Falaise Gap - Part III

The "Attack" orders I issued to the units under my command were simple, and effectively amounted to "Move east", through St. Lambert for the units in the north, and over the middle bridge for those in the south; I was determined to avoid the hornets nest of Chambois as much as I could.  In the previous day's play test, the Canadians in St. Lambert had given a very good account of themselves, and prevented any German armour from passing their, while the Poles in Chambois overextended themselves in trying to close off the open plain to their north; we also hadn't figured out the correct way to represent the powerful American artillery support. Knowing this last point would be rectified on the actual day, I was determined to assault St. Lambert with as great as force as possible.

My advance in the north got off to a rocky start, as I hadn't even got within sight of the enemy when Paul successfully rolled for a P-47 flight, which proceeded to take out my SP 20 mm AA platoon, plus a platoon of mounted Panzer Grenadiers.  However, Paul had deployed the Canadians ultra-defensively, with essentially everybody deployed within the village, rather than around it, which meant he essentially gave up the chance of inflicting any casualties as I approached the village, even when my infantry waded across the shoulder-deep river.  As a result, I was able to assault the village pretty well much at leisure: the first assault went in on turn 6, and I had completely cleared both sectors by turn 8.

German troops surrendering to the Canadian South Alberta Regiment in St. Lambert, 19 August 1944. These roles would be reversed the next day in our re-fight.

My southern advance was both more cautious, and less successful.  I attempted to utilise what cover there was as much as I could, but I was in a bit of Scylla and Charybdis situation - the cover was arranged in such a way that the more I minimised my exposure to the artillery spotters in Chambois, the more I exposed myself to the rather numerous 17-pdr-equipped Fireflies and Achilles platoons in its environs (the Poles had more 17-pdr equipped tanks and tank destroyers than I had tanks in total...).  Slowly, but surely, my casualties mounted, and I had almost nothing to show for it in exchange.  The only tank platoons to make it successfully across the bridge were two stands of Panthers, and these were promptly knocked out, one by artillery fire of all things (needing two rolls of 11 or more on two dice; not great odds to be sure, but when you have four full battalions of artillery at your disposal, why not?).

Thus by the end of 6th turn my combined 116th Panzer Division - 12th SS Panzer Division battle group, which together comprised just a single SH "battalion" of 17 stands, had lost 9 stands, including all their armour and mechanised assets, and were forced to retreat with a morale check result of 4.  Bereft of armour, my following up infantry units looked like they were going to have a hard time of it traversing the same route. As a result, Paul decided it was time to block off the southern half of the table completely, by moving his two Polish battalions north.  The 10th Dragoons, a mechanised battalion, drove out of Chambois, on the left (west), while to their east was the 24th Lancers; each had a company of Achilles tank destroyers from the 1st Polish Antitank Battalion in support.

The 24th Lancers move out into the open plain. Excuse the crappy photo - I discovered my camera was broken, and will have to be replaced; this is one of the few pictures I took that was even semi-useful.; most of the rest were just blurs...

In our test game Rhys has similarly decided the Poles should move out into the open, and, spurred by the knowledge he had just two turns' worth of fuel, moved as far out as possible. This left his more western unit rather exposed to attacks from the following up German infantry, which, although without tanks, did have the AT gun and StuG platoons to assist them, so were not entirely helpless at long range.  And so it was great interest that I watched Paul carry out exactly the same manoeuvre...

On the upside (from the Allied point of view), Paul's movement meant my northern Panzer unit, severely weakened from the assault of St Lambert, and which had just begun to move eastwards, would find itself confronted with a mass of armour whose guns covered most of the northern section of the plain, with precious few opportunities to hide. Sure enough, by turn 11, they had taken enough casualties to force a morale check, with however, they passed...

The downside, as Paul soon discovered, was that by moving not only his 24th Lancers as far north as possible, but also his 10th Dragoons, the Dragoons were no longer being effectively supported by the Americans still in Chambois.  My infantry, plus their limited, but effective support units (including one stand of 88s that did sterling service once it had unlimbered by St. Lambert) eventually (on turn 12) eliminated enough units to force a moral check on the Dragoons, which they promptly failed in the most horrible manner, and disintegrated, leaving the 24th Lancers essentially without infantry support, and suddenly very anxious to retreat back from where they came, opening up the route east. If the Dragoons had undertaken a more limited advance, I doubt I could have picked them off in the manner I did.

