More Chain of Command and some more painted stuff

 Friday brought about another game of Chain of Cammand.  Yet again Gus and I visited Casa del Stumpy, where the newly based US Paras faced of against the newly based Fallschirmjagers.  The US, commanded by Nathan, were attacking a Fallschirmjager infested town.

Jump off points are deployed

Initial recce put the Paras on the ridge just outside the town while the Germans occupied the buildings at the edge of the town.  The Americans had a reinforced platoon, giving them 4 squads (12 men with 1 LMG), a 60mm mortar and a FOO able to call in 81mm mortar fire.  The Germans had 3 squads (10 men with 2 LMGs each) and a 2 man AT team.

US Paras appear

Fallschirmjagers deploy in the cafe

German NCO and right flank unit.

The US advanced on their left, with 2 squads facing 1 FJ squad while the other 2 squads engaged the remaining Germans with suppressing fire.  This tactic didn't work the way Nathan wanted, although in the long term it won him the game.  The fire of 2 German squads worked out at 36 dice(4 LMGs with 8 each and 4 riflemen).  This proved too much for the right hand US squad and they were forced back with lots of "shock" hits, but only 2 dead. The US return fire was 32 dice(2 LMGs with 8 each and 16 riflemen), which wasn't much less but the Germans were also in hard cover.  Although the shock effect was much less, the US fire killed more Germans. US riflemen reroll 1's to hit, due to the Garand rifles.  It doesn't sound like much but it does make a difference to their fire.

Sarge is down!

On the left the Paras advanced to the edge of the field, then came under accurate fire from the German squad.  Despite their best efforts they were forced to go to ground.  Their return fire did manage to kill a few more Germans though, this "few hits but always a kill" effect was starting to cause the Germans some problems as they started to run out of men.

Boom boom boom...missed!

As the game went on the American continued to whittle away at the Germans, despite taking much more shock.  Their superiority in NCOs allowed them to rally the shock more effectively than the Germans.

 Another turn and the FOO managed to bring in the 81mm mortar support.  Despite his spotting round being on target, the actual barrage shifted just enough to miss the Germans.....fortunately. As time went on though, the steady attrition of Germans caused their morale to go and they were forced to fall back.  Damn und blast.  They nearly won, with the US suffering a large number of squad NCO hits, all of which cause a possible loss of force morale.  Unfortunately they didn't lose quite enough.  Every US squad had their NCO either killed or wounded, which resulted in the platoon officers and NCOs having to step in.  It was a good game again though, with Nathan managing another win.

FoW US Para Platoon

 Apart from playing I have also been painting more bits to sell on.  So here we have the US Para platoon from the "Open Fire" box for Flames of War.  Very nice figures that, like the German Grenadiers, match their metal figures very well.  If I didn't have so many US Paras already I would have used these for my own CoC force.

FoW British Shermans

 Also from the Open Fire box we have the other 4 Shermans.  The first 4 went on eBay last week, while these are on there this week.

FoW Pak-40s

 Finally we have the Pak 40s, again all in plastic and again a nice match for the metal models that Battlefront do.


I am now in the process of painting some Jeeps and a kubelwagen.  There are 10 jeeps in all, 4 for Nathan and 6 for me, while the Kubel has sat in a basecoated state for about 12 months now, so I have decided to finish it off.

Hope you all have lucky dice, I know Nathan did last Friday.  Catch you later.