It has been 2 years since we last played my big refight of Sword beach. I thought it was opportune time to get it out again and pay homage to all those very brave men that landed on the beach 80 years ago.
For this version I added a few extra bunkers and defending troops along the coast to give the Germans a bit more a bite and to surprise any British players that played in the last game.
Some additional bunkers between WN20 (Cod) and WN 21 (Trout)
Richard and Doug played the Germans this time with support from Piotr on the Friday having played the British in the previous game. The British were played by Philip Marshall and Alex looking after the forces on Queen White. Patrick & Trevor on Queen Red and Kamall looking after the Naval and Commandos.
The British players in particular were restricted by very detailed orders that followed their historic counter parts. I am now comparing these with Stephen Fishers new book on Sword beach who gave a very good talk at the We Have Ways Festival.
In this game I had pre-calculated the effects of the aerial and naval bombardments rather than getting the German players to roll dice for it to save time. The British players first job was to place templates down for the rocket bombardment from the rocket firing landing craft. In addition, the British players had to decide whether to use their battleships to continue to neutralise the larger off table German naval artillery positions or use them for artillery support on the beach. They choose the former.
Rocket Firing landing Craft
For the Germans their decision making revolved around them using their artillery to disrupt the landing firing into the surf or use it in support of the defending troops. The former increases the chance of sunk landing craft and supressing troops on the craft. The opted for hitting the surf which I think is the most sensible to start and then the decision is when to move this to the troops that have landed.
WN12 (Daimler) housing 155mm FH 414 (f) guns
As with the last game I made the beach a weak minefield and one of the key roles for the British is to clear this minefield, the beach obstacles and create exits off the beach. This was very important on Sword beach due to the offshore reefs that meant the British could only attack with on Brigade at a time rather than the 2 on Gold and Juno beaches.
In this game the British did not suffer any sunk landing craft but on the flip side lost nearly all of their DD tanks in the first few turns. The German 88 in strongpoint 20 - Cod proved to be it is usual lethal self, taking out its target almost each turn. The British made good progress on Queen White although had to be remind them quite regularly to follow their orders and vehicles seemed to be magnetically drawn towards strongpoint WN 21 Trout rather than COD and the objectives behind them
WN20 Strongpoint Cod with its deadly 88!
The landings have begun!
On Queen Red the troops were a little more cautious but began to methodically clear the beach and advance on strongpoint WN18 (as I have now discovered thanks to Stephen Fisher was code-named Skate!) Kamall did a sterling job of allocating the naval resources and waiting for his commandos to land to attack Casino and Riva Bella (WN8 and code-named Bass!)
The toughest nut on the beach to crack is WN 20 Cod and this eventually fell along with WN18 (Skate) clearing the path for the British to advance inland to capture the next row of strongpoints Sole, Daimler Morris and Hillman.
The crust has been breached and troops advance inland whilst the commandos move to take on Casino and Riva Bella.
The British mad good progress in the centre but the Free Commandoes and 4th Commando struggling to get to Cassino and Riva Bella. On the eastern side 41st RM commando struggled to capture Trout as they did on the day.
We manged to get to Wave 11 out of the 15 waves I prepared over the weekend and the game will need to be cut down slightly if we are to do it again. There were definitely a few things to change to make it slightly better such as tweaking the British orders of battles to make them a bit more balanced for each player.
I am planning on re-fighting some more of these Normandy battles and will do some around 6th Airborne landings including Pegasus Bridge and as suggested by Mark Trowell after Stephen Fisher’s talk on Sword Beach at the We Have Ways Fest to do the afternoon at Sword Beach – remove the beach on the table and focus on the attack on Hillman and the counterattack by the 21st Panzer Division
Comments