Falaise Gap - Part II

Rhys provided all the forces, as he had just enough to pretty well much do the whole lot by himself.  Getting information on the Allies was easy enough, but not so for the Germans, since these were for the most part a rag-tag collection of "units" in retreat, with even their commanders having little idea at the time how many men or pieces of equipment they had, and in case, many of them didn't live to fill out any sort of post-battle report...

The Allies on the east half of the table, who would be commanded on the day by Paul Reynolds, amounted to 688 points under Keith McNelly's scenario system, not counting the 1/6 chance each turn of receiving air support.  We omitted one of the Polish battalions that in real-life was defending Chambois, the (Polish) 10th Mounted Rifles, partly because we figured that something must have been guarding the area to the south, which we were not portraying, but mostly because we couldn't figure out how we could possibly fit four battalions into such a small area on the table!

Above: Cromwell IVs of the 10th Mounted rifles in action near Falaise (photo taken from here).  Note how open the ground is here in comparison with what the were fighting over a month before in the campaign. It must be said that Cromwell IVs are not exactly the most capable of weapons systems in Spearhead, so their absence from the table was not sorely missed...

The Poles around Coudehard and on Mont Ormel amounted to 778 points; again, not counting the 1/6 chance each turn of that they would receive air support (so it was potentially possible to have more than one air model on table at a time). We let them deploy just a little bit further south than they were in real life, because we didn't have quite enough of the northern end of the hill modelled on our table as it turned out.  These would be commanded by Rhys on the day.

Above: the view as it is now from the war memorial and museum on Mont Ormel, looking west toward the Dives. Public domain image by Jacques Wiacek.

The Germans attacking Mont Ormel from the east and north totalled 750 points, but were split into two waves, with the northern force (9th SS Panzer) only starting to arrive from the 8th turn, and thus would have a harder job of it than their points count would initially suggest.  These would be commanded by Peter Page on the day. Also taking on the Poles here, attacking from the west, were 396 points of veteran paratroopers and regular infantry; these were commanded by Jon Palmer, whom I had never met before; he turned up with a box of his gear for us to have a look at, and when he opened it it, I saw the largest collection of Russian WW2 lead I have ever seen - an entire 1:300th Tank Brigade, modelled at 1:1 scale! That would equate to a complete Tank Army at Spearhead scale...

Above are shown the on-table positions of the various "battalion" HQs, or, for off-table ones, their entry points: yellow for Axis and red for Allied, along with their turn of entry for those starting off-table.  I say "battalion" in quotes, because for the Germans, in many cases these represented the remnants of entire divisions, or in some cases, two divisions...

Play started at 10 am "real life", since Peter and Paul had to drive up from Wellington, representing daybreak, 20 August 1944.  After about half an hour going through the scenario and any little rules (e.g. air support, lack of counter battery assets, and low fuel stocks) we started the first turn, with Peter's 2nd SS getting immediately up and personal with the Strzelcy podhalańscy (Podhale Rifles) on the southeastern slopes of Mont Ormel. Peter was no doubt hoping to avoid this:

Above: the aftermath of the German assaults on Mont Ormel (public domain image from the Polish Ministry of Information).

Falaise Gap - Part I

It's been a long time since I had a game of anything; too busy at work.  But this year I'm at least having some sort of summer holiday - or to be more exact, a winter holiday, since I'm spending it in New Zealand.  I've taken a week off from staying at my parents' place in Christchurch to move north up to Palmerston North to spend some time gaming with my oft-time partner in testing gaming systems beyond their design limitations, Rhys Batchelor.

And since it's August, Rhys's suggestion of replaying something set in Normandy was particularly apt, suggesting the main action at the Falaise Gap, 20 August 1944.  Now this is a somewhat larger action than Spearhead is normally played, but not greatly so, and in any case, we were roping in three other gamers to help move the lead around.  It took the two us two complete days to put the scenario together, including setting up the table, preparing some extra scenery, and play-testing one half of the field to see how it all looked. The last part was far more organised than we are wont to be, but as it turned out, was time  usefully spent.

