Posts Tagged WWI

4 results.
Mar14

33 Étrépilly

by Rindis on March 14, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Mark and I returned to Great War Commander with a September 1914 scenario from the Battle Pack. It’s an interesting setup, with the Germans holding a village with two platoons and MG team, while the French storm it with eleven platoons. The Germans get five platoons and another MG team as reinforcements as soon as the original force is wiped out or the French take an objective. Unfortunately, I don’t think it went the way the designers envisioned….

I had the Germans, who set up on a re-worked board 7. The marsh is made into a graveyard, the quarry is gone, the woods are gone, three objective locations change, two buildings off towards the edge are burning, and random draws rubble half the main village. An interesting idea is all Air Assault orders are instead treated as Advance (and using one will also cause the German reinforcements to enter). Annoyingly, the G4 fountain only has its terrain defined in the special rules of the original scenario using this map, and it is not repeated here. I set up in a line in front of it, with the MG in the center. Mark lined up on the left side of the map (this is new—to us at least—as while the idea of using left and right sides as the friendly edges was obvious, we’d only seen top and bottom before), and started with Aerial Reconnaissance, which is something of a pain in the Vassal module, as you have to set aside the next Strategy Cards, as he gets to peek at them.

The action started as Mark Moved to the outskirts of the village. As the north flank moved, I OpFired to break most of the platoons involved, and one of the leaders. Some of them did get much closer, and one German platoon was suppressed by an event. During further Fire, Recall Leader came up, removing Lochow to the time track. This also put everyone out of cohesion. The south flank Moved up, with OpFire unable to halt them. Then an Advance brought him into melee with all three German platoons defeated.

And that’s where the wheels came off. One of the conditions for bringing in the German reinforcements is if they have no units on the map. But, the first time trigger happened in the middle of the final melee, bringing on Lochow as the only German unit on the map… and preventing the German reinforcements from coming on.

There followed a long dead stretch as I passed time, and Mark maneuvered for position and cards without actually taking an objective and triggering the reinforcements. I contemplated trying to attack with Lochow in melee (and bonus actions), but Mark got three platoons and Grenier off the map for 9 VP before I could act on the plan, leaving me with too much open space to cross.

Mark finally Moved to take objectives, and I was in business… huddled in the cover of the graveyard, and the French safely ensconced in the remains of the village. An Offensive put me in slightly better positions, but three platoons broke during it, and two time triggers happened, followed by a third on the French turn.

Further French Fire didn’t manage any more effects, and I managed a Rally to get everyone in good order again. I Fired, breaking Lt Tignous, but that was because I rolled a 12, and then back-to-back 12s from Mark finished the game with 25 French VP.

Afterword

It’s an interesting idea for a situation, and the conditional German entry is good. I’m sure that no one anticipated that the Germans could be left with a single leader after losing the three starting platoons. Still, I would recommend changing the wording from ‘formations’ to ‘platoons’ in SSR 1. Also, repeat the SSR from Scenario 2 any time board 7 is used.

We’ve seen some rushes of time triggers before, but the end here was a new record with three in about four rolls. That said, I wasn’t likely to take location 5 (worth 12 VPs with our chits), nor do much else productive while heavily outnumbered, in worse terrain, and with a smaller hand size. So, I was just as happy to get it over with.

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Jul30

34 Race to the Bridge

by Rindis on July 30, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

At the end of May, Mark and I returned to Great War Commander. He has gotten the first Battle Pack expansion, and we went to the 1914 scenario from that. It reuses a map we’ve seen before, and doesn’t have any new unit types, so it’s easy to set up in the current Vassal module. However, there is a bridge on the map that doesn’t exist in the scenario (by SSR), and counter for that doesn’t exist. So we just put a shellhole marker on it.

It’s a couple of weeks after the battle of Mons, and the British are falling back. At this point, the rearguard is trying to take and hold a bridge near Antwerp, while the Germans are trying to block them. Both sides are in ‘recon’ stance (the first time we’ve gotten to see that), and get one leader with four platoons. They both start off on the right side of the map, with the bridge on the left. However, the time index starts at 2, and at 3, both sides get five more platoons (including an engineer) and a better leader, and then on 4 they both get three more platoons and a third leader, with sudden death rolls starting at 8. The open VP marker makes the bridge worth 4VPs, and you can deny that to someone about to take it from you by having an engineer blow it up (leaving no one able to cross).

