Trenton gaming

Drove up to Trenton yesterday to check out Michael's new gaming emporium. He now has a 12'x6' table with his command center nearby providing tech support and music (reminds me of a gaming room I once had). He's built the table to kitchen counter height and surrounded it with foam floor mats, mitigating most back problems that arise from concrete floors and low tables.  Bravo!

We tried out the attack/defend scenario from Chain of Command with my French and German 1940 platoons. Michael chose an R-40 to support his poilus and I (sharing command with Melissa) chose a PzIVd and MMG for support. The game ended with a decisive German victory when the French Force Morale dropped fairly quickly from 11 to 2, while the German didn't budge from its original 11. This was in large part due to Michael's atrocious die rolling when checking for leader casualties. In all, he managed four light wounds on junior leaders (two light wounds on one junior leader forced him out of the game) and the death of his platoon sergeant (senior leader). Otherwise he suffered relatively light casualties but the loss of leadership apparently flustered his men to such a degree that sauve qui peut! was clearly heard a number of times. For the German part, Melissa's plan to try and flank the French worked quite well. At one point, we were able to deploy two full sections and a MMG together with a senior leader, all directing their fire onto the flank of the French deployment area. Kudos to Mel for the plan of action. My initial plan had been somewhat different and probably would not have worked as well. 

Some random pics of the game below (lighting was a problem...one of the overhead lamp sets was not working):

Overview of the table. A fairly innocuous portion of the French countryside. 

Another overview, with the necessary libation in the background. 

A German section sets up to provide a base of fire. 

PzIVd makes it's appearance. Very little happened with the vehicles this game other than to provide eye-candy. 

R-35 (using the shadows as cover?) backs up a French section in the woods. 

French infantry deploy from a Jump Off Point, seen in the right of the photo. 

Fun was had by all despite Michael's unintentional abuse of his NCO corps and was a good primer for me to start my campaign with Vidal (and I'm pretty sure the two bottles of wine had nothing to do with making the evening enjoyable).  I think I may spend some time putting together a campaign for us to play between Germans and French, using the basic templates I've already completed for the Arras 1940 endeavour.