Myself and Des have embarked on a new CoC PSC, and one that is very intriguing indeed. It is produced by PTO Games and you can pick up here from Wargames Vault https://www.wargamevault.com/product/151925/Crossroads-Closing-the-Gap. It is set in Normandy right at the end of the fighting there and in particular the 4th Canadian Armoured Division’s attempt to bottle up the German units retreating from the Falaise pocket. The campaign focuses on the actions around the village of St. Lambert-sur-Dive carried out by a battle group consisting of B Coy/Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and the tanks of C Sqdn/South Alberta Regt under the command of Major David Currie (who would win the VC for his leadership in this battle).
The German’s have a mixed force consisting of an infantry platoon that fights for the first 4 battles falling back after each one no matter the result who then hand over to a Fallschirmjager platoon who conduct the fighting in the village itself, both of these platoons also have the chance to pick up the odd panzer here and there too. The Canadians are limited to one platoon which receives only one limited amount of replacements inbetween the two halves of the campaign and they are also limited to the the 15 Sherman’s of the Alberta’s so if they somehow lose all of their tanks they don’t receive any more – they do also have a platoon of M10 Achilles on hand too though.
As usual I will be playing the Germans but unusually to me we are playing in 15mm. I’m going to go with some characters from my previous campaigns but splitting them into the two different units, so meet ze gang cos the herr are here…
Heer Zug Kommandant: Unterfeldwebel Hamann, 26, Bavarian, the company gambler and was a journalist.
Erste Gruppe (Black): Obergefreiter Schürrle, 22, from Pfalz, a city lad from Ludwigshaven.
Zweite Gruppe (White): Gefreiter Rösler, 22, Thuringian, a former gamekeeper.
Dritte Gruppe (Red): Obergefreiter Pogatetz, 21, An Austrian, from Graz, nicknamed ‘Mad Dog’.
Fallschirmjager Zug Kommandant: Leutenant Hitzlsperger (der Hammer), 23, Bavarian, former banker, he is tall and thin.
2nd in command: Unteroffizier Klopp. 26, Wurttemberger, a strapping bloke and former gamekeeper. Quite religious.
Erste Gruppe (Black): Unterfeldwebel Völler, 24, Hessian, Party member, model citizen and popular in the unit.
Zweite Gruppe (White): Obergefreiter Rumminigge, 21, Westfalian, country lad.
Dritte Gruppe (Red): Stabsgefreiter Krankl, 25, Another Austrian, a thin and pale city boy from Vienna.
We have already fought through the first two fights and I will be posting the write ups either later today or tomorrow.
Beckenbauer furiously tried to light his pipe after leaving the room containing Company HQ, when he failed for the fourth time he swore loudly and kicked out at the lamppost in front of him. After 1.Zug’s brilliant little action 2.Zug were supposed to have moved forwards to carry on the fight but they were caught moving up to the startline by a JaBo strike and the useless bastards had scattered all over the place so now it was up to his lads to attack once more. He had argued against it of course but 3.Zug were off doing something else and time was of the essence (plus him and the CO weren’t seeing eye to eye at the moment), so his protests weren’t too forceful. He knew the job needed doing and that they would have to do it, he just wanted to keep his lads out of harms way for a little longer.
As they were supposed to be resting, and due to the confusion around caused by the airstrike, the patrolling of the new area to attack hadn’t gone as well as it had previously and the Yankees had managed to secure a nice line centred on a house with good supporting positions to either flank that covered a large open expanse of ground in front of it. There was a nice covered approach to the left flank but that had been somewhat blocked off by a thick barbed wire obstacle. HQ had decided that the open terrain was probably well covered by hidden AT guns so was holding back the panzer support until the positions had been identified and neutralised, indeed the Old Man had stressed that this was the most important element of this attack. To compensate for this though he was being supported by a battery of 81mm mortars from the Support Company which he was hoping would help shoot his lads onto the enemy positions once they were identified and also the artillery would be shelling the American lines as well, also his men’s morale was still very good after their last victory.
Red dots are German JOP’s, Blue are American
My freshly made wire blocks the way!
