Taking a scenario from the excellent 2007 Rapid Fire - 'Battle of the Bulge' book, we have Peiper's last stand at La Gleize, on the 23rd December, as he found himself forced back from Stoumont by US 30th Infantry and 3rd Armored, toward La Gleize.
The Rapid Fire scenario for this battle is massive - with a lot of Shermans - most of which are going to need the dark cotton wool...and lighting effects...
A vehicle heavy scenario, it's the sort of thing that the Rapid Fire rules excels at - in terms of fast moving Armour, supported by infantry, with troops trying to 'break in' to the enemy position, pushing that all important morale check which could make or break the opposing force.
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| Tiger...lurking |
Having said that though, RF does sometimes, through its attention to detail, have lots of table clutter in terms of vehicles or elements that we won't ever use; it strives to provide them in support of historical authenticity. Would it be rash of me to admit we normally bin these elements of the OOB, on both sides? (Extra HQ vehicles, I'm lookin' at you...)
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| The actual Tiger II in La Gleize - photographed during my 1999 (yes , last century) trip...still there I believe. Also recommend Mike Reynold's 'The Devil's Adjutant' as best single book in this regard, for full history of Peiper's advance... | |
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| I used the by now familiar - three figure stands to operate as an entire (normally 8 figure) RF company - using dice to record casualties, thereby making the morale check indication easy and more seamless to work out. |
The attack relies on three prongs of US advance, against a prepared German defender - although 'key' - Peiper's tanks are 'out of gas' (cites major flaw of the entire offensive) and can not move once positioned - which is absolutely a nail-biter for the German player (hehe).
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| Some 76mm HV Shermans in evidence on the road - and lots, and lots, of sandbagged armour |
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| The 'road in' - three avenues of advance against a tough defence Looking left to right - is east to west | |
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| The Germans also have hidden units, which although immobile, merely by their existence, create flanking shot after flanking shot |
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| Those in the town have their flanks protected, and dedicated kill zones. |
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| US advance to the west - popping smoke down on the Tiger 2 spotted in the street - the German initial reactive fire was truly terrible; the Americans were VERY lucky |
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| ...well, up to a point |
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| With luck on their side - the easterly advance scores BIG with the 76mm AP - taking out a critical panther |
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| To the northwest, US infantry start a massive forest battle |
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| Early attempts to drive into La Gleize itself |
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| While on the other side of the town, the US hit a minefield |
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| 'POP SMOKE! POP SMOKE!!' |
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| Good hits from anti-tank gun... |
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| ...taking out a covered Panzer IV - the US had all the lucky shots early on |
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| ...that is until the flankers opened up... |
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| The forest battle intensifies...that flanking Panther (above) could end up in serious trouble |
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| East and West attacks meet on the outskirts of the town |
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| By now, US infantry has broken into the town, and finding a target rich environment...the flank of the Tiger II |
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| The SP 155mm, operating over open sights, gave good account of itself. |
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| North of the town now, and German defences are penetrated - infantry pouring into the area around the church |
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| ...with smoke and artillery support |
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| Assaulting the church - again US had the balance of the good rolls |
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| Germans move in the open, in an attempt to counter-attack and get destroyed by well observed US artillery |
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| US Armour now moving into La Gleize |
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| Though the Germans still have AA weapons that can make the infantry's life difficult |
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| Sherman 105 keeping the German Paras' heads down on the flank |
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| US reserves now in a position to charge the farm, though they are on the verge of a morale check.. |
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| ...speaking of which - so are the Germans in the town - the roll does not go well for them... |
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| All US attacks are now managing to converge on La Gleize and it's all over... |
A great game - and RF never lets us down.
Having said that - these rules may appear in our futures... ;)
Looking good as usual, Darren!
ReplyDeleteAfter all these years of looking for "the right" WW2 rules, should we just surrender and say RF has all the right stuff?
You know Steve...I'm not sure now. This battle took a loooong time - and a lot of weapon systems going off - and having to remember to do 'stuff' with same, and I know it's all simplified now ...So i was taking a look at the old Piquet 'Point of Attack' - and reasoning how the old Field of Battle ww2 mechanism (which it was a forerunner of) would focus the attention via card draw - and force the player to only look at one or two levels down in terms of command... watch this space, in case I do something maaad with an old set of disturbingly controversial rules - and something random like the Fall of Hong Kong lol...
DeleteA splendid looking game.
ReplyDeleteThank you Peter - a very long game though :)
DeleteAwesome, Darren, a helluva good looking fight and lots of fun! Was that ‘regular’ RF or RF Reloaded? And when you’re using your 3-figure bases, do you still require hits to come in multiples of two? And what’s Point of Attack got over on Field of Battle? Sorry for so many questions, but you always manage to get me look into new/other stuff. Hope all is well!
