SCS It Never Snows: Massacre at Osterbeek

I solo-played one of the small scenarios included in SCS It Never Snows, the Standard Combat Series treatment for operation market garden. The scenario lets me play through the defence of Osterbeek where airborne forces desperately try to maintain a foothold east of the Rhine. Instead of a bunch of photos I combined them into a single gif animation to see if the action is easier to make out that way. It would be nicer to have better image alignment but see if you like it:

To be honest, it was a pretty dull affair to play. A small scenario with very little manoeuver but lots of fighting which isn't that interesting in itself. The allies tried their best to maintain a link to the ferry landing (the black arrow) while the Germans attempted to cut them off. The allies came very close to losing that hex a couple of times, but in the end it was the only position they held. They got all their reinforcements across but the Germans destroyed the rest. In the end, the allies had just that one hex but won the scenario because the allies win if they have any units on the other side at scenario end. I'm sure Monty would have been pleased!

We are scheduled to play the full market garden campaign early next year, I'm excited to see how that works out!

SCS Day of Days

A month ago I had the opportunity to participate in my first hex&counter wargame that could be described as a "monster" game. It's MMP's Day of Days, a fresh Standard Combat Series game focusing on the first ten days of the Normandy campaign. The map scale is about 700 meters per hex and the counters represent mostly company-sized forces. Four mapsheets and a ton of cardboard on top!

It's a struggle to present the game in a way that you, my dear readers might enjoy even slightly, so I will only outline the main developments or lack of them per turn. There's a lot to cover even in the main points so I hope the photos make some sense into it. We managed to play the first 9 turns during the weekend in some 22 hours of gameplay including two hours to set up.

Turn 1 + Turn 2 (D-Day begins)

During the first two turns of the game, there isn't much for the players to do other than to roll the dice. Very little choice involved. Big piles of troops are moved ashore and then put back into their plastic bags.

The landing parties at Omaha Beach have to deal with a lot of German strongpoints

US paradrop area and Utah Beach

During the allied paradrops, there was a lot of dispersion for the US forces. The preliminary bombardment went well for the  US, not so much for the British, who did not receive any air support. After the first two landing waves and a ton of dice rolling, Utah beach was clear and Omaha contested. Gold, Juno and Sword were clear also, although there were plenty of strongpoints still close to Sword.

Sword Beach

Juno and Gold

Turn 3

The third landing wave come ashore. The British and especially the Canadians make excellent progress inland, but Sword beach remains bogged down with massive stacks of counters cluttering the area. The British Paratroopers spread out northeast of Caen and take Pegasus Bridge.

Pegasus Bridge was an easy grab, but important. Without this bridge, the British airborne can only trace their supply to their dropzones.

The yanks make good progress inland from Utah. At Omaha the fighting continues, but German strongpoints are surrounded and put out of supply. Pointe Du Hoc mounts a good defence without German losses.

The first German reinforcements arrive swiftly using road movement. Their advance catches some British paras by surprise as they are surrounded.

The German commander plots his moves

Turn 4

The allies get plentiful air support which is put to good use. The more allied forces are landing ashore. Now all the landing areas are clear of Germans save a couple of isolated strongpoints. The allies hit the scattered German defenders hard and the German reinforcements are busy plugging the gaps in their defences. The Germans are also effective in counterattacking some British advance units trying to push as deep inland as possible. A single British tank unit rolls into Caen, but we later found out we had broken an activation rule there. D-Day ends.

I cannot overstate how hard some of these stacks were to handle. Good thing the British spread out from Sword Beach quickly and it was no longer an issue.

Turn 5 (D+1)

Lots of marching about on the British front. You might guess I'm playing the Brits as I have very little time to check on how the Americans are doing. Long lines of battle are forming throughout the map and the Allied advance is slowing down. The Germans defend stubbornly and the British are unable to mount effective assaults. The German players get their long awaited SS troops and finally have some real muscle to put against the Allies.

The US paras get busy

Battlelines are beginning to form near Caen. The SS halt the British advance towards Caen.

Turn 6

The Allies find gaps in the German lines and around flanks and start to pour through. Dangerous bulges in the line are starting to form. Road marches into the rear become a concern for the Germans. The British start to turn the left flank of the German line mid-map in hedgerow country.

A breakthrough of US troops near Omaha, a stalemate elsewhere. Americans are attacking toward Cherbourg. The Allied lack of activations is a hindrance.

Two groups of German units are surrounded and become out of supply.

