Thursday, August 2, 2012

Contact at Hill 325

Last night we played the second scenario from Rommel's Route to Verdun.   Andy and Richard came over and took charge of the Germans whilst Jamie looked after the French.

Contact at Hill 325 sees two German squads and Rommel's three-man platoon HQ attempting to cross the board from east to west.  The pic below shows the battlefield with Hill 325 in the foreground.  The line of gravel shows the crest.


The battle was made more interesting by the Germans having to locate at least one of the three defending French units and the fog that meant visibility was limited to about 60 yards (six inches on the table).

We started off with moves planned on the map but soon had the figures on the table when the Germans encountered Jamie's platoon HQ in the small woods in the centre.


The forces of both sides marched to the sound of the guns and soon there was a fierce little fire-fight going on around the woods.


Those red pantaloons stand out nicely and provide a splash of colour to early WW1 games.  Of course the French army soon came to realise that they weren't great on a modern battlefield and replaced them with the 1915 bleu horizon uniform.


The French platoon commander and his bugler were shot down by the Germans but "Claude" (seen lying down in the woods above) proved to be a magnificent shot, killing three Germans before deciding that discretion had very clear merits and breaking off precipitately.

The last survivor of the platoon HQ having retreated off table and the main French squad having been "disrupted"...


... the Germans were able to march off to the west,  gaining a victory by 10 Victory Points to 4.  The campaign score is now 16:13 in favour of the French but the Germans have two attachment credits towards a future action.

Next game is The Mussy-la-Ville Road, set just an hour after the events in this game.

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