He arrived back to the unit’s forming up area and called his NCO’s around him and they listened to his plan. As usual Beckenbauer would take 1. & 2. Gruppe forward in the attack whilst the ever ready Klopp would take control of the tripod mounted MG42 and the Adjutant would hold 3.Gruppe back as a reserve. The main attack was still going to be through the wood that extended along the left but instead of continuing through the wood they would cross the road once they reached the barbed wire and try and outflank the Ami’s position from the left. While they were doing this the heavy MG42 and the FOO would take any spotted enemy around the house and on the right under fire to keep them busy. 3.Gruppe would support where needed. Once all the NCO’s nodded that they were clear on their parts, Beckenbauer pulled his cap tightly down over his eyes and looked at his watch “Right, those lazy Mummy’s boys in the artillery should start up in 2 minutes, lets get moving. Good luck”.
The lads of 1.Zug move out again
The advance through the wood was going smoothly enough with both 1. & 2.Gruppe making their way steadily forward when all of a sudden a murderous fire erupted over on the right. From the sound of it, the Americans were doing the shooting which started up again as soon as it finished. Beckenbauer was nudged by Klinsmann ‘I hope Jurgen’s alright over there boss’. Klopp was alright, but the men manning the MMG definitely weren’t. Due to the poor patrolling earlier they had to move quite a way forward to take up a position from where they could take the enemy under fire. Unfortunately the enemy were already in place and waiting when they did so, unleashing a couple of murderous volleys that cut down 3 of the crew and made the remaining 2 run back towards their own lines. They were halted by the big Swabian Warrant officer who temporarily checked their progress but they were too shaken to convince that getting back into action was a good idea. As he was trying to sort the MG team out Klopp did notice the mortar observer moving forward on his left “Get those bastards on the right” he shouted across to him whilst thinking that maybe he should call for 3.Gruppe to come forward to help out. Unfortunately, whilst he was thus distracted, the MG gunners slipped away to the rear their morale completely shattered.
The Amis wait on the right
The survivors of the MMG team make for the rear
The sound of incoming mortars were very soon filling the air but it was the sound of the enemy’s and not the German’s. The barrage fell across the road quite near to where Beckenbauer had started to move 2.Gruppe over to try and take on the GI’s firing on the MMG, an idea he quickly changed when he saw the mortar rounds seemingly move closer “Jurgen, get your lads back here and follow 1.Gruppe around to the left” he bellowed over the crumping of the incoming rounds, “those damned mortars will get us soon if we stay here”. As they all moved back to the left another ripple of enemy fire burst out from the direction of the road which was quickly followed by the unmistakable sound of 2 MG42’s opening up in response. At about the same time the mortar barrage stopped and Beckenbauer heard another seemingly more intense round of firing from the Americans and a very feeble return volley from 1.Gruppe. Calling on everyone to follow him he charged forwards to the lane where he was met with a terrible scene. Breitner lay dead in the road and one half of his men lay dead or wounded around him with the survivors pinned by the nearest hedge whilst down the road the opposite hedge was bristling with GI’s who unleashed another volley. “Smoke!, Smoke!, get a grenade in there now!” but the nervous lad that threw it just about cleared the hedge barely covering the survivors who used the cover of it to quickly vacate the death trap they were in and head for the rear dragging their wounded comrades with them.
American mortars miss their target…
… but creep ever closer
Breitner’s lads make it into the ‘Lane of Doom’
Damned Yanks move across to take them on
The scene just before the carnage ensued
” Verdammt! Back!, get back now!” bellowed the platoon commander and pretty soon they were all back in the safety of the woods. Beckenbauer stopped to think. He couldn’t hear any sound of the heavy MG or mortars firing over on the right which didn’t feel good at all and looking around at the faces of the remaining troops with him he could tell what they had seen in the lane had shaken them all up too. “Sod it, we are off. Klinsmann follow me, we’re pulling out, send a flare up to signal to Klopp. No sense in dying here for no gain”, and with that the attack failed.
So another short and sweet fight but this time the Dice Gods had switched sides and Dan had the better luck (hopefully it means that it will be a bit more even next time)!
Dan had called in the airstrike so this was now round 3 of the campaign and, as explained, my plan was to try and find his AT guns and try and take them out if possible so that if we had to attack here again the tanks could be used with a bit more safety, whilst hopefully writing down his infantry. However, I did make some mistakes which combined with terrible luck scuppered the attack which I was quietly confident in succeeding with when we started as I had rolled up 11 in morale to his 9 and my high men’s opinion gave me one extra support point.
