Sicily 1943 : Chain of Command

We thought we would try a different scenario this week with Chain of Command to see if it created a more mobile engagement. So back to Sicily……

We would be playing the ‘capture objective’ scenario from the rule book which runs length ways along the table, but we randomised which way the attack would come. In keeping with our learning curve we didn’t bring any vehicles, just infantry with some support.

Forgot to photo right at the start , but this shot after about three turns shows the situation. The Germans are attacking from the far end. The burning tiger tank is the objective, perhaps the last one on Sicily ? The patrol phase does give some mild entertainment and I think we might see this being used in bolt action games in the future as it avoids the sometimes linear nature of a battle when both sides enter form the baseline. The Americans were very lucky with their early command rolls and the whole force was deployed on table within about three turns. The rings obviously show the jump of points for the two forces.

The Germans have the advantage of numbers but it will be tough to approach the objective in the face of dug in American fire

Once on the table the Americans push right into the building and locate their MMG in the trees

The machine guns then draws massive fire from the enemy and the senior leader has to rescue it pulling it back. It does take some time for the Germans to get on the table so a number of the Americans sit in over watch waiting. The two sides exchange some long range fire but with limited effect.

As we are still learning the rules we weren’t quite sure how close combat would work. One of the German support teams is a unit of Fallschirmjager they seek to work their way under cover around the rocky outcrop and charge into assault the GU’s behind the wall. The Germans get a special hand grenade rule !

Lol , we went through the combat rules fairly carefully but it is pretty clear that an assault against an enemy behind a stone wall is not going to work ! To be honest this wasn’t helped by the Americans using a Chain of command dice to interrupt with a firing activation which added a couple of shock on the charging paratroopers. I don’t think we will see much close combat in the future other than very specific situations.

Having held the attack on the left the Americans emboldened push on the right to capture a German JOP.

But a second unit of Germans have attacked over the rocky terrain and the defenders on the left have been knocked out

We did make a couple of rule mistakes around here as we didn’t realise that once pinned a unit remains pinned even if shock is reduced until the end of the turn. In the distance the Germans can be seen running down the road towards the objective.

The American reserves had been brought across to bolster the defence, by now the German force morale had been hammered

Finally the German resolve breaks as their force morale reaches zero. A very spirited attempt to capture the objective buts as others have mentioned in previous posts assaulting is very difficult against a dug in defender. A fun battle although it did take quite a long time to get to a conclusion, we again learnt a lot about the rules and have agreed a couple of house tweaks to stop them becoming too competitively focussed. On reflection the key learning for me is not to try to recreate Bolt action type games using CoC. They are very different rules. That means the Sherman I am painting up is more likely to see action in Bolt action in the future 👍 next CoC in the dungeon we may try a smaller village battle to really force both sides to get mobile ?

The weather was nice again yesterday so we walked up our Penrith ‘Beacon Fell’ the views in the sunshine out to the Lake District were nice.

Thanks again for popping by, mainly painting this weekend

Matt 😀