ReplyDeleteV/R,
Jack
Heeyyyyy Jack
DeleteGreat to see you back sir!
ok - lots to talk about :
it was RFR
The 3 figure bases have a dice tray and I use dice to tell me the casualties (i can change colour once it goes past 6) - this is also useful to tell the morale of the battalion at a glance. One base is a normal 8 or 10 figure company - but it works.
Yeah - i use the old method and just take the hits - the probabilities are skewed but it's the same for both sides.
Field of Battle ww2 - where a base is a company - followed Brent's version of Point of Attack. PoA is more full fat Piquet.
PoA has Three levels of play- a base can be a fire team, a squad, or a company - (or a single vehicle, two vehicles or an entire company - weird huh?)...in the older version this was a little different again with some man to man scaling too.
In FoB ww2 - you would roll a d10 say, vs your opponent's d8. In PoA it's always your dice vs a d6 - so Brent varied that a little for FoB...and the cards work very differently too - and don't even start me on the D20 initiative thing LOL - but I am going to change a few minor things and give them a go...
Hey buddy, it’s great to be back, and I’m super happy to see some of my old friends are still kicking ;)
DeleteThanks for the explanation on RFR, it all makes sense to me. Maybe give the infantry company base 10 or 12 hits (rather than 8) in order to make them a bit more resilient, or maybe it didn’t seem to matter?
Gotcha on POA, too, was just curious as you’ve always seemed to have gotten on well with FOB (they’ve certainly been some of my favorite batreps to read). And yeah, that’s an insane amount of scalability (team/squad/company), not sure I could trust’em ;)
Maybe Steve is right about Rapid Fire (and I certainly want to try them), but FOB just seems to be chock full of interesting mechanisms. Someday I’ll get to them.
V/R,
Jack
Thanks Jack - yeah , i was thinking about 10 or 12, rather than 8 - that makes a lot of sense. It means with 12 that the unit 'runs down' a red dice then a black dice - almost like two stages of hurt?
DeleteYes - Steve is definitely right LOL _ I am just experimenting to find the perfect set that doesn't exist, and I guess i got frustrated this time with sooo many tanks, mortars and infantry units on the table - our collective heads were sore. Maybe there is a threshold for RF battle size.
so FoB ww2 folled from Brent Oman after he did the 2nd edition of PoA...
The first ed of PoA by Bob Jones (with Brent and Cris Brown) covered these scales:
grand tactical (1"=100m) - 1 base is company
battalion (1"=25m) - 1 base is squad
skirmish (1"=3m) - i dude is 1 dude
The 2nd edition by Brent did this:
squad game : 1"=10yds - 1 base is a fire team - 1 vehicle is 1 vehicle
platoon game: 1"=40yds - 1 base is a squad - 1 vehicle is 1-2
battalion game: 1"=160 yards - 1 base is a company 80 men, or 12-18 tanks
Wild, but I am looking into it LOL
Wow, gotcha. Yeah, I suppose you can get overloaded in any game/set of rules; we wargamers aren’t known for our impulse control ;)
DeleteI was thinking about this, a British infantry brigade:
Company 1 stand
Battalion 4 stands
Brigade 12 stands
Squadron 1 stand
Regiment 3 stands
+Arty Battery
AT Battery
AA Battery
MG Company
Engineer Company
Arty Regiment (3 x Battery)
So 23 stands, just for a brigade (whether RFR as you’re doing it, or FOB), which sounds like an awful lot to me, even in 15mm! And FOB purports to do a division, so that’s gotta be 70-80 stands, per side!
It boggles my teeny, tiny mind ;)
I look forward to seeing what you get out of POA; for some reason I’m biased against it do to the wide range of scale options (how can a single set of rules cover from 1 man = 1 man or a fireteam all the way up to I base = 1 company, but watch, they’ll be the greatest ever! ;)
V/R,
Jack
Gents - thought I'd weigh in here - I've spent the better part of the last 20 years looking (in vain) for the holy grail of Napoleonics (with WW2 a close second). For my own part, im coming to terms that it's probably time to start playing more games and less time reading about rules in my rulebooks.
DeleteOn one hand I've always bought rules to learn more about novel mechanisms and perhaps mash them all together into "my own" set. At the end of the day, I want to put more weight on the "games played" side of the scale. Darren, you've played many fine games of RF and you know the rules through and through (and even added your own mods to it).
These days my rules are whatever gets me playing more, thumbing through rules less, and excited about painting more kit.
Okay off my soapbox!
Great points guys.
DeleteI think the problem with this scenario was the size/amount of units. ideally - it's a scenario requiring 4 or 5 players I think now (beer optional). The rules work well BUT - we played it with 2 people, and I found myself at one stage with: 14 Shermans to fire, artillery batteries to plot and fire , 2x81mm mortars, 3xHMGs, 2xMMGs to position, about 10 companies of infantry to shoot etc. - with movement co-ordinating before or after fire.
