La petite ville française

A Platoon Forward Game

My units are infantry, other units are allocated on a scenario by scenario basis. Below is the battle report.

The Briefing

Through a combination of manoeuvre and combat the regiment has gained a position on the enemy's flank.

Your battalion has been ordered to deliver the "hammer blow" by rolling up the enemy position. Your battalion is once again in the vanguard. There has been no time to arrange artillery support, but you will have the element of surprise.

Aerial view of the town square take from the east.

Aerial reconnaissance suggest that a  French Battalion HQ is located in the town. The French forces are lightly dug in and mainly facing east. They are in company strength with at least one anti tank gun and a high likelihood of one or more tanks. (The defence is set with markers and until they are spotted or the French commander wishes to activate them their exact composition is unknown).

The town square, location of the French Battalion headquarters.

German OOB

1st Company & 2nd Company

CC +1, HMG

3 Plts. each

PC +1, rifle groups x3

Support

3 x Pz38t

Pz38ts thread their way through the woods.

Pre game events reveal three French positions, giving me some much needed intelligence.

Move 1

Company 1 advance through the woods the 38ts are just out of shot.

Move 2

Pz38ts break off left intending to strike deep into the rear of the french. Company 1 continues its advance through the woods. Company 2 still in reserve till we can identify French positions.

The French muster their forces realising the Germans are striking for the rear of the town!

( In pre game events the French commander was Bold, uncharacteristically, and would be quick to react, hence the activation early of some French defenders).

To be continued !

German Infantry Company for Platoon Forward.

Company OC Hauptman Malwitz: A gifted commander very loyal to the government but with a pessimistic outlook.

1st platoon OC Oberleutnant Urtz: An average commander but cunning with a keen interest in engineering.

2nd platoon OC Feldwebel Breiding: A sensible but poor commander, motivated by increasing his position  in life.

3rd Platoon OC Feldwebel Gunter: An average commander. Hedonistic and addicted to living life to the full.

MG Platoon OC Werner: An average commander, obnoxious and looks forward to the next bottle.

The company started as a Regular company at full strength and its current strength varies with combat losses and replacements.

How the company is represented on board is dependant on the rule set being used:

In Crossfire it could be 1CC, 3PC  and 9 stands plus HMGs

In PBI 1CC, 3PC, 9LMGs and 18 rifle stands plus HMGs

Russian Civil War

Another project started ! White Russian troops for a game in November. Peter Pig army box, a long way to go yet.


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France 1940

Well my first game with Platoon Forward saw my German Company tasked with capturing a prisoner during a combat patrol against the french lines. Moreover only two platoons were allocated for the task. Support came in the form of one HMG from the company support platoon and Battalion HQ laid on a pre planned mortar strike.

The scenario required my troops to engage the french for at least four turns, inflict casualties and capture some prisoners.

I chose 1st and 3rd platoons commanded by URTZ and GUNTER respectively.

The French forces were placed as blinds, there are three types A,B and C. Blinds A will likely be an infantry section, blinds B could be heavy weapons and blinds C could be HQs or even armour. This allows you to set up a credible defence but not know exactly what you will face.

Next I diced for pre game events, luck was on my side with Gung Ho, company morale was high. This increased my chances of motivating my troops to engage in close assault.

Table seen from the German side, French units are dug in.

The artillery strike was planned on the right flank in front of the villa extending to the field.

Move 1


The strike was on target, killing one rifle stand and pinning the rest.

One section assaulted the pinned troops in the scrub killing another rifle stand and pushing the rest back.

The section captured some wounded French left in the scrub ( Result ).

In the centre a fire fight ensued with the dug in French section losing out to two German sections in the woods. However one French rifle stand hung in preventing any advance by the Germans.

Two French HMGs, one each side of the road poured fire on the German units but to no avail.




After four turns I retired my Platoons off the board having lost just one rifle stand, the French had lost two full sections.

The HMGs protecting the road.

A Major victory!

After action events make good my losses with replacements from Battalion HQ and the promise of an extra weapons team on our next outing.

Did Platoon Forward work?

1: The differing blinds allowed a credible defence and actually worked very well. Not knowing exactly what would the blind would represent but having knowledge of the probable units.

2: Any decision for the German force was helped by having a personality for the platoon commanders.

3: Random events anything from reserves to leadership tests add uncertainty.

Thumbs up for our first outing.

Next Blog I think I will layout my German  company OOB.

Platoon Forward

As I play most of my games solo I thought I would give Platoon Forward a try.

It is a generic system for adding personalities to your game, generating scenarios and random events.

It is split into three sections, each section can be used independently of the others. Section one generates the personalities of the unit, section two generates scenarios and section three events pre game, during the game and post game. It consists of over 50 pages with plenty of examples of how to interoperate the various tables.

I am going to base my games on a German company during WWII, but it can be used with a little tweaking for other periods. All references in Platoon Forward are at platoon level, but it scales up to company level with ease.

For my first game I will be using the PBI rules from Peter Pig, but plan to use other rule systems on a scenario by scenario basis.

Platoon Forward is available from toofatlardies for £7.00 on PDF.

The first game generated is a combat patrol with the objective of bringing back a prisoner. Look forward to the game report after the weekend.

Gifts from Santa

Well I have been too busy to do much before Xmas, so not much to update.

Santa was kind enough to bring me a Peter Pig boxed army for the Russian Civil War.

I think you get the bases, casualties and standard bearers for free. All the figures were the usual high standard for Peter Pig, very little flash and really good castings. The first ten stands are done and I have now started on the colour companies.

I am going to try out Red Actions, a set of free rules from The Perfect Captain.

Each stand represents a platoon, between three and six stands to a company.

Over the holidays I did get in one game of Modern spearhead with my mate Tim, but didn't get any pictures, I would like to replay the game using Cold War Commander to get a feel for how different they play. The game, Syrians vs Israel, went well and was most enjoyable we should play more games.