Mark had the British, who go first, and he started with an Air Assault, which didn’t find my troops, and then Moved out. There was then an exciting round of both sides discarding before I started Moving. Mark managed to Fire at them, and broke Lt Ruhberg, but one of his platoons broke to a sniper. We both tried to Recover, but blew our rolls before I did it on a second attempt, and Mark Advanced to get the broken guys out of the way. Fire broke a second British platoon, but it recovered (and the first one didn’t) with a Recover, and he Advanced further. I Moved towards the bridge, largely staying out of range, and occupying the farm house (objective 1). Mark Moved to cross the stream on his side, but I broke two platoons in it. Further Fire eliminated one of them, and then the other Advanced out of the stream. Mark attempted to Recover him, but failed on a 12 to get a time trigger, and I Dug In near the farmhouse.


At the end of the initial turn. Objective 5/bridge K6 doesn’t exist.

I got my reinforcements Moving first, and then ordered an Offensive for the first contingent to seize the bridge. The fire from that action finally eliminated the second British platoon, and an Air Assault let me suppress one of the reinforcements. Mark got his reinforcements moving with minimal trouble (I broke a platoon, which immediately came back with Probe) before we both needed to discard cards again. I Moved my reinforcements up to the rest of my troops just before running out of cards for the next time trigger.

Mark used an Offensive to get Perry closer to the bridge and shoot at the platoon there, but couldn’t get a result. He then Advanced the entire mass of both reinforcements. I Moved my newest reinforcements, getting them around the orchard before committing to an Offensive with everyone else. Air Support managed to suppress the stack of my highest-ranking leader, and a Sniper broke one of the reinforcing platoons, but I suppressed Maj Stone with an Interdiction event. I didn’t manage to break Lt Perry and his platoon on that turn, but the next turn, Fire broke Perry (recovered with a Probe) and the platoon. Mark continued Moving up, but a regular platoon, Maj Stone, and the engineers broke to my Fire. High Command Meddling “forced” me to recover at this point, clearing a few suppressions that had built up, and rally my one broken platoon. I then Fired and eliminated a broken platoon. Mark then Recovered, getting the engineers and and remaining regular broken platoon back, but not Maj Stone.

He also ran out his deck during this, taking us to time index 5. He then Fired to break Lt Ruhberg and his platoon, who both successfully Recovered. I Fired on Maj Stone again, but while he made his defense roll easily by rolling a 12, that put us at time 6, and the engineers broke again, and he lost Lt McBeath to Recall Leader.

Mark Recovered both his units, and Fired, breaking Ruhberg again. He then tried to Move across the stream again, getting another time trigger to my Op Fire, returning McBeath to play, and I got a Reinforcements event, which sadly did nothing (out of fusilier counters). And then he got a time trigger again, to take us to 8, and did not pass the Sudden Death check to end the game very suddenly with 11 German VPs.

Afterword

The general scenario concept is good, and it was very nice to see a meeting engagement style scenario. I’m a bit concerned that it may be a little too weighted to whoever can get near the bridge first. Worse, that stream the British need to cross is just nasty. 3 movement, and it makes you more vulnerable. Once I got in range of it before Mark got to it, it was largely downhill for him as I could do a lot of damage as he tried to get close enough to the bridge to contest it.

Much of the action also pointed up the disturbing all-or-nothing nature of defensive fire. Either you don’t have or want to use a card when someone moves, or you do and the game grinds to a halt as each and every hex in a move becomes subject to fire which breaks up the normally free-flowing nature of the game. It’s also a stark contrast to the “normal” Fire Order where everyone just fires once and is done.

The sudden string of time triggers at the end was unusual, but something that has to be expected once in a while. It cut short my expected grind to six casualties to force a surrender, but also prevented any opportunity for the mid-game turn around which GWC has certainly delivered on occasion.

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Jun17

The Road to Erzurum

by Rindis on June 17, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Jason was over again on Thursday, and we tried out the Caucasus 1916 scenario from Osmani Harbi. I contemplated trying one of the other maps in the set, but decided to keep it simple by sticking with the area and sides we’d seen already. We kept the same sides (i.e., me as the Ottomans), which meant that Jason got to be on the attack this time.

This scenario starts in early January 1916 and runs to the beginning of May, and a special rule ensures that all but the final turn are in Winter conditions. The front has advanced back into Turkey, and the Ottoman forces are exhausted, with all but a couple infantry divisions down to one strength point, and the others still down to their 2-4 side. The Russians are generally at full strength, and have 40 supply split between four HQ. Victory this time depends on taking Erzurum and keeping demoralization down.


