AAR part one Table was six by four feet & we played lengthways. The terrain which was knocked up quite quickly consisted of a number of corrugated cardboard stepped hills under an army blanket. Most of it counted as normal going but it was dotted with shell holes and areas of broken ground most of which featured large shell holes. the objective was an area of broken ground on a rise with a "h" shaped trench on it and two sandbagged weapons emplacements. there was no wire owing to my not having time to make any of it. This did not detract or affect the game however.
Game started with both sides on blinds & all the blinds on the table the British had one blind per section & the Germans had one per group with two additional dummies.
At the start of the game there was a thick ground mist which limited visibility to twenty four inches but which would lift on the third turn of the blank card.
Steve split his force into two & I thought he had made a horrible mistake when both the Sergeant & Second lieutenant went with the same half of the force.
Initial moves where quite quick owing to the mist though Steve in his usual way did keep asking rules questions I had to look up & be a bit rules lawyer-ish, Once we both got the hang of it things & the action hotted up stopped. His main moan was not being able to do all the stuff he wanted to in a turn <LOL>
Eventually the lead section of British hove out of the mist which persisted, the blank card came up in both the first turns and then not for the next about five, on the British right. Tried to spot the German blind on the right and failed to do so despite taking two actions and its corporal helping.
The German blind card came up next & I unblinded the rifle group they had failed to spot, spotted the British section & opened fire, hit three times to no effect, turn ended & the first card to come out was the one for the spotted British section which turned out to be the Lewis gun section it opened up on the rifle squad and promptly killed half of it and shocked the remainder to the point of bottling out. This was a patten which repeated itself through the game, the Germans shot like they had never picked up a weapon before & the British like they where the 1914 BEF of legend. The turn ended at this point.
The next card out was poor
Matus who used it to rally the shattered group so they stayed round a little longer but gave up when the following card was the Lewis section's
Corporal Branston who used his turn to have his squad continue the obliteration of
Matus down to two men & himself they lost their bottle never to recover it (Ran off). Still the next card out was the German Blinds card so I deployed all the German troops in the trench & machine gun nest to shoot only to discover that the pesky lewis gunners where still under the cover of the heavy mist, so the British manoeuvred into position under cover of this mist for the next two turns. Whilst the Germans sat and waited until it cleared under catastrophically effective blind fire from
Corporal Dove's Rifle Grenadiers. Then the mist cleared........
To be continued
Ginger
