Battle Report - 22 Dec 2014 - Chain of Command

Having finished with the club's Dreadball and WAB campaigns, and having had a couple of weeks break with things like Black Powder, it was definitely time to break out the Home Guard again. This was made even better by the fact that Pat popped out a fourth final draft (we're getting there, honest) of the Home Guard lists, and I finally got round to painting some of the 3D printed accessories he sent me over the summer.

Based (mostly) on 25mm metal disks :D, black
undercoat, assorted Army Painter colours, ink wash,
Janis dark earth scatter - Javis static grass yet
to be added at the time of the picture. 

One of the major changes is that, since the advent of the CoCulator, it's been much easier to balance up the lists: in the past I've found that the Home Guard tend to suffer greatly at the hands of most lists due to being woefully (and historically) under-powered. Draft 4 has the early war HG worth a platoon rating of -12, which lends itself to a lot of shopping for... stuff.

Anyway: we broke out the scenery from 'Dead's Army', courtesy mostly of Warbases, and built a nice East Yorkshire village with a river bridge for the Home Guard to defend. We used scenario six from the rulebook - "Attack on an Objective". Gary brought his early war Germans (+4 rating) and Carl took the Home Guard. The roll for supports was a double six: 

• Gary got 10 points, which he spent on:
• Panzer III (List 4)
• SdKfz 231 (List 5)
• Adjutant (List 1)
• Carl got 10/2 + the difference between the list values, namely 21 points, which he spent on:

• 2 x Milk Churn mines (2 x List 3)
• Medical orderly (List 1)
• Lewis gun, no crew (List 2)
• Home Guard section (List 3)
• Vickers gun + regular crew (List 4)
• WW1 18pdr gun, no crew (List 5)

Effectively Carl's extra section went to man the Lewis gun and the 18pdr.

This is the first CoC game we've played in a while. so as usual, we were a bit rusty and slow. The patrol phase was chiefly characterised by a race for the church, which Carl won. Once we started Gary pushed down the road with the 231, and deployed a couple of infantry sections near the church and the farmhouse: he was somewhat chagrined when Carl deployed a section in the White Horse pub with LOS on the milk churn mine at the crossroads, and... blew off the front wheel of the 231! (Gary was probably more chagrined than most at this as he's supposed to know about IEDs in Real Life.)

[Game mechanics wise, I had Carl make a to hit roll for the mine, to reflect timing etc of the detonation.]

The Panzer III wisely chose to skirt across the fields towards the church, which Gary managed to capture before Carl got to deploy anything n it, and also denied the Home Guard the jump off point on the board edge next to the church.

In the meantime, the Germans pushed ahead on the right flank, round the backs of the houses on High Street and Bridge Street: they were met by some accurate fire from the Vickers in the window of number 1 & 3 High Street (the green and blue doors).

Somehow they survived a couple of phases of fire, sneaking round the back of number 1 Bridge Street and aiming for the White Horse. Meanwhile, the Home Guard had wheeled out the WW1 gun, and taken several shots at the Panzer III. And, pretty much, missed. 

Unfortunately, the Panzer III and the German mortar didn't miss, and in about 3 phases the gun crew were wiped out. 

That's about where we had to leave it: both sides still had a section to deploy, but the Panzer was probably going to be able to wade across the river and take the bridge.

Lessons learned? Much better balance. And the Home Guard need to take every anti-tank device known to man - with hindsight, Carl and I agreed they should have ditched the second set of milk churn mines, fun though they were, for three List 1 Sticky Bombs, one for each section.