The next Crossfire instalment .. lessons learned

This week's Crossfire shenanigans with my 'gamers at College involved two small practice scenarios taken from 'Wargaming with gluteous maximus'. I set up the Hill, and Woods, scenarios for the boys. The forces are small, so each scenario can be played to a reasonable conclusion in an hour or so, and since we have a two hour window of opportunity these are ideal. The Woods involving hidden deployment for both sides.

A squad is caught moving in the open, and smoke is called down from the mortar battery to try to allow the squad the opportunity to get to more substantive cover. This use of smoke marked a significant shift in the sophistication of their thinking.

This first game was 'The Woods' in which the objective was to eliminate the enemy.

Caught in the open

The German squad at the bottom of the photo had been further to the right, thinking it was pinned by the British vickers centre right. The MMG suffered a No fire, but the German player mistakenly use that No fire to withdraw rather than press the attack when he had no squads pined or suppressed.

The lesson was well learned.

The wrong move

The second game was 'The Hill' and the objective was to take/hold the hill.

The German squad bottom centre was hung up on a hidden mine field

That squad eventually however managed to get through the minefield suffering no casualties.even more extraordinarily, the German player managed to shift his left flank platoon completely across the field of action and flank the British left crossing a field of fire while taking no casualties. The defending British platoon all suffered No fire results in their reactive fire phase. This time the German player took full advantage of the result and flanked the British defenders, close assaulting them from their own rear.

The close assault

The battle was on for the hill but time ran out.

This last game was much more satisfactory, both players learning a lot from playing/watching those earlier games. This of course was the objective of these small games. Job done!!