Battle of the Hedgerows

A small unit action was arranged last night for KGN at Ilchester, a continuation of the learning excercise to get familiar and confident in handling the game mechanisms. Its working ! Its also a lot of fun watching both teams working the problem, instead of being on one side or the other. I'm alsogetting positive feedback from the players as well.

The US army was represented by  John and Mike, 2 platoons, 50 cal team,Battlegroup HQ with a jeep, and an Observer team with a jeep. 2 offboard 81mm mortars.

The Wehrmacht was represented by old hand Steve, reinforced infantry platoon, Observer team and a Battle group HQ with schwimwagen . 2 offboard 81mm mortars.

The US were attacking across the table, probing the 'line'and pushing on if possible, eliminating German resistance where necessary. All figures were deployed on the table, last game any troops in ambush were not deployed. This gave a somewhat surreal experience for the US as nothing seemed to be happening. Not true this game.

US Battlegroup Command comes on to watch the action from the cover of a cornfield. Not a good idea as he parked in front of a MG42, in sight of the German observer in the windmill. After losing his staff officer, the team jumped over a hedge in front of another MG42 team. Take a morale chit and no rerolling of dice! An illustrative example of the high combat loses of inexperienced leaders in combat.

 The US forces developing their attack, which kind of stalled on the right, but was not able to draw support from this to develop their left flank attack.

 The US right flank finally starts to move - but loses a section and a half, as well as suffering the effects of the loss of the Battlegroup command, 2 dice giving 3 is a bad roll!, especially if done in the following turn as well!!

 The US left flank gets going, but is slowly running out of steam. The 50 cal has spotted and shreded the windmill, removing the observer from play

After 3 hours, the Germans start getting morale chits giving a total of 9 out of 12, whilst the US have 19 out of 27, and a marginal US victory.

Any lessons to be learned would be the importance of coordinating the actions of the infantry, and plenty of heavy weapons supporting the advance to contact, or allowing manoevre of infantry on the field free from enemy interference.