A CoC-up for the Books – Burma, 1944

At long last, time to resurrect this blog.

After spending a fair chunk of the last year or so playing what I'd call a prodigious amount of Chain of Command 2, and finally getting to a point over Christmas where I had two opposing armies to field, it seemed like a good time to see if Gareth, one of my usual opponents in Hong Kong, would be interested in having a go. He said yes, and the rest is history.

The two forces would be clashing somewhere along a more open stretch of the India-Burma border in 1944, with an Indian platoon under my command receiving an attack from a Japanese platoon led by Gareth. The scenario would be Mission 2: The Probe (which I find much more useful as an introductory game than Mission 1), which involves the attacker trying to capture an enemy deployment point and exit one of his sections off the table before time runs out. Gareth managed to get the maximum support budget possible (10), while I would get a third of that, plus one to account for different platoon ratings, for a total of 4.* Gareth spent his on a red die (2), a tankette (3), a sniper (2), and a couple of other extras, while I bought an extra PIAT (2) and 18" of barbed wire (2).

*In the handbook, a 1944 Japanese platoon is a +1 and an Indian platoon is a +4 in the rulebook. However, the higher rating for the Indians is due to their having Jungle Warriors, and I'm not quite sure what the reason for the low rating for the Japanese is. I had re-rated all the platoons in the Far East book using the CoC2 Coculator, with adjustments for jungle rules, so 1944-5 Japanese are a +3 while Indians are a +2 without jungle rules in play.

The game

The setup: the Japanese jump-off points are in the wood, the hut, and at the edge of the barrier growth on the road (here represented by hedges); the Indians have two positions on the barrier growths and one in their own hut.

Covered by fire from the infantry in the wood, Gareth brings out his other two rifle sections in the centre, although his movement rolls leave much to be desired at this early stage...

In a moment of extreme passivity even for myself, I decided that I could afford to lose that forward jump-off point if it meant I engaged Gareth in the more constrained terrain on the right. This undoubtedly cost me the game. Moreover, suppressing fire from the tankette against the hut and by successive rifle sections against my rearmost position were having the desired effect in terms of both frustrating deployment and limiting the effectiveness of my fire.

That said, I had one chance to at least complicate Gareth's situation when I deployed one of my rifle sections into close combat against his rightmost section, accompanied by the platoon commander.

My section proceeded to score a grand total of two kills against Gareth's, which in return rolled six Shock. So, even though I caused more casualties, I lost the combat by four net hits, and my troops broke in confusion.

A brisk round of follow-up fire from the Japanese, and the section fled off the board with the officer in tow. The breaking of the section, plus the loss of its corporal and the officer, were a combined disaster for Indian morale, which fell from an initial 10 to just 4, losing me a command die.

This was the situation during the endgame. My centre section had come into action at the start of a double phase and began pouring fire at close range into the lead Japanese section, which racked up an increasing number of losses even when my own section was affected by suppressing fire.

By the end of the game, the lead Japanese section had been chewed up quite badly. Japanese sergeants are rated as Inferior Senior Leaders with just two Orders instead of the three that their Commonwealth counterparts get, but once per game they can rally off 1D6 points of Shock through corporal punishment, unless they roll a 6 in which case they inflict a casualty instead. You can guess what happened here.

In the end though, the game would be decided on the left, as Gareth raced his men to the back of the table while I tried desperately to catch them. Unfortunately he had a considerable stockpile of Chain of Command points which which to use Repositions for extra movement.

Despite my best efforts, the Japanese got away with it!

Lesson learned: you may think you can afford to lose a jump-off point in the moment, but you put it there for a reason! Still, Gareth deserves a lot of credit: he managed to carry out effective fire and manoeuvre, save for the bad luck of his lead section coming under fire during a double phase and never really recovering from that. It was a good game and he was interested in continuing, so we'll next have a go at the Delaying Action mission using the same core forces. All being well, I'll have a report on that too.