Sunday 12 February 2017

SimWar FireMove "Lost Battle of 2016" (Part I)

I dug this old FireMove battle out from the innards of my iPhone recently (dating back to July 2016). I was in "cleaning the camera roll out" mode and I even didn't realise I even had recorded it. The generated [human  by rolling forty eight pairs of dice, taking up a good fifteen minutes of pre-game preparation] terrain is very sparse. One wood (middle right), two low ridges (top middle) and a BUA Farmstead (top left denoted by a 'bottle top'). Not very promising territory for a swift British Infantry attack (see below, open ground aka "The Somme"?):


The German defender chose the "slightly" more terrain rich right hand side of the battlefield to deny the British player any chance of "dead ground" behind the wood. The German commander spaced his infantry out evenly across the board (see below, that is a lot of deadly "open ground" for the British infantry to cross, did I mention "The Somme"):


The classic British infantry response, four platoons spaced out with a gap between so they do not present multiple "grouped" targets. The HMG platoon is placed in the Farm BUA to gain benefit of the cover and avoid taking casualties (see below):


The oblique view of the battlefield (see below):


The initial artillery bombardment had a poor effect and a further turn spent trying to suppress seemed to avail nothing in the "net column".  The British Commander (me)  resolved to start pushing platoons forward which inevitably meant giving the German Commander a "target rich environment" for his accursed mortars (see below, the British player has successfully suppressed two "centrally placed" German platoons [denoted by two small silver 5p pieces]):


The British Commander decided to "push his luck" and try to exploit his "suppression" by flooding his right hand attack with of his infantry three companies. The mortar has been brought to bear on the central German Platoon (denoted by the 'blue marker') along with the interest of the British  HMG platoon to the sniping German Platoon located on the low hills. The favourable terrain on the left flank has allowed the fourth British Infantry Company to attempt a single file, stealth, flank attack on the British left. This means the British Commander has committed eleven out of twelve of his infantry platoons relatively early on in the game (see below):


A perfect plan, but what will the Germans make of it. There comes back an old proverb that says "no matter how strong the lion he is best to conserve all his energy and chase only one hare at a time". Note: Even early on the British have been steadily accumulating casualties.

Next: Withering fire shall stop them! But whose?

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