It was exhausting and I was reminded - that in games like Field of Battle (the ww2 version is very high level)...and the earlier Piquet - you can't do everything you want...and the fact that all that stuff could fire seemed a little convoluted. Now granted, I have seen this in RF before, but it just seemed magnified here.
Now I get that Piquet - before FoB...had really strange progressions between levels --- and this was always my bugbear (and Little Wars TV's issue) with Black powder - that you couldn't echo 200 years of combat with one ruleset - just as you can't do ww2's different levels of command with one ruleset.
Volley and Bayonet managed to reflect the time periods though - and I guess, since Piquet is based more on 'what happens or doesn't happen' in the game turn, rather than the mechanics - it can reflect the chaos of battle.
For me - the fact that all those units could fire, bearing in mind that we read about how many men preferred to stay alive by keeping their heads down, and the sheer friction of modern battle...seemed unrealistic - and that is the ONLY time i felt it in RF.
Now higher and lower level stuff , with the same set if rules would be epic, if it worked. RF has tried this with some older scenarios, but RF is ALWAYS fighting the same style of battle. No bad thing, unless you cross the size/scale threshold like we did yesterday.
And yes, trying the Piquet thing will be an experiment ...oh yeah , and I also have to try Eisenhower LOL
Steve - Do it, I need some more batreps to read! ;) Like you, I keep buying and reading more rules, and I’ve even tried a few games with the new rules, but each time I’ve ended up quitting halfway through because something about them wasn’t working for me…
DeleteDarren - Gotcha, and yeah, that’s a tremendous amount of stuff to try and control by yourself. I agree with your comment on RFR about the lack of friction; for me, particularly as a (primarily) solo gamer, gotta have it to throw some uncertainty into the game.
V/R,
Jack
You can’t keep a good Airfix Polythene vehicle down!
ReplyDeleteI know right? They are the original and the best, in God's Own True Scale ;) - 1/72 - none of this 20mm nonsense
DeleteJeffers Sighting!
Deletethe lesser spotted Jeffers is noted to comment upon really old Airfix finds :) It is a trait of the noble species (now if I still had the cardboard box for that vehicle, and i hadn't painted it, it could be worth a tenner on ebay :))
DeleteGreat looking game Duc. Nice toys especially the old self-propelled gun.
ReplyDeleteHAH - yes - referred to by Jeffers and 'men of a certain age' Jack...it''s a polethene Airfix classic . I just need an excuse to get all me old 1978 polythene Centurions on the table - a 1946 fictional episode pre BAOR perhaps LOL
DeleteHAH - yes - referred to by Jeffers and 'men of a certain age' Jack...it''s a polethene Airfix classic . I just need an excuse to get all me old 1978 polythene Centurions on the table - a 1946 fictional episode pre BAOR perhaps LOL
ReplyDeleteGood AAR but yes maybe tad large for 2 player even with something as 'simple' as RFR.
ReplyDeleteNice seeing the old Airfix ruined farmhouse in use along with the AFVs.
If doing POA I recommend trying D12 vs D12 for initiative (re-shuffle on 2nd tied roll) and with both sides getting to use the PIPs they roll (ie not all vs nothing).
POA would be slow with that size of game especially as you need to remember what units acted on top card showing in your deck (enemy may have used several cards in interim).
The polythene stuff is very nostalgic so many Centurions and M48s that came with Pontoon Bridge Set, Gun Emplacement and Atlantic Wall sets. I do recall them being issued as separate items (in little boxes) and expanding to include Tiger 1 and a Firefly (with bendy gun) which were a nice cheap alternative to full kits for a cash strapped teen :-)
Yes - a lot of that old aifix stuff hanging about. I have always wanted to cut down the fireflies I have to create a cheap desert 'fleet' - but it would be heresy...bendy guns notwithstanding.
DeleteRight - so yes - I was thinking about D12s as I think you mentioned before (also considered 2d6 but the curve doesn't work) - and yes, both getting to use their PIPs is excellent - so do you avoid then having 20 impulses to make up a 'phase'? I was tying with that idea too - it does not need to be 20 impulses ...
Yes, still a lot of units, but I am still convinced that RFR allows too much to happen in that scenario, also of course, want to try full fat ww2 piquet.
Will get you to call down soon for a game
Using D12 there is no Impetus clock as such as a Turn Ends/Deck Reshuffles on 2nd tied D12 roll or decks expended, but you just keep rolling D12s and using Pips until that occurs.
DeleteBeen years since I played POA but used this D12 method for a SYW game and it worked very well.
Any set not just RFR that allows 'unrestricted' actions/activity can creak under large numbers of units but we always want as many on table as possible :-)