All those -1 markers are hiding Ottoman divisions that are down to 1-4.

Jason moved up methodically while I did some minimal reworking of the line, and late in the month he did two sharp attacks that killed depleted divisions and blew holes in the line. Worse, the division between the two attacks was stuck in place. (Der Weltkrieg features a number of places where familiar rules have an interesting twist. It has the usual ‘1 hex minimum move’, but forbids it if you’re going from enemy ZOC to enemy ZOC and the terrain cost is 4 or more, so mountains can really stick you). Isolated, he ended up surrendering.

I anchored the center part of my line in relatively clear ground, with a hex that was nearly surrounded by rivers. Jason second another round of attacks as January came to a close, eliminating an independent regiment near the flank, and drove me out of that position. But he was gobbling up 4-5 supplies per attack, and taking pretty noticeable losses himself.

I disbanded my three lost divisions (special rule for the Ottomans) to get an extra replacement point at the start of February. I used it to rebuild the destroyed regiment, and the normal two I got headed north to rebuild a division on the line. I also started building a trench in the next hex down the valley. I wasn’t sure I’d use it even if I completed it, since trenches and mountains don’t work together, and the hex could generally get mountain terrain against an attack. But better to have it than not.

Jason spent a decent amount of February getting new supplies and troops to the front while lining up his next attack, and I strengthened my position with a new fresh division and rebuilt another to full. He hit the next hex in the valley, driving me out of it before the trench completed, and getting him within two hexes of his goal.

The Russians get a lot of replacements in March (9 points above the usual monthly two), while I got a couple of HQs (only one with actual supplies) and another fresh division (the Ottoman reinforcements trickle in while the 11 Russian replacement points all arrive at the beginning of the turn). I naturally started entrenching in the final hex before Erzurum.

Of course, Jason didn’t really want to take that approach anyway. Erzurum is a very limited fortress. The strength of it is fine, but it only works against one hexside: the one that faces up the valley that the Russian advance had been moving up. So Jason’s next target was the north flank of my line, which had a full-strength 3-4 division in it. Towards the end of the month, he forced me out of the hex with losses, but the trench in the other hex completed.

Meanwhile, I’d been using the latest round of reinforcements and replacements to try and cause trouble on the southern flank. It had ground to a halt early (in fact, I think all activity was from me pulling back to keep pace with the rest of the line), and was held by a series of 1-strength units on both sides. While some strength did go to shoring up the position in front of Erzurum, I did end up with a pair of 3-4s slooowly moving into position on the weak flank.

Jason’s activity in April was partially consumed with reorganizing the very limited supplies left to him, which culminated on an attack north of Erzurum which failed to dislodge me. There wasn’t much left, but he was exhausted too, and there wasn’t enough time for one turn in May to make a difference. Meanwhile, I’d hit his flank three times, using up much of my available supplies. Since he wasn’t supplied the counter attacks were at strength 1, and he rolled horribly (1s) to not do any damage to me in the first two combats. I returned the favor by merely rolling poorly to do nothing to him. On the third try we finally hurt each other, knocking out a brigade and giving him a potential problem on that flank… if I had anything to follow it up with.

The game technically ended with an Ottoman Decisive Victory, but late in the day, we finally realized our major rules muff of the day. We’d forgotten that retreating defenders are only double strength instead of tripled. It’s hard to say exactly how much difference that made, the results chart is fairly flat in the numbers I was dealing with all day (especially with the mountain and winter +4 mods making the max result likely in most combats). Certainly the first few combats, I would have gone from strength 3 to 2, and that wouldn’t have affected anything. In the middle it’s hard to say. As it was, we were really close to 2:1 on Demorilization (~15 to ~32 by memory), so I count this as a Substantial Victory.

It’s hard to say how the Russians can do much better though. No matter what, it’s just really awful terrain to do anything but defend, and with the occasional movement problems, not always the best for that either. Even if he’d gotten that last hex, he was about out of supply, so attacking Erzurum itself was going to be a major problem.

I have to say, I’m starting to think these smaller scenarios are probably only good for 2-3 plays before being fairly exhausted (I could be missing something), but the next step up is generally a one-map ‘duration’ scenario that would be way too long. I wish I was seeing something more intermediate, like a full year.

