Chris has moved on to D-Dayy with NQM, looking at the role of the Northants Yeomanry.
Tuesday last week we had a first go at it. This is Sword beach. I had the Commando brigade on the left, Steve had everyone else on the right. Chris' account of the game is here. There was a lot of stuff about, still in the process of being sorted.
My job was to capture a small port and a major concrete defence position. I had infantry and a Centaur armoured unit, supported by naval gunnery.
I should have done the port first, but the numbers for me attacking a fortification with light troops and a small amount of armour aren't great. To have any chance of succeeding you need to go in with everything you have from as many hexes as possible and even then you are still crossing your fingers that you get a hit or two, and then you need to win the post combat outcome roll. Can't afford to do this after losing some bases in a sideshow.
I did get a hit with the naval guns, and thought I'd got enough to turn the flank of the position, although I'd misunderstood the nature of the position. The single point of entry onto the beach head meant that I had to wait a turn or two to get enough ashore to make it worth attacking. I don't know how D-Day like this is, but it is what you need to do in NQM when attacking defences.
Phil did his normal wait and see trick, then skipped out once I'd moved into position. I do find this annoying, and the requirement to request an IGI-UGO roll off rather than actually have an initiative type of move priority is a weakness of the system, in my opinion (Chis does not agree, but this is my blog). Anyhow, I overran half the position, and was about to go for the big one when we broke for tea. coffee and birthday nibbles for Chris.
Chris will have got a lot out of this run through. He needs a load of specific tweaks for D-Day, I suspect, to make it work , especially as he wants to do a 10 minute game for Partizan. The central issue here is the lightweight nature of the attackers against heavy entrenched defenders. Light troops attacking Heavy need a 6 to get a hit. The tank was a Medium, hitting on a 5,6. The odds of getting a hit are therefore low. With four infantry bases I've got a 2/3rds chance of inflicting a single hit, and 1/3rd chance from the armour. Take them all together and I can expect a single hit. And - get this - the infantry units only get it if they roll a 6 which means they are out of ammunition. The post combat outcome is a d6 + the differential in hits. So I'm relying on a heavy position firing at light missing completely (chances 1 in 6), and if it does hit, it may well cause more than one hit - possibly four. So the chances are that we will lose the Post Combat Outcome. With no Log off the transports if the Commandos don't win in round one they have a good chance of not having enough ammo to attack again.
We didn't play this through to conclusion, so it might have all turned out fine, but I wouldn't have put money on me to win this one.
Comments
Post a Comment