Gigabytes Games Day - May 11th 2019

Saturday was my first chance to get in a game with friends in a long time. With my health being what it was this year, it was nice to get out and see everyone. I got to play in a Chain of Command WWI game. It was a four player game with each player commanding a platoon of troops. I commanded an 1917 British Platoon while Marlon commanded a Scottish platoon with a Lewis gun team as support. Our platoon organizations were identical. Two senior leaders, a squad of eight riflemen, a Squad of eight with three bombers (grenade guys), a squad of rifle grenadiers (4) with four riflemen and a squad of eight with a Lewis gun.

The Scottish Commander

The Germans had two platoons that I didn't look at their organization too closely. Each had four squads and they had a LMG team in support. The Germans were ably commanded by Preston and Scott. Mark was the umpire and after Marlon had to leave, he took over the British and did rather well. The game was a patrol scenario with an objective of a broken German tank that was astride a forward section of formerly British trenches. The tank crew had bailed out with one of the machine guns from the tank and were waiting to be rescued.They were umpire controlled.

The German Commanders

Our Noble Umpire

Scott had the highest force morale at 11. The Scots had the second highest at 10 and Preston and I both had a force morale of 9. Scott was the first to deploy. He had a good role and brought out most of his squads.

The Scottish Commander Deployed next and brought out a number of his squads at once. He was directly opposite of Scott's positions.

The far unit was the Lewis gun team. The LMG Team and then the rifle team out in the open charging the trenches. I believe I deployed next. I brought up my rifle grenadiers in the back shell hole. And the lewis squad into the brick building in front of the rifle grenadiers. The rifle grenadiers proved to be a thorn in the German's side for a while as they accurately were lobbing grenades into the Germans as they were deploying. There was a group in the trenches that was taking a bit of shock for a while. This was the highlight of the game for me. After that, it was just a quick slide as my force morale was to crumble as most of my junior leaders ended up wounded.

Preston brought out a few squads and began firing at my rifle grenadiers. He managed to hit the squad leader on no less than two occasions. Each bad thing happens result kept dropping my force morale like a stone. Then the German tankers fired at the lewis squad and hit the squad leader wounding him as well. Force morale tumbles again.

The Scots were holding their own on their side. They lost a few men and managed to reach the trench. They killed nearly half of a German squad without inflicting any shock on it. But did manage to place shock on a German unit entering the trench. Things were fairly even for a while. The Scottish commander, Marlon, had to leave to run his own game. Mark took over and things took a turn. My fault not Mark's.

First off, my rifle grenadiers took a ton of punishment that nearly killed them to a man. A senior leader was with them so when they routed, he did too. Next, I had deployed another squad (bombers) forward of the lewis team to put more pressure on the trench bound Germans. They were close assaulted by a German squad and mauled badly. They routed. I counter assaulted with a fresh squad and drove out the Germans. This was interesting. My force morale tumbled to 3 but Preston's force morale dropped down to 4. I still had a chance, but Preston burned a chain of command die and ended the turn. The game had been one long turn to this point. One of my routed squads immediately fled the table and my force morale rolls were wretched and the rest of my platoon bailed out leaving Mark holding the bag.

Mark wasn't idle. His troops had seized the German tankers who surrendered without a fight and escorted them off the table. Mark had two squads in the trenches and were throwing grenades at the Germans on the other side of the tank. The Germans tried a couple of close assaults which had one of their squads thrown back and the second wiped out a squad. This was enough to drop the Scottish force morale to a point they fled.

Here are more pictures on the day that I don't necessarily remember where they go in the story. It was a long game but very fun. Thanks Mark for your work on this. The miniatures and much of the terrain was borrowed from Rob. All in 28mm.

I was only able to physically last one day. I really wanted to play a few more games but just wasn't up for it. There were a number of games that I wanted to play bNext time, I should be in better shape and get in a full day of gaming.