You can see where the Allied forces are turning the German flank on the middle-to-right side of the picture.

Turn 7: (D+2)

The British continue to turn the German flank, but the Germans deploy a more effective, defensive depth. Fighting north of Caen is a stalemate and the opposing lines become static. Utah front is stable, Carentan is now in reach.

Breakthroughs near Omaha

Turn 8:

              

US forces attack Carentan. The British move in to the countryside in the mid map, blocking several roads. Baeux becomes out of supply Fighting in the mid-map hedgerows is slow, but slight progress made. The allies make dangerous use of road movement to move deep into occupied territory.

The British airborne have been fighting a losing battle against the SS. Now they receive armored support. The Airborne retreat out of contact and the SS receive an artillery pounding. The Tanks move in and break the line. Then they achieve an exploitation breakthrough and wreak havoc on the SS artillery. The Germans scramble to plug the gaping hole so made in the line northeast of Caen.

The Airborne retreat to let the tanks attack the artillery-battered Germans..

The Germans are pushed back and the tanks overrun and exploit..

..to great effect!

Turn 9: (D+3)

The Allied tanks continue their breakthrough northeast of Caen and reach the outskirts of the city.  Mid map, the allies make grand gains by using road movement to capture huge amounts of territory. Some three kampfgruppen are stuck out of supply near Bayeux. Carentan is almost captured, St Lo captured, Villers Bocage captured.

We had to end the game at this point before the German half of the turn, but the result was not in question anymore. The allies had achieved major breakthroughs in the German lines and it was doubtful if the Germans would be able to turn the tide even in a longer game.

The map at game end from left..

..to the center..

..and finally to the right.

Post-battle thoughts:

An exhausting but also rewarding game! We had a good group of players and the whole weekend was enjoyable. I liked the game so much that I went online to buy It Never Snows right away :)

As for the strategy involved, the pressure is on the Germans. The Allies have plenty of troops to just keep hammering away at any weak points they discover even though they can't brute force their way through well defended areas very easily. The Germans, however, are badly outnumbered and have to play their defence smart in order to stay alive. They need to deploy deep and sparse and try not to get swamped. If they try to "hold the line" in one place, they will be hammered by the built-up Allied superiority and lose. There is plenty of bocage to to retreat to however, and the German players have to take advantage of that. Our Germans learnt their lessons and caught on, but it was too late and the campaign was lost. It would be interesting to play this again with the same group and see if the Germans could fare better.

Also, be wary of Road Movement! The German player has to take extra care not to leave any roads open for enemies to march through. The road movement rules allow for simply ridiculous marches into enemy territory and can really ruin your day. I think these rules need an overhaul as the Road Movement rules lead to some pretty unrealistic situations where the Allies can march entire divisions via small country roads into the rear of the German army. This is a minor gripe in a very good game though.

SCS Karelia 44

I haven't played any Hex & Counter games in a while. I'll post this so this doesn't turn into a 100% miniatures blog :)

Finnish troops hold the line (SA-Kuva)

At the end of August we'll be playing the new Standard Combat Series monster title from MMP, Day of Days. I have little experience with the system so me and another guy who will participate in the game thought we're going to need some practice beforehand. I have on SCS game, Karelia 44, and have played one scenario from it by myself before, so we put the whole game in the table this time.

The scenario is set during the 1944 Summer offensive of the Soviet army against Finland., which happened at the same time as the Normandy offensive. For historical details, check the wiki.

My camera hadn't recharged when we began the game so I don't have a picture of the opening setup. The pictures start from the Finnish first turn after the Soviets have launched their first "prepared offensive". The prepared offensive is a special turn the Soviet player can activate every three turns or so, giving him a lot of extra artillery power, better offensive strength and greater mobility.

Commentary is in the photos as usual.

We had to stop as it was past one AM on a weekday. We wouldn't be able to resume the game later because there was no space to leave the game open. At this stage the game was still undecided. The VT line was about to break and the Finnish army had taken a lot of damage, but they were far from beaten. The Soviets still had a long way to go in the way of victory points. Oddly enough, Stalin's patience was still good as it hadn't decreased a single time yet (the Soviet leader's patience is tested every round an it has a 50% change of decreasing. When the boss point meter reaches zero, the game ends and VP's are calculated. This forces the Soviet player to rush forward as capturing the lines is the only way aside from disbanding troops that replenishes the meter). It would have been interesting to see how this would develop. The game did however reveal that the boss point mechanic is a low point in the design of the game as a relatively few rolls on a D6 have a huge impact on the tempo of the game.