Here's the scenario description I sent out to our other players last night:

Background: the Falaise gap, 20th August 1944.

Reeling from defeat in the west, the remnants of the German 7th army are trying to escape east, as powerful Allied forces threaten them from both north and south   Fortunately however, Allied command friction has meant that their path eastwards has not been cut completely.  Only a small force of Poles stands between them and the Seine: the Polish 1st Armoured division.  Are they up to the task of blocking the 7th Army’s desperate retreat?

Scenario description:

The table is 2400 x 1200 mm, representing the most important 9.6 x 4.8 km of the action, encompassing St. Lambert and Chambois to the east, and an all-important crossing of the river Dives between them, along with Mont Ormel in the east, also prosaically known as "Hill 262".

The bulk of the 1st Polish Armoured Division is on table. One battle group, consisting of two battalions, the 10th Polish Dragoons and the 24th Polish Lancers, is deployed around Chambois.  Unfortunately, each battalion has only have enough fuel left for two turns’s of Advance orders (movement under Defend orders is not restricted).  With this battle group is the 2nd Battalion of the American 359th Infantry.  This unit may not undertake any Attack orders whatsoever, but has powerful artillery support to aid the defence of Chambois.  To the north, a small force of Canadians hangs on to their beleaguered position in St. Lambert.  They too many not undertake any Attack orders, having exhausted themselves during the night trying to prevent Axis units crossing the bridge leading west over the river Dives from the southern half of the village.

The majority of the Polish force has moved out from Chambois overnight and is now deployed around Mont Ormel, 5 km northeast of Chambois. Facing east are the 2nd Podhalian Rifles. Facing north are the 9th Polish Rifles, and between them is the 1st Polish Armoured Regiment. Facing west, and deployed around the village of Coudehard, are the 8th Polish Rifles, and south of them, also facing west, is the 2nd Polish Armoured Regiment. Enough supplies have been paradropped over the night to allow the Armoured Regiments to undertake two turns of Advance orders each; while the three Rifle Battalions have unrestricted numbers of Advance moves.

Certain German units have made it across the river Dives in the night, and are now positioned between Chamois and Mont Ormel.  The bulk of these detachments come from the veteran 3rd Fallschirmjäger Division, organised into three small commands, plus remnants remnants of the 353 Infantry Division as a fourth manoeuvre unit.  Still on the west side of the Dives, approaching St. Lambert, are the remnants of the 2nd Panzer Division and 10th SS Panzer Division, amounting to little more than a battalion’s worth of effectives, while further south are the remnants of the 116th Panzer Division and 12th SS Panzer Division, also amounting to little more than a battalion’s worth of effectives.  To their rear are the remnants of 5 infantry divisions, the 84th, 276th, 277th, 326th, and 363rd, which will make on to the field of battle over the course of the day.

To assist the 7th Army in breaking out to the west, Feldmarshal Walter Model has ordered two combat formations outside the gap back into the fray.  The 2nd SS Panzer Division, down to barely 20 tanks, and assisted by the badly-depleted 362 Infantry Division, is in position to assault Mont Ormel from the east, while to the north, what is left of the 9th SS Panzer Division, is awaiting fuel before starting off southwards towards Hill 262.

The table was 1200 by 2400 mm, the biggest we could fit into his dining room space, which equates to a 9.6 by 4.8 km slice of the battlefield, and was just enough to cover all the important bits, once it had been rotated slightly off a strictly east-west axis.

The west side of the board is the high ground that the Germans have to surmount in order to escape; the north is much more strongly held than the south.  The centre is flat open country, lacking the bocage seen in the Cotentin peninsula.  The east is is also flat, but has the river Dives meandering northwards; small enough to be crossed by determined infantry, but deep enough to stop vehicles, save at three bridges.  One, leading into Chambois, is strongly held by the Americans and Poles, and thus not likely to be of any use to the Germans.  Another leads directly into St. Lambert, but can be taken with effort, as the Canadian defenders are weak.  The middle bridge is not physically blocked, but is nonetheless overlooked by the American artillery observers stationed in Chambois, so crossing it will not be without its hazards...

