First game of Chain of Command

First Chain of Command game completed amongst packing up my house and getting ready to move.  I hate moving!
Anyway, my group and I ran our first game of Chain of Command.  A simple meeting engagement scenario with the Americans vs. Germans.

We had two young guys playing this time and they hadn't really play historical games before.  They caught on rather quickly.

My friend James and Sam playing the Americans.

Anthony and I played the Germans.  Since I was teaching I let Anthony control the bulk of the German forces.

The patrol phase went smoothly for trying it the first time.  Both sides locked down pretty quickly.

The Americans deployed first taking the farm house.  A German squad took up a position to fire on the house.  The building was tough and caused no damage.

More American troops appeared.

German squad took a beating and fell back into a line of trees.  They would soon lose that jump off point.

More Americans came pouring over the hill.

German armor arrives!

Another squad tries to make it across the field but didn't make it and fell to the ground for more cover.

The German armor backs up the squad.

The Americans push forward.

The Germans tried to push around the other side of the board and took an American Jump off point.

The Americans didn't bite on the flank move and kept pushing forward.

The German squad took some shock from accurate American fire.

The German tank sits in the tree line and waits for the Sherman coming down the road.

Close Assault time!

No more german squad. Killed to the man.

The Sherman rolls down the road and survives a couple of shots from the German tank.

The game soon ended after this as the German morale dropped to zero and they retreated back off the board.  We were very happy with the game played and at how fast we all picked up the sequence the flow of the game quickly.  I did spend some time flipping through the rule book looking for things but that was expecting with a first run.

We will be playing this again in October when we get together.

I've been using Too Fat Lardies rules for several years now and I think this is their best product that they have put out.

Some great WWII Bomber Footage.

This is some great bomber footage on a raid into Japan.  P-51's escort a B-29 flight on a bomber run.  It's rather long around 30 minutes but well worth it.

The Last Bomb

NUTS! WWII skirmish game

Its been a little bit since my last post. Life has gotten in the way of having fun.  This past Saturday I ran a game of Nuts! by Two Hour Wargames.  If your not familiar with the rules, it is a fast paced 1:1 skirmish game, which uses an innovative system of reactions to move the play along.  I first played this system at the Enfilade Convention this past year and loved them.
I have run a few games for the guys in my group and I feel like I am finally at the point where I can run the rules comfortably. So this game was a Russian Recon Mission using two squads of 10 men each against two squads of Germans of 10 men each.  One German squad was broken up into two groups of 5 men and placed at different areas on the board.  This was also the first time where I did all of the rolls for the Germans as NPs or Non-Player figures.  The Russians were control by my friends Garland and Andy.
The first initiative phase went to the NP Germans.  The roll forced the German squad out of their house and into view of one the Russian Squads!

Needless to say the result was pretty bloody. Two Germans were KIA, the Squad Leader was Stunned, one was Out of the Fight and the last guy Ducked back around the house. It wasn't too long before the Squad Leader was captured and sent back to be interrogated and the last of the small squad were dispatched.

Meanwhile the rest of the Germans started to move towards the sound of the fighting and ended up getting caught out in the open, while the Russians started to spread out across the board.

The Russians had the edge in this battle and made the Germans pay for their costly mistakes.

The Germans take refuge in the trees.

Before long the Germans couldn't put up much of fight.

I called the game about 2 1/2 hours after we started.  As usual Nuts! games are quick and bloody and the system really supports the gamer who uses good tactics and punishes those who don't.  I did realize afterwards that I did make a mistake on the first roll for the NP Germans.  The did not have to leave the house after all, I had read the instructions incorrectly.  Oh well, it was fun night anyway.