Whack-a-Maxim

Last night we played that Chain of Command scenario where one side has to take an objective on the other side's baseline. I had the title of it in my head when I got home, but it's totally gone now.

Anyway, here's the table. Caesar and I were the Germans, attacking from the foreground across fields and hedgerows. The Russians had our objective stashed in those woods right at the far end. Beyond Fortress Village.

The Russians also had an artillery barrage going on the first turn. And in Chain of Command a turn can possibly last most of the game. The effect of the barrage was to make it harder to actually get our troops on  the table. Eventually we managed to deploy some stuff on our left ...

.. and then our right.

Meanwhile the Russians occupied the village with some infantry and a couple of Maxims. The Maxims fire at us. We kept our heads down and fired back. When the Maxim crews ran away, their officers shouted at them and they came back. The Maxims then continued to fire at as. Eventually we ran out of ways of dodging bullets and, having not moved from our start positions (aside from routing), gave up on the attack.

The last time we played this scenario the attackers had it easy because there were too many covered approach routes. This time we probably swung it too far the other way; there was lots of cover, but Russian fire could reach pretty much every point on the table, making any kind of advance extremely risky. The fact that we couldn't get key parts of our force past the Russian barrage didn't help either.

Still, the game was a surprisingly entertaining firefight.

Apologies to Ralph, Bryan, Peter and John T for neglecting to take any pictures of their games. Peter and John played 36AP HOTT using 28mm Middle earth armies, whilst Ralph and Bryan went back to those memorable days in the 1980s when  Russian tanks with too few turrets swept across Germany.