An introduction to "To the Strongest!" - Part 2

Following on from the previous battle, next up was 1st-century Gauls versus Roamn, with me taking the Romans this time.  If I remember correctly, I had a single standard-size (i.e. two hit) raw legionary unit, six average legionary units, and four veteran units that were only half-sized - i.e. single-hit units.  There were a couple of allied cavalry units, some camp-guards (armed servants), and a single unit of archers.  The Gauls had three units of cavalry, and 8 blocks of infantry warriors, who counted as "deep" and thus had 3 hits each; there was probably a unit of youths hanging at the rear who played no effective pat in the clash.

The set-up is as on the right, with "my" lads on the left; Aaron supplied all the figures for this game, however.  Single trees are just for show, but squares with two trees counted as woods and therefore rough going, as did the stream on my right. I figured my right was the strongest of my three commands, although when it came to the crunch it didn't quite perform as well as expected...  Aaron had his two right horse units in a single small command, with the rest of the army evenly split between two large commands. All my generals were "detached" (like Lost Battles "commanders") while his were "attached" (like Lost Battles "leaders").

"To the Strongest!", in addition to generals, also has "heroes".  I was very sceptical about these when I first looked at the rules, but they are actually a really good feature. A "hero" costs one point, and allows a single missed attack roll to be rerolled. That's it. A really good way of distinguishing two units from one-another, without the big difference implied by making one of them raw or vetreran, is to give the better unit a hero, as it should given them a slight edge in the attack.  One of the biggest problems with Lost Battles is the massive difference in effectiveness between the three grades of troops, as opposed to the entirely accurate difference in effectiveness between the grades of troops: in Lost Battles you have three and only three levels, so the "army lists" are chock-full of dodges like grading two historically identical "units" differently in an attempt to "average out" their effectiveness away from what a single grading would amount too, which really undermines the whole "model". 

The fight was pretty much a straight-up affair, with the main lines marching forward, and getting on with it. Romans get a definite advantage over other foot with their "heavy throwing weapons" but it's not like as if they are carrying grenades like the equivalent feature in Basic Impetus (written by an Italian, note!), so it's a decent bit of chrome without being overbearing.  It didn't help them much against the Macedonians in the previous game, note!  Also not helping the Gallic cause in this game was Aaron's complete inability to ally any hits.  I probably rallied half a dozen hits over the course of the two games, maybe more, and I don't recall Aaron managing to rally a single hit.  Sometimes Fortune just isn't with you...  Rallying itself is one of those inetresting "decision points" that makes a good game - do you try and rally a hit, or do you try and hit the enemy with your unit's first - and quite possibly only - activation?  Sometimes it's an easy choice, but certainly not at other times.

In this game, I deployed a front line of two-hit legionary units, with the one-hit veterans in reserve. When the front unit took a hit and became disordered, I had a choice between trying an rallying it, or executing a line replacement, and bringing up my fresh veterans, and this worked quite well; it was certainly a flexibility the Gauls didn't have. To the right you can see how a veteran unit has passed through the larger average unit, with general, to take up the lead position - presumably because it still had its pila in hand (which you get to use a single time).  Talking of one-shot weapons, the only real book-keeping involves ammo.  Missile troops do have an amunition supply, so they need to carry around some small chits representing this.  On the other hand, it's handled quite well, so it didn't worry me too much.

The game was quite bloody, and although the Romans definitely had the upper hand, Aaron was in with a chance even at the end.  To the right is the remnants of Aaron's right wing, or the infantry component lestways; the horse having galloped off into the distance trying to take out my own cavalry, who put up some fantastically stubborn resistence.  As you can see, this Gallic unit has not only a legionary unit to their front, urged on by a general, but the unit next in line had broken, and they are about to be rolled up by the victorious unit there taking them in the flank.  As it happened, the Gallic force broke before this combat could be resolved.