Battle of Tali-Ihantala anniversary game (Solitaire to learn SCS)

I've been meaning to learn Multiman Publishing's Standard Combat Series for a while now. I own Karelia '44, which is a module detailing the major Soviet offensive on the Karelian isthmus during the Continuation War in the summer of 1944. As the anniversary is upon us, I thought it was high time to give it a go by myself.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Continuation War (can't blame you), Finland and the Soviet Union had been at war since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, yet the war had been slowed down to a stalemate for a couple of years. In the summer of 1944, to coincide with the Normandy landings, the Soviets launched a major offensive in Karelia to finally break Finland. The scale of the offensive caught the Finnish by surprise and they started a fighting withdrawal across the Karelian isthmus to buy enough time for reinforcements to arrive from other parts of the front.

There was a succession of fortified lines on the isthmus. When a line broke, the Finns retreated to the next one to regroup. The first two lines were broken in the opening days of the offensive and the city of Viipuri lost. The defensive line the Finns now occupied, VKT line, was not the last in the succession, but if it would fall, it was unlikely that the last one would hold either. In the Battle of Tali-Ihantala, the gradually reinforced Finns finally managed to stop the Soviet offensive. Failure would surely have meant that Finland in it's entirety would have fallen behind the iron curtain. The Soviet attack stalled as all available reinforcements were directed to the push on Germany. Peace was ultimately made and Finland remained independent.

Karelia '44 contains scenarios to cover the entire summer offensive, but I opted to play the small Tali-Ihantala scenario. It was small enough to fit in the lid of the game box when I made a copy of the area, which was nice as I didn't finish the game all in one go.

Opening setup of the Tali-Ihantala scenario. The Soviets outnumber the Finns by a wide margin, but the Finns have water obstacles to protect their flanks, a defensive line to get a bonus in defence and reinforcements on the way. The Soviets must also reduce troops on the field depending on Stalin's whims.

When the "boss point counter" nears zero, the Soviet player must reduce troops on the table to appease the high command or the scenario ends. Here's the reduction to keep the Soviet player going for one more round.

SCS seems really simple to learn for a hex & counter game. Basic movement and combat are as simple as they come and won't give any trouble for anyone who's played anything similar before. The effective use of "exploitation capable" forces takes some plays to master though. These troops are able to mount more than one attack in a turn and are able to exploit gaps made by other troops during the same turn (hence the name). This capability is mostly for tanks, mechanized infantry and elite formations.

There are a lot of module specific rules and I think these are the ones that took most learning. Finns in Karelia '44 are able to make some extra actions and so on, and some rules override the normal series rulebook. Nothing too difficult but it takes time to learn how to use them properly. Here's how I did:

The Soviets easily drive back the Finns on their right flank but are unable to cut them off from the main force.

The Soviets play their only "prepared offensive", which allows them more efficient artillery barrages and additional exploitation capability. The Soviets fail to make any gains on that turn.

Two turns of pounding and the Finns do break however and the defensive line between Tali and Ihantala is broken through. The Finns retreat once more to a bottleneck between the lakes.

The Soviets cannot be stopped at this point.

I called the game at turn six as there was little more than artillery left on the Finnish side.

The game took me six turns and was a pretty straightforward slugfest. The Soviets hammer the Finnish defensive line and the Finns try to plug any gaps that appear. The victory conditions of the scenario oddly state that the soviet player needs 8 victory points to win the scenario when the boss points run out, but this doesn't make any sense as the Soviet player is the attacker and he already has the requisite points to win at the start of the scenario! Anyway, I reasoned that the Soviet player has to exceed the historical result to win and set out to see whether the Finnish line could be overcome.

For the first three or four turns it looked like the Soviets didn't have a chance, even with all their numerical superiority. The protected Finnish flanks and good defences meant that it was really difficult to get a good odds ratio against the Finnish anywhere. Even the prepared offensice just fizzled into nothing and the red army had to reduce troops three times because the boss points kept dropping. At some point the Soviet luck turned however and the Finnish line was suddenly broken in two or three places at the same time. This signaled the end of the battle.

All in all, the scenario was not very good gameplay-wise, even if the history behind the battle is interesting to me. It gave me a chance to try out the SCS rules but there was very little manoeuvering to do and I couldn't really give the exploitation rules a good go. Maybe the whole campaign will cement the rules for me. I have a chance to start the full scenario on vassal against another player so maybe I'll give it a go.