CoC Airborne vs Fallschirmjäger around Carentan

Overview of the battlefield

Nick and myself first tried Chain of Command or CoC last year because Bolt Action wasn't giving us enough "crunch" in our WWII gaming and although BA is a good game it just wasn't enough anymore. We liked Chain of Command so much we decided it would now become our go to WWII rule set and fact we are so hooked we haven't played anything but CoC since trying it which has been months now with no end in sight. I've always been an avid Dark Ages/Horse and Musket player/painter with a interest in WWII, but this game has now really lit my hair on fire for WWII with all kinds of future plans for the period! Now will WWII overcome my love of North American conflicts then probably not, but it sure has moved up the ladder of significance.

If your looking for a game that makes you feel like your in the boots of a platoon or squad leader then Chain of Command does it better then anything I've played so far and I thoroughly recommend it if you haven't had a chance to play it yet.  Nick even commented it's the first game that makes him feel like wargamer and not just a figure painter who sometimes plays wargames.

The Rules!

Now that we have had some games under our belts we started looking at doing a campaign. We decided to use 28mm for most our games and 15mm for any scenario's with a lot of armor. I have US Airborne I want to use and Nick wanted to use his newly painted Fallschirmjäger so we started looking around for some pint sized action featuring theses adversaries and Nick found a nice campaign on the Too Fat Lardies forum called "Rendezvous with Destiny" by Will3T(sorry don't know his proper name) featuring the 101st Airborne and the 2nd Fallschirmjäger in and around Carentan which was just the ticket! I've added a page to the top of my blog to help me keep track of the campaign and add a little detail to it if your interested.

A coke bottle supervises the battlefield.

Our first game was "Charge at Ingouf farm" which went so fast I didn't take any pictures and all the pictures you see are from our second game. The scenario was a Probe scenario requiring the Airborne to get a unit off the enemies table edge while running over mostly open ground for over half the way(Gulp!). Nick's intent was to bring his FJ's on directly into close assault with my Airborne rather then shoot me as I came in, but the gamble didn't work as I rolled a double move and over ran his jump off point thus denying him a chance to deploy and covered the other FJ jumping points in smoke making it a pretty easy and quick escape for the Airborne.

Black is FJ's and Green is Airborne

The next game and the one featured in this entire post was "Fighting in the Hedges" and is a flank attack by the FJ's. Black is FJ's and Green is Airborne. I had 2 Squads of my own Airborne at 1 and 3 and support Airborne squads at 4 and 2 with Plt Sargeant Tellman and Bazooka at 2 and Lt. LaMarch  at 3. Nick had a squad of FJ's at 1 moving to assault my Airborne 1 and another FJ squad at  2 exchanging fire with my Airborne 2. In between these he had a senior leader. At 3 he had one of his own FJ squads, a support FJ squad, senior leader and support heavy MG all exchanging fire with my parartroopers at 4 and 3.

FJ's exchanging fire with my Airborne in the buildings.

In a nutshell the FJ's at the hedges exchanged fire with the Airborne in the buildings each trying to suppress the other through covering fire with the FJ heavy machine close to being removed. In the Orchard the FJ's again exchanged fire with the Airborne to little effect on each. The game decider came when the FJ's moving down the side of the orchard assaulted my Airborne behind a hedge which resulted in an almighty bloody melee with saw the entire FJ squad wiped out including it's junior leader and the Airborne only coming out a little better with the loss of 9 paratroopers and 1 junior leader leaving only the LMG crew of 2 left! This left one of the FJ's senior leader exposed who was promptly cut down by the LMG. At this point the FJ's morale dropped dangerously low and Nick decided a withdrawal was the prudent thing to do.

Another shot of the FJ's firing on my Airborne in the houses. Along with his FJ's you can also see Nick's marker which are both great!

It was a truly terrific game and I'm very curious to see if my Airborne can continue to push back the FJ's, but the next game is a night attack by the FJ's and I have no idea how that's going to turn out. While I can pump out a good amount of firepower the FJ's can really pour it on with 2 MG's per squad so I'm really curious how this will play out as all shooting will not happen except at close range (18in.) unless a flare is used, but that requires a chain of command dice so not often if at all.

My Airborne in the ruined farm house keeping the FJ at bay led by Sgt Hardwell and Lt. LaMarch 

Another shot of Airborne in the ruined farm. I really do need to work on my cobblestone roads!

I've of course started to see the short comings of my terrain and will need to paint up a lot more roads
and build a proper orchard, canal. Ah well that's wargaming always more to do!

Airborne engaging the FJ's trying to outflank the orchard

Front shot Airborne locking and loading and taking aim on seeing the FJ's moving in!

I've also noticed I need to paint up some more Airborne troops as I need more then I expected plus some armor here and there......

Assaulting FJ force

Quick overhead look.

This campaign will probably last us a couple months then on to the next one. Still plenty more to do in Normandy and we have most the troops we need for it, but always need more

FJ's moving through the orchard.

Nick moving to check the range for his assault.

Not sure where we will go after Normandy, but we may go into the vast expanse of Russia as we have some of the troops needed and are curious to see how the two match up.

Thanks for viewing!