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Jun05

The Road To Sarikamis

by Rindis on June 5, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Jason recently made it over for another FtF session last Thursday, and we finally tried out the copy of Osmani Harbi that I picked up nearly two years ago for cheap. Thankfully, we had some time to read through the rules before hand; I was having trouble fitting it all in my head at the same time, even though much of the system is nothing especially new.

I went with the 1915 Caucasus scenario to try it out because, 1) it’s the first one in the book, and 2) it looked to need fewer of the Osmanli-specific rules (since there’s no desert, and it uses the normal Winter turns instead of the Summer turns). With most of my knowledge of this part of WWI still coming from Pursuit of Glory, I needed the victory conditions to confirm that the Ottomans are on the offensive here (the general goals are to take Kars, Sarikamis, and be less demoralized than the Russians). A random roll gave me the Ottomans, and off I went!

The initial look at the situation didn’t seem promising. The Russians have already advanced slightly past the border, and are in good defensive terrain (then again, the terrain in the entire map isn’t good for much other than defense). It sure didn’t seem that I had enough on hand to mount a real offensive. But there were a few possibilities. My main moves were against the ends of the Russian line, and I tried one combat, against a one strength Armenian division, and only took a point of damage myself.

The idea of the defender getting a ‘counterattack’ in which their strength is tripled takes some getting used to. The actual point is to effectively build the combat system around the old idea of a 3-1 attack being equal odds, while using strength factors instead of odds calculations. But it really makes you pause on attacking, and feel it’s so unfair. I needed to remember, that at around 3-1 odds, both sides should take about equal losses, and there’s only a third as many defender to absorb them.

An interesting wrinkle is that it seems that the attacker only ever gets negative modifiers and the defender only positive ones. However, I was usually attacking in mountains, which has no (attacking) modifier, but halves the attacking SP. This gives the attacker the ability to get a wide range of results compared to being stuck with the low ones as some of the other heavy terrain causes.

Jason consolidated his line slightly on his turn and I tried again against the Armenian division, getting a 6-1 die roll to knock it out for no losses. The next turn I moved in on the slightly shorter line, and continued working my way around the west flank, and concentrated on the center. My big attack there had another good set of die rolls, and I pushed the Russians out of a hex.

With things going poorly on the flanks and the center, Jason started pulling back. I think he pulled back too much, and let me take ground while he was reorganizing, instead of trying to make me pay for it, even if he lost a couple units in the process. By the end of December I was repositioning some extra cavalry to continue trying to threaten cutting him off from Batu, and was close to Sarikamis itself.

We ended up calling the day early, but got halfway through January, and could have finished the month if other events hadn’t gotten in the way. Still, by that point there was probably going to be a lot less activity. I took Sarikamis in a large attack from the SE, which meant I was only facing broken ground. This in turn surrounded three 2-4 infantry brigades that ended up surrendering after a failed breakout.

I had a Substantial Victory pretty well in hand, but was rapidly running out of supply, so short of being handed a really tempting target, I was planning on settling on something near the current line and waiting it out. The Ottoman ability to not need supply for defense had already been handy a time or two, and meant that I could basically exhaust my supply while doing this. (To be sure, the Ottomans get less supply to compensate for this.)

We’re both pretty happy with the system so far, and we may be giving it another go soon.

Questions:

Can you inspect enemy stacks? You can’t inspect the supply status on the charts (that is stated), but can you inspect the contents on on-map stacks? (I think you can, but an explicit statement eludes me.)

The depots on the map have no supply points listed, are they supposed to be empty? (I’m pretty sure that’s a yes, but stating ‘0’ in the scenario would have been preferable.)

There’s one railhead marker on the map, which makes it clear where that line ends. The scenario rule about ‘rail lines in Russia’ implies that the branch out to Tabriz exists. Does it stop at the Russian border (i.e., not go in Persia, and not reach the Tabriz depot) too?

Is there anything for the two engineer units in the scenario to do other than perhaps allow a HQ to move into a trench?

A 1-4 unit has (1)-4 on the reverse. Does flipping it resolve a SP of losses? Does removing it after being flipped also satisfy an SP of losses?

Can you supply some units for an attack, but not others? Or can you only provide supply on an ‘all-or-nothing’ basis? (Probably not ‘all-or-nothing’, as supporting a breakout attack is already an exception.) Can you just supply by number of strength points? i.e., provide 5 supply for a 21-point attack, which would then become a 20+0.5*1 attack or 20 SP.

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