NEWS FROM THE FRONT: Chain Of Command, Great War Style

Monday, 21 December 2015

Chain Of Command, Great War Style

We started 2015 with a Great War game, so it was only fitting that we should end the year with one. This time we would be using our much delayed second outing with Chain of Command, you can get the Great War modifications from here or here. The game would be a sort of follow on from our previous encounter Dawn Attack 1918, this action takes place behind the British front line. A platoon of Germans is probing on the flank, news of the breakthrough has reached British HQ who have sent patrols out to access the situation, we chose the patrol scenario to reflect this. This was a relatively quiet zone before the German offensive so the terrain is wooded and hedged, with a farm building only exhibiting damage from the fighting in 1914. There would be no artillery or vehicles involved in the action, reflective of the action and also to keep things simple while we got acquainted with the rules again.
The initial period of the game saw both sides playing cat and mouse amongst the hedgerows, both sides being cagey and unwilling to commit until they had sussed out the opposition, the British got things going by sending a couple of men to scout down the road, this led them behind the Germans who had entered the wood. The Germans had little choice but to fire on them, killing one of them, hearing the firing the British sent a section towards the wood, the sequence of dice however saw the Germans get to the edge of the wood before them catching them in the open with some withering fire. They were in a perilous position to high tail it away out of line of sight would need three movement dice but this would take their shock to double the men remaining breaking them so it was either charge or fire, they took a chance on firing hoping that they would get to activate again before the Germans it was not to be and they broke in the German phase. The Lewis gun section on their right were now able to fire on the Germans in the wood, eventually causing them to break in turn. Back on the other flank the Germans tried to break the impasse and charged the British ensconced behind the hedge, but they were soundly beaten back by good old British pluck.
Now if you read the last report you may remember the myopic British sniper, well it appears he has a brother, 3+ to hit, not difficult is it? well yes apparently, first four shots, four bloody ones. While all this was going on the British rifle section had got into the farm building, this was to be a two edged sword, yes they had hard cover but they could only get to fire four men each turn, with hindsight I should have sent the Lewis gun section there instead of having it covering the road. back outside the farm the section that had hurled the German assault back under terrific fire from the German infantry and granatenwerfer finally broke, their place was taken by the now free Lewis section, but they must have been low on ammo for despite the number of shots they hit very little, this combined with the little amount of fire from the farm did little to the Germans in the hedgerow, whilst their casualties began to grow until finally they broke, with this and NCO losses the British morale meant that they now only had two command dice. With the German firepower now also being twice that of the British it was only a matter of time before the British morale collapsed, which it finally did after three hours of play with a break for lunch.
All in all a rather splendid game, we did miss one or two things and had to check things in the rules along the way but they were equally applied to both sides so no advantage was gained by either side.
We plan to start 2016 with another Great War game using Chain of Command on the 11th Jan all being well, the first game of 2016 will be at GHQ, a French Revolutionary War game using Black Powder, until the New Year here are a few pictures of the game.