AVBCW: Clipping Hedges

For our second game of Chain of Command, we re-arranged the table, and added the em-4 barn.

Clipping Hedges

Old farmer Arthur Webley has been clipping hedges, but he’s also been clipping some of the gun runners of their goods as payment to cross his land. As a result he’s amassed a goodly load of weapons.

Both the BUF and Anglican League don’t want these weapons falling into the wrong hands.

We commenced the Patrol phase.

My BUF deployed well I initially thought.

JP’s Anglicans popped up very close and a ferocious firefight ensued.

Then JP deployed his tankette – he had subtley altered his army list.

I seemed to be winning the firefight. All our troops were “green”, i.e. rubbish…except I had bought an upgrade to this unit and they were “regulars”, so my shooting wazs better, and they weren’t using the covers as well as I was. Even so both sides started building up shock markers at a…shocking…rate (sorry). 😉

Then he brought on another unit which more than evened the odds…

And a third…

And brought the tankette up, which was armed with an HMG (10 shots…). Unsuprisingly having finished off one of his units, damaged a second but with no way of harming the tankette, my regulars made a quick sharp exit ! This left that flank undefended, and my jump off points exposed.

My central section streamed into the barn – yes the doors are moveable, which on retrospect was a hideous egotistical mistake…

…because my thrid section on my left flank got caught out be an impetuous advance by his third unit who wiped them out in two rounds of shooting.

Even pulling the central unit out of the barn and forming a firing line couldn’t save them.

The tankette was now coming round behind the barn. This left my central section trapped in a pincer movement, with no escape routes. I therefore conceded the game. I had lost because I ahd become fixated with the barn, and by entering it had effectively (as Jp put it) taken a section off the board. In this set of rules, and probably most others you need your troops shooting, not marvelling at architectural excellence ! Occupying terrain features is one thing, driving off the enemy is more important. Other lessons learnt will be in the next posting on the rules.

We resolved to run our next game, with the BUF holed up in the barn needing to be rescued.