Skirmish!

After moving my 1:1 WWII collection into its new storage the other day, I was itching to put them on the table again.

A randomly generated terrain layout, provided by the tables in Platoon Forward!  The scenario was simple, and based loosely on one from Britton Publisher's Solitaire Soldiers: a British paratrooper squad with a Vickers team in support, was to reconnoiter and secure a small. The enemy was believed to have abandoned the area.

Green chits are possible LMG fire team, Marx farm animals are possible security team.

 I wasn't sure  what I was in the mood for rules-wise, so I broke out the tried and true, One Hour Skirmish Wargames. "My" squad would be the British.

The enemy consisted of a handful of German in two groups: an lmg fire team (lmg, assistant, rifleman, and smg armed leader) and  rifle/security group(smg leader, another smg, and 3 rifles).

To keep the location of the enemy hidden from myself, I used blinds. I would only check a blind if either the British successfully made an attack against a marker - treated as a spotting attempt(OHSW does not have spotting rules for hidden units) - or if the marker had LOS to the British it might want to take advantage of.

Scouts move up. To their right, some movement in the woods turned out to be nothing.

To their left, however, was a German LMG.

Spotting it didn't prevent prevent disaster.

Members of the British squad move to engage the LMG in a firefight, trying to suppress it. Others hustled to reach a better firing position in the yellow building - using the burning StuG for cover.

The LMG is quieted. At a cost.

More Germans arrive.

The yellow building would change hands a few times.

The British leader(3) screamed for the Vickers team to hurry up and was killed shortly after.

The Vickers team moves up and sets up at the corner of the StuG. This gave them a field of fire including both buildings.

All kinds of insanity happening now - the Germans strongly contested control of the yellow building and still clung to their position in the woods.

Popping around the corner, a private fires a shot at the burly German officer.

The officer kills three paratroopers in revenge.

With the rest of his squad eliminated, the German officer fell back, while the Brits, down to a Vickers and a rifleman, awaited reinforcement from their platoon and prepared for a counter attack.

After a slow start reacquainting myself with the rules, the game turned into a fun little encounter. I admit it did feel a little silly at the end - the German leader kept drawing higher than the German casualties, as did the Brits, despite losing both their Leader(3) and Leader(1), so neither side, despite massive casualties, broke. I decided to call the game rather than come down to two figures slugging it out.

I left the table set up, reset and played it again later.  No pictures as it wasn't worth it.

The unfortunate British never got much past their starting positions - despite winning almost every initiative, they had a run of Aces, twos and threes for the activation points, while the Germans had high cards and could do as they pleased. Both sides were hitting but neither side was knocking figures out of the fight, so after 12 turns, which was far more than it merited, I called that game and reset yet again but I'll save that for the next post.