A one sided WW2 campaign game

Today I played out a very one-sided campaign game. The Commonwealth forces had just secured a victory in their last limited attack in the campaign were on the verge of surrounding a German occupied zone. The Germans now quickly put in a limited attack to counter any encirclement.

The game being played is the counterattack on advancing Commonwealth forces (red arrow)

The dice generated terrain was going to be somewhat problematic for the defending Commonwealth forces with terrain points even split 10 points on either half of the table. The defending forces selected the table edge with terrain features essentially split on either flank, but close to their base edge for re-enforcements. A couple of units were pushed up close to the fields in the centre and were to fallback to the woods after attempting to delay the advancing German forces.

Game set up

The make up on the each force had not been kind to the Commonwealth. They rolled a 2 and 3 with two average dice added this total to the standard 6 units the defender gets. The German roll was 3 and 4 added to 12 for limited attacking forces. So I had a game of 19 attacking units starting their attack at 10am against 11 defending.

It was going to be one of those campaign games where the game result was going to be a forgone conclusion. The only highlight for the defenders was the attack was starting late in the day and a delay in re-enforcements for the attacker could mean some of their forces would not participate in the game other than to secure terrain close to their base edge.

Attacking motorised and mechanised German forces push through the centre splitting the defending force.

The initial deployment for the Germans had all there motorised infantry, armoured infantry and tank units starting on the table. These units quickly swept away defending Commonwealth units in the table centre. Sending them in a hurried retreat to the woods. The few defenders were desperate for re-enforcements, which were delayed in arriving and allowed the attacking forces to concentrate their attacks eliminating a unit almost every turn.

Game end an easy win to the attackers

While re-enforcements were delayed for both sides, the delay impacted the defenders most, and by 5pm the Germans had won convincingly.

After this game I am having some thoughts for future campaign rule adjustments. Particularly for a game like this where Commonwealth forces had very little hope of a victory against the attacking Germans. At the moment games are decided by points for terrain occupied or controlled. It's a simple win or lose outcome.

I am now considering having a win and outright win. An outright win would be where one side has double the terrain points of the other. In this event the loser would lose campaign supply points. So had that rule been in place for this game, the Commonwealth forces would have been be prepared to sacrifice some terrain in an attempt to hand on to key terrain to avoid an outright loss. Hopefully making for a game which both sides had something they could get out of the game.