With no sign of any real-life games on the horizon, I decided to bite the bullet and ask to join a virtual game of I Ain’t Been Shot Mum run by my friend Bevan.
My previous reluctance to try anything virtual was mainly down to the fact that I spend a lot of the day working via Zoom now, and although it is truly a marvelous communication tool, it’s also quite draining to use. Nevertheless, with the Beardless King (daughter #2) busy with schoolwork and Kavan (daughter #1’s boyfriend) back at Uni, it was Zoom or nowt!
The scenario was a simple one set in France 1940. I would play the Germans, and would start the game in situ defending a bridge against an anticipated attack by a French armoured column. At my disposal I had three Big Men, a platoon of infantry, a platoon of anti-tank guns, and a support platoon consisting of a couple of MMG teams.
Here’s how I set up. The French are expected from the far left-hand corner:
The Plan
Bevan had sent round the briefing and table plan 24 hours before the game, giving everyone a chance to make plans. My plan was simple: to keep as far away from the French as possible!
If this was an armoured column, then it was likely to consist of well-armoured tanks with a pop-gun main gun and MMGs. I wasn’t too worried about HE from the main guns: it was unlikely that I would be facing Char B1 tanks with their 75mm guns, and there’s not a lot of damage done by the 37mm and 47mm guns carried by the other French tanks.
I was, however, worried about the effect of close range (under 18”) MMG fire on my anti-tank gun crews, especially as I was using the rubbish early-war German AT guns known as “door knockers” as their shots, even if they hit, would generally just bounce off.
I therefore had, as you have seen above, set up to defend from a distance: clearing his scouts (Dummy Blinds) and spotting his troops as soon as possible, then opening fire with everything I’d got, preferably defilading the axis of the French advance.
How It Worked
For those not familiar with how these virtual games can work, Bevan had set up the table with his webcam perched on a bookcase looking down on the battlefield.
Trevor, Dave and I could all see the table on our computer screens, and there was an open mike that we could all use to issue orders, hurl insults etc. Bevan rolled the dice and moved the kriegspiel-like counters (although you can equally well use figures); Dave and I worked out the dice rolls; with Bevan adjudicating any disputes.
The Game
The French duly entered the table where they were supposed to, meaning that just after the first round of spotting took place, the table looked like this:
As you might be able to work out, the first of my plan has achieved its objective: my Dummy Blinds and spotting have already disposed of three French Dummy Blinds.
The French then did exactly what I had hoped they would do, and crept cautiously forward, spotting every hedgerow, house, tree, blade of grass as they went. My troops kept very, very still!
The French Blinds then split. One moved straight ahead and crossed the main road, one went into the house, and one turned and lined the hedgerow by the house.
This gave me a chance to spot them and, with thirteen units able to use their entire turns to spot, I had soon seen exactly what I was up against: six Hotchkiss H-39 tanks and a weak platoon of infantry.
As predicted, heavily armoured tanks with a pop-gun main gun. Knocking them out would be a problem, but I did have another advantage: H-39s only have a crew of two, a driver and a much-overburdened commander, who has to look where the tank is going, issue orders to the driver, load/aim/fire the main gun and shoot the machine gun. In the rules, this meant that they couldn’t move and fire in the same activation, which also meant problems with such things as a platoon “Hunt” order.
Even better, more by luck than judgement, all the French tanks/squads were over (sometimes only just over!) 18” from my men. I opened fire with everything I had, forcing one Hotchkiss crew to abandon and knocking over a handful of infantrymen despite their being under cover in the house.
My excessive shooting, most of it ineffectual (you would not believe how many shells bounced off those tanks during the game!) had the desired effect: the French stopped their advance. I don’t blame them actually: each turn I had the ability to pump out a maximum of ten aimed AT gun shots (4 guns and a bonus fire card), and with a Big Man with two of the guns and the cards turning my way, there was a veritable storm of steel (as Alex would say!) pouring down the table.
The French stayed where they were for another couple of turns, and although no more of their tanks were taken out, they had all soon started to accumulate Shock…three or four points of which would be enough to force a tank crew to abandon ship.
We could all see that the writing was on the wall, so the French finally decided that they had no option to advance. Unfortunately, they had left it too late. The Shock on their tanks (I just couldn’t take the armoured monstrosities out!) mounted even more, and Dave and Trevor realised that they had left it too late and ordered the retreat.
A technical victory for the Germans: although I hadn’t “wiped the French out”, I had “cleared the battlefield of all French troops”.
Aftermath
A great game, even if everybody felt some frustration during the event. I was frustrated because I just couldn’t KO the French tanks, the French were frustrated because they just couldn’t take my men out at that range, and Bevan felt frustrated because he’d hoped to see more action. He was probably exhausted as well from rolling so many AT hit dice!
What would I have done if I were the French?
Well, Capitaine ‘Indsight has vingt/vingt vision, obviously, but I think my knowledge of the capabilties of the H-39 would have made me use very different tactics.
I would have charged forward as fast as possible with my tanks (the H-39 has an improved engine over the H-35, so doesn’t usually have a Vehicle Breakdown card in the deck) forgetting about my main gun and concentrating on getting into a decent MMG range, concentrating my fire on one German position at a time.
Four kills would take out each AT gun: once within 18”, an average roll of ‘7’ on 2D6 gets you two hits even as a Poor shot, so each turn, if you have three tanks concentrating on one AT gun, you’re killing 0.99 of an AT crew member per turn*. Given that throughout the entire game I only managed to force one French tank crew to abandon, and that being closer does nothing for the AT guns’ penetration, I reckon that taking the Germans out is therefore pretty doable. But, as I said, Capitaine ‘Indsight was late to the battle, and there were an awful lot of anti-tank shells heading the French’s way!
A great game, and I am now sold on virtual games, certainly until we can get back to facing each other across the tabletop.
Robert Avery
*50% chance of activating in a turn, three tanks in a platoon, average of 2 hits per tank, chance of a kill is a third so 50% x 3 x 2 x 0.33 = 0.99.