Sicily 1943 : Chain of Command

Having packed away the SYW I moved (metaphorically) to Sicily. Jon was interested to see if CoC would work as a remote game and to refresh his knowledges of the rules now updated into version 2 since he last played. Whilst most of my collections have been built broadly around Bolt Action I have gradually been adding bits and pieces to allow them to work across Chain of Command as well.

With the main point of the game being a semi tutorial on Chain of Command 2, I kept things reasonably simple (is that possible with CoC) we would play the flank scenario with a strengthened American infantry platoon seeking to capture an objective from a small Fallschirmjager platoon.

I had thought about some of the challenges of playing CoC remotely, visibility is the greatest problem so amongst other things I built some small flags to help manage the patrol phase and identify jump off points when the battle started. I would also keep the force morale sheets at my end. Anyway a couple of shots of the action……

The Americans had a split deployment but the majority of the force deployed on this high ground using the small orchard and shed as cover. We agreed that the Sicilian stone walls should be hard cover and if you were tactical and staying still/not shooting you would be hidden. This rule needed a bit of thought as the Americans get their move a shoot rule as well, it made everybody quite hard to kill. But I can’t see the stones walls as anything other than hard cover really. The objective which I placed inthe centre of the table can be seen at the bottom of the hill. Blue flags represent the US jump off points. The German paratroopers are in the village. I purposely placed the buildings to have very limited fire potential to discourage the Germans from going in the buildings. I also avoid vehicles for this battle.

The US have a .30 cal machine to support which with its entrenchments has set up on the road.

The Americans also had a flank JOP but the first unit to arrive from their got hammered really quickly

German paratroopers in the orchard supported by a 50cm mortar, pushing out a lot of lead, but also taking a lot of casualties.

As to be expected a fire fight ensued, both sides taking hits with Junior leaders going down. The Americans at one point were forced to get one of their senior leaders to join the MMG team who were the. Promoted forced to flee the table, basing their morale by minus 3!

Eventually the Germans were being whittled down, but with the American morale down to 4 we instigated the ticking clock, the Americans rushed forward their Bazooka team to capture the objective and despite the germans pouring fire on them they managed to hold on till eventually the game ended.

Firstly it was nice to get the Fallschirmjager out in the sun, they were last out fighting in the snow in Norway ! I wouldnt plan to play with them in CoC that often as they are beastly with their 2 xLMG teams per section. But it worked to make things simple for this game. The Americans worked fine although I noticed the CoC rules give the junior leaders carbines and mine have SMG’s oh well, I do have some more Americans to make some time ? The rules worked pretty well remotely, visibility is the key and you are never (without massive expenditure ?) going to get the perfect camera angle. You need to try and avoid too many hidden areas if you can. I’m sure we will be playing again when we get a chance.

A bit of painting this week and with the First battle of Newbury 1643 on the table I thought I would paint up another ECW unit, nothing complicated and following the same approach as usual. But doing one unit every now and then seems to gradually build up the collection with much fuss. I might try and blitz the Scottish army at some point.

That’s it for now I’m off for a cuppa before we play Newbury so another post sometime over the weekend I guess.

Thanks as always Matt ❤️