I recently came across the excellent CoC Operation Martlet campaign write up on http://tinyhordes.com/tag/martlet-campaign/, so decided to try the first game using IABSM on my mini-board (2’ x 2’) in 1/300 H&R.

After a little research (Google Streetview) and buying a 1/25,000 WW2 map of the area suggested in TFL ‘At the Sharp End’, I decided to go with slightly different terrain setup from that in the scenario, based on this overly magnified section of map:

The thick black line bottom centre to top right is the main road and has a few farm buildings and a church, so to convert that to a wargame layout I've added the high stone walls favoured in Normandy around the farm and a low wall around the church. There is an orchard on the right. ‘A’ marks the British entry point along a narrow track towards a large building on the main road. A church with a spire is at the German end. 

Additional/Changed Rules

• Scale changed to 20cm = 100m (1/500)
• Infantry fire from side or rear is more effective
• I used the morale system from Summer/Winter specials – Germans dropped a couple of points, but didn’t really kick in.
• Tactical movement - I can't remember if thats in IABSM as I've been a lot of CoC Batreps
• Made easier spotting – although, nobody in cover got spotted before they opened fire
• AT fire has modifiers for range and penetration and vehicles have discrete front/side/rear values – not sure if this really adds anything, the original rules being a very simple/elegant solution.

Lessons Learned

Churchills armour is too tough for Pz IVs … but their gun is dire! 3 Churchills v 1 Pz IV and eventually they batter it into submission.
• Even an SS PzGren squad with 2 LMGs can be over-powered by 3 or 4 British squads at close range. Maybe I reduced the German force a little too severely and should have stuck with 3 squads each.

James Tree