Firstly I shouldn’t have deployed the MMG at all, the Yanks were in position and on overwatch already I should have just hit them with my mortars and just used it either to defend my 2 JOP’s on the right (along with my reserve section) or deployed it on the left after moving that JOP forwards with a CoC dice. Over on the left I think my plan to still advance through the wood and around the wire was a good one and it might have worked. Indeed when Dan brought in his mortars he was way off target (was supposed to come in on the wire which might have caught 2 sections and the SL) and was having problems moving the barrage – we are playing that you roll a d6 to see how far you can move it, he rolled a 1 then a 2! However it was creeping towards me so I spent a CoC dice to end the turn which meant the survivors of the MMG team routed off with my rolling on the BTH table starting high and staying high all game.
So what actually happened in the ‘Lane of Doom’? After getting caught with a very ineffectual volley which only caused a bit of shock I returned fire and scored 12 hits which only caused just 2 points of shock, and it was close range too! Unfortunately this fire was on a 2 so I couldn’t order a smoke grenade to be thrown as well to cover myself and Dan made excellent use of the American ability to both move and fire to get more weapons to bear and his next volley caused proper damage including wounding Breitner and reducing his activations to 1. Before I could reply though he used a CoC dice to interrupt and that’s when Breitner and the rest of one of his teams copped it whilst the other one broke. Dan then rolled up a triple 3 ending the turn and thus routing the survivors, on top of the hits to my force morale from the JL being wounded then killed and losing a team my force morale had plummeted to 2 so it was a no brainer to pull out.
Again a cracking game and lessons definitely learned for next time. I know I might have said this before but playing these rules in a campaign just makes them so much better – you stop thinking like a wargamer and start thinking like a commander.
As for the result of the fight: I only managed to KO 2 of Dan’s men but he will get them back thanks to the difference in morale at the end. 1.Zug lost 5 men in total , 2 dead along with the JL and 3 will be returning the next time they see action. Beckenbauer lost 4 points off his men’s opinion but as he was already on +3 that isn’t too bad whilst he managed to not lose any more on the CO’s opinion so starts the next round at -1 & -1.
“Well Franz, at least we will be attacking for once!”, ‘der Kaiser’ looked at the suntanned and grimy face of the big man stood next to him and couldn’t help but return the beaming smile he saw there. “You are right there Jürgen, but let’s hope we have caught the Ami’s napping”. As he spoke the air was rent by the sound of shells screaming over their heads towards the enemy’s lines. “Good to not be on the receiving end for a change” shouted the Feldwebel and he jogged off to pick up the ‘heavy’ MG42 team he would be responsible for in the forthcoming fight.
Beckenbauer moved into the wood where the majority of his Erste Zug waited for him and ran through the plan once more in his head. Luckily the unit had been very aggressive in their patrolling and had caught the Americans flat footed whilst allowing the Zug to both get well forward and to get a good handle of where the enemy was. A minefield had been discovered where the road bent and was hemmed in by a couple of hedges but he had decided to not take the offer of some Pionere to clear it, instead he had told Klopp to cover the area and the likely point nearby where an enemy might appear with a tripod mounted MG42. He would take the majority of the Zug through the wood as quickly as possible to pin and hopefully overwhelm any defenders across the field whilst trying to also close down any attempt of the enemy deploying on the right flank. ‘Der Bomber’ would be holding one Gruppe back in reserve along with a sniper and the hope was that the barrage crashing down on the Ami’s would help this plan unfold before they could react.
Red One (craters on the left standing in for minefield) Klopp and his MMG lads set up and overwatch the minefield
Upon meeting his lads he nodded to the curly haired NCO looking up at him who turned to his men “Right ladies, let’s go and sort these Yankees out shall we” and with that 1.Gruppe moved swiftly off. Breitner then told off a couple of his men and told them to move over to the right to check out the flank, whilst behind him to the left he heard Klinsmann getting his men forward too. Both of the sections moved swiftly forwards until they hit the hedge surrounding the field when they were taken under fire both from a machine gun across the field and from some riflemen on the right. This fire wasn’t very accurate however and pretty soon both NCO’s had their Gruppen pouring fire back. Over on the right the two scouts were seen running back after taking some withering fire from the squad of infantry that they had run into.
