Chain of Command at Barrie's

Jim's Brits v. Barrie's Panzer Grenadiers

Scenario 2: The probe - Brits attacking.  The Brit objective was to get one team across the table & off the far edge.  The table being at Barrie's is big step up from my utilitarian style.

In the scouting phase the Brits gained a small advantage with a better spread of jumping off points.   The Brits were allowed some extra support for the scenario & chose a Preliminary Bombardment.  This meant that in the first turn, the Germans were likely to be delayed in deployment - requiring a 4+ to deploy each unit.  This did delay the German deployment and gave the Brits a good start which they used to get some of their force down & start advancing before any Germans arrived.

The first German squad was deployed on the left behind the fence behind the thatched building.  The Brits concentrated the fire of two squads on it and broke it with small loss to themselves.

While the fire fight was happening on the left, the rest of the Germans were deployed behind the hedges in the rear (they had to deploy within 6" of the established jumping off points).  The third Brit squad with the CO then moved as fast as they could to the right, down the road, through the field and behind the wood.  The Germans didn't get as good command dice as the Brits and were unable to do anything to stop this move to the rear and the Brits got to the table edge and gained a pretty quick victory.

The battle went a bit quicker than the last one now we had a better handle on the rules.  The Brits won with a good plan backed up with good command dice - which they exploited to the full.  It was an interesting exercise each phase to decide what to do with the hand you rolled, and there is clearly scope for skill as well as luck, but I remain sceptical about the connect between the command dice system and reality. 

The patrol phase is an interesting concept and provides variety to the standard scenarios in that they could all start off in many different ways.  But it also produces a sameness in that all scenarios start with it.  I can see something similar being used to good effect in scenarios for other rules.

We intend to do another Bolt Action next to help make a fair comparison.