I was really impressed by the rules - with the caveat that they are very much a work-in-practice.  Simon Miller is by all accounts a "standard gamer" who, like many of us, are questing for their Holy Grail of games, and, again, like many of us, has decided to write his own set because nothing he finds is good enough. But unlike many of us, he has actually succeeded in putting them into a shape suitable for wider desemination.  But boy, does he need an editor!

Some things are simply sloppy English.  Here's typical example in an passage suppsoed to illustrate play: "the Roman player decides that he must attempt to rally".  This is oxymoronic - either "must" or "decides" needs to be replaced with something else; in this case, presumably, "must" should be something like "would be wise to".  But in other places, there are plain-and-simple rules contradictions, like how under the "Senior generals" section it says, quite explicitly,  that a Senior general must have a "command" (and thus they are no different from other generals in this regard), but under the section "The order of battle", it equally explicitly says a Senior general need not have a command of their own!

Once the worst of these bugs are ironed out, I think "To the Strongest!" could become a very well-rounded system indeed.

An introduction to "To the Strongest!" - Part 1

Aaron had a day's break from the family last week, so I was able to head down to his place for a couple of games, since I was also owed a couple of off work en lieu.  I usually let him decide what we are going to play, and rather fittingly given the title of my blog, he chose Simon Miller's "To the Strongest!".  This an ancients set that neither of us have played before, and is currently available as a pdf downlaod for ten quid; I understand it will be made available as a printed item when it is more fully developed.

Aaron's tried to get me interested in several "new" ancients rules over the past  or so years, but none have really taken my fancy, so I was very pleasently surprised by "To the Strongest!" - there are a lot good things to be said about this rule set.

We played a couple of games, and since Aaron has already blogged about them individually, you should probably read his accounts too; I'll provide links as we go.  First up was a Macedonian-Polybian Roman stoush. We used my Macedonian pike blcoks, but all the other troops we Aaron's; the reasons for which will become clear soon.  The rules have army lists, and given there is a points system that, unlike Lost Battles for example, is not tied into the game mechanics, I assume the eventual goal is to have the rules in a suitable shape for competition play.  We each had 133 points to play with, which didn't allow for a lot of choice, since the army list minmums were very close to that - this is no bad thing, IMO, especially for an introductory battle.

My army turned out to have 5 pike blocks, of which one was veteran, so I was looking at a scale of something like 4000 men for a "deep" unit; the game has no fixed scale in terms of numbers of men represented per figure and/or base, so is similar to Lost Battles in this respect.

I also had two units of normal "javelin"-armed cavalry (I'm a bit dubious about how efficacious these guys should be at shooting... but that's an army list issue as opposed to a rules issue), and one of light Tarantines; a single unit of Thracian infantry, two units of light javelinmen, and one of Cretan archers, who counted as veterans. There were also three camp bases, the maximum allowed.  I set up as shown right, with me on the left. Nothing fancy: the usual pike centre, with lights on the flanks, except that my javelinmen were consigned to baggage guard duty rather than as skirmishers - wisely as it turned out...

The system is grid-based, again, like Lost Battles, but finer grained - we had a 12 by 8 grid.  I think this is a very decent level of granularity for the forces we had.  You can deploy in the rear two rows of squares ("boxes"), but not in the most extreme flank column of squares, giving a 10 by 2 deplyment area.  Each square, or box, can be occupied by only two unts, only one of which may be "deep" (e.g. pike blocks).  One unit must be forward, and one back. Ostensibly, the rules don't care how your units are based, but in fact there is one important issue here. Because the squares are well, square, they are in fact implicitly designed for units that are based wider than they are deep, and ideally at least as twice as wide as they are deep.  My pike blocks, like all my Hellenistic units, are on square bases, so you can only get one of them in a box (unless using truly giant boxes, 18 cm acoss, in which case two could be put together side-by-side as a single unit; Aaron's boxes were 12 cm across, I thnk, or posibly 10; my units are on 8 cm square bases).