Breitner and 1.Gruppe move out Yanks pop up Scouts find them 1. & 2. Gruppen pour fire on the enemy
Brietner had just told his right hand gun to keep firing on the infantry to the right when another burst of MG fire tore through the hedge knocking over two of his lads and also winging him. “Scheisse, are you alright?” said his no.2, “Aye, keep firing, I’ll be ok in a minute, just keep hitting the enemy”. That they were hitting the enemy, and hitting them hard, was evident as very soon the MG fire to their front stopped altogether and the enemy to the right suddenly disappeared. Klinsmann then appeared as Breitner was being patched up: “Bloody hell Paul I think we’ve made them run!, I’ll send a couple of lads across to make sure”. Soon the scouts jogged back across the field and confirmed that the enemy had definitely gone and the only thing visible was a completely wiped out MG team and a dead officer. “Right then lets let the old man know what’s happened and hopefully we can have a well earned rest” said Breitner and let out a long sigh of relief, not only had he had a close escape but they had seen off the enemy and both men that had been hit were also only nicked too so were ok to get back into action straight away, “a good day’s work lads, well done.”
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So a very quick and quite bloodless game (well for me anyway) aided by some great dice luck from me and awful luck by Dan. I managed to get lucky in the patrol phase and got 6 free moves which helped me get far through the wood and forced Dan’s JOP’s across the field. This (coupled with me ‘winning’ the morale roll too having 10 to Dan’s 8) made me decide to just pile forwards with the sections to try and engage as soon as possible while covering the enemy JOP by the minefield with the MMG. Even though the scouts were broken and I took a few hits I managed to keep my luck going and didn’t lose any morale points. Unfortunately for Dan the combined fire of 3 MG42’s made short work of his MMG team and even worse his Platoon commander, Hiram P. Wilderbeest III, deployed with the team had been hit and wounded 3 times and so was killed. His bad luck with the dice held when rolling on the BTH table and his morale had dropped to 4 pretty quickly, this coupled with the death of his CO made him decide that bugging out was the best thing to do. I’m expecting a tougher fight next time as I reckon there will be more enemy to face. Oh, and the pre-game barrage didn’t stop Dan deploying at all!
As for opinion, 1.zug are now at +3 for the men and -1 for the CO’s (they started at that unfortunately!) with Beckenbauer’s outlook still Thoughtful.
I forgot to put what I managed to acquire in my last post and as it is like a Wargaming Blog law to do so I shall rectify it straight away!
My major purchase was at Heroics and Ros (as usual), and mainly it was bits and pieces to round out my Alt-History Polish units now that I’ve eventually settled on a TO&E for them. So some Vickers Mk.1’s, Grizzly APC’s, some Fox’s and Ferret/Vigilant for some kitbashing. and some ARV’s and minerollers. I also got a bunch of T-62’s for my Soviet Tank Regiment as I’ve decided to go 3 platoons per company instead of 2 per company as in the rules as it was just bugging me, it’s just too restricting for the Soviet player and not ‘realistic’.
Vickers Mk.1 – old sculpt but ok especially as no-one else does one
Kitbash: Fox with a Ferret Vigilant turret posing as a Swingfire turret!
My ‘off list’ purchase with Andy and Ian was some of the new Sisu APC’s and a G.91. Both of which, in keeping with all of their new releases, are cracking little models. They will be soon appearing in a Baltic State’s armed forces pretty soon! Unfortunately I didn’t realise that the new Danish Infantry were available as I’d have had some of those too as I’m a big fan of the new sculpts. Yes they are a bit bigger than the old ones but are belting figures and great to paint and, if we are honest, the older stuff seems like its on its last legs.
Sisu APC, love the tyres and open hatch on this.
Fiat G.91 – sorry about the half arsed priming, just had some left on the brush!
I also bought an Austrian Infantry Booster pack from Baccus for some 6mm Napoleonic shenanigans that we have planned for later in the year. Nice figures and look easy to paint up so I’ll be looking forward to doing those sometime soon, and a bargain at 288 figures for £19.80.
Lastly while with Comrade Noakesavitch at the PSC stand he chucked me a box of their new 15mm T-55’s that he picked up as his buy-4-get-fifth-free. Daren has some Team Yankee kit that he picked up a couple of years ago in a raffle at the club and although we have absolutely zero interest in those rules (and even less after Dan and I watched the game being put on at Salute – nice enough models but tanks jammed together in rows and M109’s and Rolands on the table, niet tavaritch) we are looking forward to the release of either ‘I aint been nuked Mum’ or ‘Battlegroup NORTHAG’ rules to get them all on the table. I also got to check out the Armies Army range as well and they are lovely too so worth investing at a later date in some of that kit too.
Tracks and Threads 