Men of Iron

     Men of Iron  by GMT was the next wargame on our list.  After delving into Warriors of God I was ready for another challenge to my personal wargaming sensibilities.  Men of Iron did not disappoint.  The game started with the Flemish defending against the French.  Set-up was pre-determined by the scenario and it had a couple of small rules variation specific to the set-up, such as the French knights could be pulled down if taking a negative result while being in a ditch.  I wasn't really sure about what I was supposed to do so I ended up passing for the first couple of rounds waiting for the French to come into my troops. This was a big mistake that will be explained later.  

The beginning...

     The French finally gather the stones to come in on the Flemish.  My opponent does fairly well with his pikemen and crossbow troops and pops a hole in my defensive line.  This is the point where I should have had my reserve troops in position to plug the hole and repel the attackers.  Instead I reacted too late and then had traffic control problems in trying to bring my reserves to bear.  I also had the problem of boxing in some of my troops so that they could not move back in a retreat on negative combat results.  When you can't flee you are defeated!  Ouch!  That hurt and threatened the stability of my line.

It is the Towers fault!

     From there he tried to exploit my weakness, which he did readily and caused a lot of my troops to retire.  This has the effect of removing chits from the immediate battle and placing them next to the banner, which is in the backfield.  This effect means that the troops have to spend an activation getting back into order before they can be utilized by the commander.  I don't think that I really had a chance to rally my troops in this game so they where basically done.  As he broke through the line he shifted troops to fill in the gap and keep pressing the advantage.  It seemed like there was nothing I could do, especially since my dice rolling was horrible!  I blame it on the dice tower (along with my very poor luck.)  After that all that was left to do was exploit my turned back and weakened defense and it was all over.

The End is near!

     Thoughts: 1.) The activation of your units revolves around the leaders and their initiative value.  To activate leaders after the first requires a die roll of less than the commander's rating on a d10.  Before your opponent rolls for activation you can "seize" it my rolling under the commander's rating.  It seems like most of my "seized" initiative rolls failed, thus giving Paul a free activation with one leader.  This hurt big time as I kept on giving him initiative and a free activation from my failed seizures.  It allowed his troops to just continue to steamroller over mine.  2.) Troop placement and facing are also a big deal, allowing them to be attacked from the front, flank or rear.  When you lose the activation and someone gets a charge on your flank your dudes are going down quick!  3.) The other thing I neglected was pre-positioning my troops when I saw that he was going to make a push on one side.  I should have adjusted my troops way before he got to my line so that my reserves could be in position for a counter-attack.  This I couldn't foresee though because I wasn't sure how my troops would retreat or retire from the battle.  This is something to think about next time.  4.) The chits.  These things are small and are a little bit fiddly especially when they are under a shield wall marker.  I just couldn't remember which value troops where there so I might have neglected to get them into battle rather than a weaker complement of troops.
     This a fairly good game with a lot to think about tactic-wise.  At first, I didn't want to play again but that was just the tears of defeat clouding my thinking.  I would just want to go into the next game a little bit more deliberately than I did the first play.  Now that I know the capability of the troops types and the way that terrain works I would play differently next time.

Combat Commander Match

Played a game of Combat Commander tonight from the new Normandy Battlepack. The Battlepack comes with maps, counters, scenarios and special Normandy rules. We played the first scenario in the pack and it used new rules such as starshells and night modifiers. Some of the other rules in the pack that we didn't play with were dealing with things such as armor support, rural roads and swimming. There were around nine or ten new rules that were pertinent to Normandy. The new maps look fantastic like other Combat Commander maps and the chits were also standard fare including new commanders.

We played the Pegasus Bridge scenario, Germans v. British. The Germans were tasked with holding a bridge head surrounded by trenches and wire. There was an artillery gun and a pillbox to complete the defenses. The Germans had poor troops (conscript squads and green teams) and one leader. Reinforcements would arrive on the three or four time box. These were volksgrenediers and rifle squads as well as another commander. Would the weak troops survive in time for help to arrive? Could they hold the bridge?

The British enter the map from a glider so they must be in or adjacent to two specific hexes at set up. The Limeys, mainly paratroopers and elite teams, set up in two groups. One occupied some woods near the map edge and the other started rather forward in the open. Allies had to capture the bridge for victory points. The first couple of turns were the perfect storm for the British. They steadily advanced into and over some wire and stumbled into the front trenches after approaching under the cover of smoke. The most the Germans could do was minimal harassing fire and a little shuffling around of troops. The British machine kept rolling as they continued to assault and capture the infantry gun and pillbox as the Germans made a strategic retreat to the other side of the bridge and into some trenches. At this time it kind of turned into a stalemate with victory points shifting back and forth and the frontlines holding. Time passed and we forgot to do the night sniper at every time event for the entire game! Reinforcements arrived for both sides but the Germans were the only ones that got their reserves into the fight (although, it was mainly to die.) The momentum died around the seventh time box and ended on a sudden death on time marker nine. I could be slightly off about the end, hopefully Paul will correct me in the comments! British won with two victory points. It was a hard fought battle that stayed tight through most of the game. The British big push at the beginning was the keystone to cementing their victory because without that there was no way they could have made it to the trenches as the Germans were throwing out lots of illumination and had a steady hand of fire cards after the push. It is much easier to break those paratroopers when they are moving in the open under illumination.

Overall it was a very fun game that had just the right mix of back and forth to make it feel like you were always in the game. Being able to use Artillery cards was huge as it made cards that are a lot of the time useless have some worth. I am looking forward to see how the remainder of the new rules change the game play experience. I give Normandy Battlepack a 4 (out of 5) finger salute!