Return to the East: WWII Chain of Command

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Although most of my wargaming career has been dominated by WWII wargaming, particularly Chain of Command, I'm a little ashamed to say that I've played just two games of Chain of Command this year. It's been a while since the blog has had any WWII content, so here's a few photos from a game we had Monday in which we finally returned to the brutal battlefields of the Eastern Front.


This ended up being a fairly small game, so my vehicles only saw use as destroyed set dressing, perfect for late summer 1941.

This game started out as the probe scenario from the core rulebook, with the Germans attacking from the lower table edge. As you may be able to deduce from the photo above, the Germans got well ahead on one flank during the patrol phase and made a rush for the table edge under the effects of a preliminary bombardment and covering fire on likely Soviet defensive positions.

Seeing as the Germans completed the game objective before the Soviets were able to deploy, we decided to improvise. We removed the Soviet jump-off point closest to the German thrust and essentially rotated the axis of attack, with the Germans attacking from left right on the above photo.

With four squads and a tripod MG-34 giving them a lot of firepower, the Germans started to advance aggressively on Soviet positions in the farmhouses and crop fields. You may note that I still haven't finished putting together and painting my MG-34 MMG, so the late-war MG-42 team is standing in.

A Soviet Maxim team in a farm house was effectively suppressed, and numerous Soviet leaders found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and were wounded or killed. Even a last-ditch rush by a squad supplemented with submachine gunners wasn't enough to dent the German advance.

It was a bit of a lopsided game, but it felt really good to finally get the Eastern Front terrain and figures out. It makes me want to finish a few needed elements of my '41-'42 collection and play a pint-sized campaign. Maybe something to look out for.

Expect the FIW campaign to return soon. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate, happy Thursday to those that don't.


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