THE BATTLE OF BLOODY GULCH.

The Farmhouse viewed from the Western woods

Had a game of Battlegroup with a friend from the Alumwell Wargames Society on Saturday gone. Set around the German counter attack after the initial battle of Carentan. The scenario is actually in the Battlegroup Overlord Book and it plays out as it was on the day, early morning of 13/6/44. Interestingly the area remains largely unchanged to this day. I decided to take control of the German forces, and wish I had taken more notice of the historical records. To be honest the game pretty much played out as was in reality.

The Stugs Capture objective 2

The board has 3 objectives and the Germans start by holding objective 1 a small building on the South West corner. The Yanks initially hold Objective No 3, the farmhouse and the Germans deploy Fallschirmjaeger along the Western edge of the board. These are quickly reinforced by 3 Stug IIIs

The 1st Stug falls

 

Then again in turn 3 another 3 Stug IV's and     a  Pz Grenadier platoon from the Western edge. Turn 4 see further Pz Grens Platoon and an AT Tank Pak 40 on Western edge. To win I needed to hold position 2 a junction on the South East corner and capture and hold objective 3 from the Yanks.

The remaining Stugs ambushed

The American Paratroopers were holding on by the skin of their teeth against a lot of German armour, but turn 6 and 7 see 2 troops of Shermans ten in total coming on from the Eastern board. As I decided to send most of my Stugs down the road they were mere target practice for the late arriving Shermans and the lack of turrets allowed them to be fired on at near point blank range with no chance returning fire.

Off board mortars and Artillery also played an important part, the Americans to begin with causing devastation amongst the pinned Fallschirmjaeger, and again later on when the Germans zeroed in on the Farmhouse. I did manage to get the farmhouse by deploying grenadiers who were riding on my surving Stug, but would not have been able to hold it as the americans still had a platoon of armoured infantry in reserve. If played to it's entire conclusion we agreed that my friend would have eventually hammered the remaining pinned German troops with HE, whilst retaking the farmhouse with his Armoured Infantry.

More reinforcements

Lone survivor almost there

As you are probably aware it did not fair well for the German forces, but it just goes to show that you recreate history on the gaming board.


Half time was look in the loft at his H/OO model rail layout, and a much needed bacon and egg bap. We also discussed a new rule set command HQ and thought about combining the combat phases from this rule set with the battlegroup setup. It would play similar to the Napoleonic games we recently played, which themselves were a combination of Lassalle and Principles of War. Each battle group have a number of dice and 1 set can cancel out the other and the loosing force pick up detractors which when reaching the maximum loose the group altogether. The beauty of this is that 1 vehicle can represent a whole troop or squadron and the combat phase is more fluid.

His pride and joy, needed to restrain myself from taking on another project after seeing this.



As you can see from the battle group tokens the Germans suffered heavily after an initial assault the Airborne troops were able to hold them off until armoured support arrived.

 A test play of an ambush scenario with the alternate combat rules.

And another test play, in this instance a superior gun on the Jagd can easily take on a advancing troop of Shermans.