and to double check that I've covered everything. The terrain board is a mite more complicated than my usual games and it is using existing game components that'll go back to everyday use afterwards so nothing is glued down permanently. After I'd sorted the layout I documented it on a grid overlaying the original trench map:

The black chevrons are trench sections. The blue crosses show "higher ground", the green areas are woods, and the light brown have concentrations of buildings. The "explosions" mark the limits of the opening barrages, and the circles with letters are specific buildings to be placed in those locations. Pre-cut stretches of felt road are marked round the edge A, B, C etc. I & II are MG posts. Under the cloth are foam sections, which are labelled, but I forgot to document the exact layout.

To try out the set up I boxed it all up (one crate!) as Phil said he had a clear table and I could practice setting it back up and then we could play it for this week's game.

Well, of course, his table wasn't clear, so we had half an hour clearing all sorts of wargaming paraphernalia into his spare room before I could start. By that time Tm had arrived, and once I'd sorted the foam out he took the trenches and buildings boxes and tried to follow the plan whilst I laid out the roads and fretted that I'd got the hills wrong (I had, but that's because the map was missing a blue cross).

It took the two of us about 30 minutes, including putting out the figures. Well pleased with that.

I've also tidied up some processes and followed up on issues identified in the last run through. I bought a load of coloured d6/d8s so I have pairs to randomise German battery fire. I've increased the "Drop Short" dice from eight to twelve, and I've made time cards to keep track of what is happening:

I ended up with seven pairs of dice as the sets I bought didn't have a yellow d6. The cards are flipped every turn and move the game clock 20 minutes per card.

Hopefully you can also see that I've made little standees highlighting key locations. For this game Tim moved the Brits, mostly, and Phil rolled the artillery and German dice.

The revised artillery dice made things a bit more difficult for the attackers, and I will scale back the "Drop Short" affects. As you can see, the Royal West Kents in the centre got caught by both their own and German artillery fire. Some fire also fell in the wood.

This tipped the odds in the favour of the defenders. Tim would need very good Close Assault rolls to take the position.

 6am. Still dark and rainy. The attack went in.

More artillery fire fell on the attacking troops, and Tim rolled poorly. The assaulting RWK company was effectively wiped out, and were remove from the table. Whilst there was better news to their right, the British have lost the barrage at this point of the line. The German are now unpinned, and are fighting back strongly.

In the next turn or two the position was taken as the tanks came up, and it was surrounded on three sides. However, it had slowed the British down considerably, and they were behind their projected timeline. What's more, the sun was coming up, meaning the defending MGs had better fields of fire.

7am and the barrage has shifted. I put it one square too far forward, as you can see from the map above. The 6th Northants are in position, but the Royal Fusiliers are behind, due to the fierce fighting on the edge of the village.

Tim let the Northants go anyway, and in fact they set off before their start time. Their right flank was immediately enfiladed in the open by a couple of MGs, which held them up.

Tim went for the VC option, and was successful. This was a very satisfactory moment for me, as this is the first time this has happened in the game, and it is exactly what happened historically. Three cheers of L/Cpl Lewis!!

Things were moving along, but not exactly to plan. The Northants found some defenders in the wood, but took two bites at evicting them, as they weren't Pinned. Whilst they were driven out of their positions they did not surrender. 

We finished about then, after about 75 minutes of game time. The game had another four or five planned turns to run, but it was time to break and I needed to take the game down and pack it. That took about 30 minutes too, so that was a win from the evening as well.

That's it in final form now, I think, for the game. I need to produce one or two more playing aids, and make a slight revision to the QRS. I'm also working on a pop-up banner to go with the game:

Plus I need to do an A Frame to go on the table with key info on it.

So, nearly there, but not quite.