A Game of Blitzkrieg Commander

 This past Friday night I had an opportunity to play in a Blitzkrieg Commander game at our club game night.  One of our club mates, John, has made some great simplifications of the rules and has really brought out the foundations that make it a great game. I like playing in John’s BKC games because it gives me great inspirations for my Cold War Commander games. 

We played a medium large game set during Operation Bagration in mid-1944 Germans defending against a small section of the huge Russian Offensive. There were four Russian commands against three German commands. 

The Germans had an infantry battalion with a couple of Panzer MkIV’s and an artillery FOO. They also had a Panzergrenadier battalion with Sdkfz 251 PG infantry and three Panthers. The final unit was three Tigers and command stand.  These troops were veterans and combined with the heavy armor of the Tigers, they were a real challenge for the Russians. 

The Russians had two units of T-34’s with Tank desant riders, a foot infantry battalion and two special units - an ISU-152 unit of four vehicles and a JS-2  unit of three tanks. These heavy armor vehicles are really intimidating when they show up on the table. 

The Russians entered from the left attacking to secure tactical points on the hill and in the town upper center of the photo.  My Tigers held the German left flank at the bottom of the photo.

My opponent, Dick, had never played these rules before but by turn three he was driving his infantry forward and used the small hamlet to screen his T-34’s from the long range fire of my Tigers. Dick played a great game and if we had played a few more turns, those Russian infantry units would have been a big problem for me. 

Gamemaster, John (r), contemplates the PzGr unit and Panthers with the other three Russian players (l-r) Kevin, Greg and Rob.  No one could solve the puzzle and the Panthers stopped the Russian left flank cold. 

AJ, the Panther and PzGr commander, sits innocently as his dice wipe out the Russian left flank.

My Tigers have taken some hits, but they don’t have to worry about flank shots so they maneuver to get fire lanes on the T-34’s. 

This sort of sums up the game. A Tiger sitting on one of the tactical objectives without a Russian in sight!

The Russians suffered losses from the long-range fire from the Tigers and Panthers and the center German player, John, called in some devastating artillery fire. Ultimately, the Russians did secure one of the tactical goals and killed several German stands.  We agreed at the end of the night that it was a German victory although probably only a marginal one. 

All-in-all it was a great game and I learned a lot of lessons that I am sure will help me improve my CWC games in the future. Many thanks to John for a great evening.  

New Units for Chocolate Box Wars

 My painting table has definitely been slanted towards CBW armies lately, especially focused on American Civil War (ACW) Union and Confederates. Here are some photos of my recent figure painting.

In CBW a command stand option in the army build is called a “Chief of Staff”.  Here is my Confederate Chief of staff. A Perry Miniatures artillery officer. I painted this myself. 

For the Union I added a dismounted cavalry unit that I can use as my Light Infantry selection or even a Rapid Fire unit given their carbines.

The other stand of Union dismounted cavalry. 

Staying on the Union cavalry theme, here is my “Uhlans” option for the Union Army. These are the 6th Pennsylvania Volunteers- also known as “Rush’s Lancers”. I have always been fascinated by this unit and CBW is the perfect chance to do them up and get them on the table!

I hope you like these units. I now have three complete armies for CBW - Union, Confederate and British N. American Interventionists. I am rounding out some additional units so I can fill all of the available army building options so stay tuned for more photos in the (hopefully) near future. 

Hungarian (Or was that Romanian?) Goulash!

 Two Saturdays in a row - two CBW era games!  It has been quite a couple of game days at Ed’s house playing a new skirmish scenario from Ed M. of Ed’s Wargame Meandering’s .  We have really taken a shine to One Hour Skirmish Wargames by John Lambshead.  

This is a set of simple rules based on card draws to establish movement and “action” parameters for each figure in your force as well as combat resolution.  You can find an excellent description of the game here at Dale’s Wargames.  Ed has done his usual great job of summarizing the game into an easy to follow Quick Reference Sheet (QRS) and we have made some slight modifications to the rules as this is the Age of Rifles so weapons and troop types have a bigger impact on warfare than the author envisioned in his original rules.  While being slightly more detailed, the modifications we made do not make gameplay that much more complex.  

Over the past couple of weekends Ed and I had the first play-through of his modifications and then we added in our friend AJ of AJ’s Wargaming Blog to help with the play testing. We had a great time playing through Ed’s scenario to see if we could “break” it. We found a few places that it needed to be tweaked, but overall the game is a real challenge from either side. Even when the dice gods…. I mean the card gods go against you there is still a chance that you can pull out a win from either side. I think this is a really good indication of a solid game system. Both players should always feel like they have a chance of winning. Of course that that is also a function of good scenario design and Ed has come up with a good one in this case. 

Set on the Romanian/Hungarian border in the mid to later 1800’s, this game features a mix of light troops coming to blows over a frontier telegraph office. Ed has done a marvelous write up of one of our games with links to his play sheets and explanations and photos. 

Here are a couple of photos I took when Ed and I ran through our play test games:

I start to move forward. My forces are on the right with the telegraph building in the center left side of the photo. Ed has already dropped one of my Romanians in the forest area center of the photo. Unfortunately for Ed, he killed one of my Dourabanti Militia. His fellow militiaman would not take kindly to this.

The other militia man begins an odyssey of death and destruction which will be written about through the annuals of Romanian military history!  In this phot he is hidden under the tree by the hill where he has just despatched a Hungarian Chasseur. 

Here is the aftermath of the Dourabanti’s continued rampage. He has charged towards the telegraph office the red markers showing the gory trail of his fury. Now he is in the telegraph office with another victim and the Hungarians have one chance to evict him. 

The end of the game.  The Hungarians were unable to defeat the Dourabanti militiaman and he ended up smashing the transmission equipment and chocking up a “W” for the Romanians. 

I do not have any photos from the day AJ and I played our games. To me this is a good indicator of a fun game - we were having such a good time we forgot the photos!  Another point - the game is truly a fast play system as AJ and I were able to get in two games in one afternoon!  This system has some real potential for many different eras and scenarios. I am really looking forward to more games in the near future. Don’t forget to check out Ed’s blog and AJ’s blog - it is well worth the time.