Chain of Command - More Russians and Germans!

Ziggy and I put CoC back on the tabletop last evening. It's been a while since our last battle and CoC makes for a rather entertaining few hours. I took the Soviets as usual and Zig commanded the German platoon. The Soviets were holding a bridge at the east end of the table that the Germans wanted to capture. The Germans were reinforced by a StuG IIIF and a 75mm infantry gun. The Soviets took a T-34/76 and a 50mm mortar as their support.

The grey circles show the evil Nazi jump-off points. The red circles show the evil Commie jump-off points. The one on the bridge at the bottom of the frame is the German objective. Z has already deployed one platoon.

I get a good first roll and deploy a squad in the house up at the cross roads and my T-34 rolls in.

The German assault gun roll in.

The forces are really starting to build up now, I get another squad and my mortar. Zig also has another squad arrive as well as the infantry gun.

The light infantry gun fires and immediately kills two of my troops in the house. This would become a recurring theme.

I get squad 2 moved up to the edge of the woods to provide some return firepower. My mortar managed to kill one of the gun crew, but the gun was still pounding the house like there was no tomorrow.

Finally, the squad in the house has had enough and reaches their breaking point.

But moments later, the lead German squad also is pushed past its breaking point and also runs!

At that, I burned six Chain of Command points and ended the turn, sacrificing my broken squad in order to eliminate the German squad. The broken German squad was very near their Senior Leader and would have been able to rally with little effort. Ending the turn was, I think, prudent.

At the start of the next turn, the damned gun got back to work and started pounding my squad on the rise which broke in no time. A magnificent 18" rout roll qualified them for the next Summer Olympics!

The German Panzerschreck team at long last had managed to make its way forward and loosed a rocket at my T-34. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it was a miracle of miracles that the tank survived with nary a scratch! The T-34 returned fire, killing one of the team and routing the other.

The godforsaken light infantry gun zeroes in on blue squad defending the bridge with predictable results. On the plus side, yellow squad which ran a country mile earlier finally rallied and got their act together.

The leIG18 has done this. German machine guns and the StuG might have accounted for one or two of these kills.

The T-34 and StuG exchange fire. A lot. both vehicles are blessed in the armor department and cursed in the "accurate gunner" department. The German infantry "mans up" and charges across open ground next to my tank.

The T-34 gunned down a couple of the Krauts but the accursed 'Schreck which had rallied and made its way back to the fight finally got a rocket to stick and burned up the tank. The T-34 had already soaked 2 rockets and 4-5 hits from the StuG. It was easily "machine of the match."

With that, the game was over. I had just a mortar team left. (The infantry gun had wiped out the remains of yellow squad and my Senior)

So, yeah. That IG18 which was thrown is as a "oh what the hell, let's see how this works" absolutely crushed my platoon and as it turned out, was pretty well immortal. I hit it at least 12 times with my mortar, occasionally getting a shock or the odd kill, to no avail. I hit it with rifles and machine guns countless times and couldn't get a hit to stick. It was infuriating to say the least. The rest of the Germans were easy enough to kill but that gun was touched by the almighty and because I threw so many bullets at it, the rest of the Germans fared rather well.

The game was a hell of a lot of fun and made for a great evening of toy soldiers. Give it a go if you haven't already!