Aaron's Romans were a typical "Consular" army with four legions deployed in the usual velites, hastati, principes, triarii formation.  As was completely normal for a 2nd century Macedonian-Roman encounter, the Romans had the slight edge in cavalry numbers (there was no difference on quality).  Deployment is by commands, with each side deploying one command, and then the other side, and back to teh first side, and repeat.  The side with the lowest "scouting" strength has to deploy their first command first. All this was reasonably standard, and completely fine with me. 

The system is a points activation system, which is used both for movement and combat; melee as opposed to missile attacks are resolved ssentially as if attempts to move into an enemy-held box, so if you win, and the result is no enemy in the attacked box, you must perforce advance into it. (I wonder if there is an axception if you are defending a terrain feature, or fortifications?  Will have to look that up, sinvce ot didn't come up in our battles.)  Unlike DBM, where the number of activation attempts is variable, but the chnace of sucess is not, in To the Strongest! there is an element of chance to the activation process in the sense of you are not sure whether an acitvation will suceed or not, closer to the WAB system I undertsand, but nowhere near as random, as there is only a base one in 10 chance of fluffing each units's initial activation, and even that can be re-rolled if you have a general with the unit.

The really interesting wrinkle is that units can be activated multiple times, but each activation score must be higher than the previous one for the unit that turn, and that a single failed attempt will mean no more actvation attempts are possible for any other units in the command that turn (units are organised into commands under generals, pretty well just like in DBM). This system works extremely well given how simple it is.  One downside is you need to keep track of the command "rolls" (or card pulls if you are using cards, or chits pulls if you are using a container full of chits numberd 1 through 10, like we were), but this only needs to be done for a single comamnd at a time, so isn't that bad at all.  The system introduces a very decent fog-of-war aspect, while simultaneously opening a lot of player-input decision points (and therefor chances for skill) that don't acyually need agonizing over too much, sok eeping things moving.  While the game certainly doesn't play as fast as DBA, it is definitely much faster than DBM, and that's just on an inital game; I can imagine it going very quickly indeed with a bit more practice.

The grid system obviously constrains movement, put perhaps not as much as might be anticipated; since diagonal moves are rather easy to pull off. Indeed, they might be too common, although I'd have to play more before judging this. For example we had the following situation in our first game as shown to the left.  My veteran pike (on the right of my line) had been hanging back in case of enemy horse started engaging in some smart-arse stuff on my right.  They duly moved wide, leavng nothing in front of them. So I moved up to get them into action with the enemy foot rather than have my best troops stare at empty ground all day. They then, with another activation attacked the left Roman legion, rolled over its hastatii, and then, with another activation,  drove off the velites who had just retired behind them.  This meant I had to enter the now-vacant square - moving diagonally to do so, putting them immediatly ahead of pikeblockk thay had just come up to support, as shown above right.  I'm unsure if this is something that is "clearly wrong" or in fact something "perfectly acceptable", because we just don't really know enough about the dynamics of pike combat to judge. On the one hand we get commnets about unweildy pike formations, but on the other hand we get also comments about how e.g. Eumenes' Argyraspides somehow rolled up pretty well much an entire phalanx by themselves.

The system's handling of Polybian Romans - line relief and all that - was clearly central to how ths game panned out, and we were both not quite convinced here, especially in comparison to how our second game ("Marian" Romans versus Gauls) played.  The problem was that in this game all the Roman infanty units were "single hit" units - a single successful enemy attack, and they were gone, so there was no time (or need) to swap lines at any point: the Roman hastatii and principes either were at full strength or dead, with no halfway house (DBM has the same problem, of course).  In comparison, the Macedonian pike blocks took three hits each to break. So you could disorder them with one hit, which made them less able to inflict damage, but if you didn't inflict further hits, they would eventually "rally" their hits, and you would be back to square one.  Only you would have probaby lost some Roman units completely in the process, so it was sort of the opposite of what we wanted to see, which was Romans more slowly soaking up hits.  My own AoT rules are rather similar, except because the number of hits a unit can take is at least twice as many as in "To the Strongest",  as a Roman you actually get a chance to survive any initial damage...

During the game the Roman left flank did good work, but couldn't capitalise on their success, while  the pikes pretty-well much steam-rolled the legions in front of them.  But it was a cracking game, so I very much looked forward to the second round!