Our Thursday gathering at Miniature Market Rock Hill on this hot steamy St. Louis Summer afternoon took us to Normandy France on D+2 for a small unit game of “One Hour Skirmish Wargame Rules”.
This scenario (from the fils section of the One Hour Skirmish Facebook Group) found the German forces staging a pull back as the Allies moved forward from the beaches after the invasion. A German tank was near a French farmhouse with a crew working frantically to make repairs before things got too hot. Fortunately they were not completely alone as a small detachment of infantry were gracious enough to remain behind in support.
A look at the starting positions with the Allies able to being 12 inches in from their end of the table.
Our players picked sides with Jules R and Steve L taking the Germans, while Chris K (the Americans), Tim L (the French Resistance and Ravi R (the British) approached from the far side of the table.
As “One Hour Skirmish” (OHSW) is completely card driven we started with an initiative care for each player and that would be the sequence in which the round flowed. Each deck was reduced to one turn ending Joker to keep the game from getting too crazy.
above we see the panzer under repair and one of the crewman “downed.”
First time using this set for WWII so we did add in hand grenades but kept them limited by players with each being given a few poker chips to represent the collective allotment for their squad. When the player ran out, that was it, but any figure in the squad could tap the reserve.
The German supporting infantry commanded by Jules R took up position in the woods covering the road with an LMG.
Also added in was a weapon jam rule for this scenario. If a player pulled an Ace when firing their weapon it was considered to be jammed and was unusable until a Joker appeared. This added a bit more chaos to the game without being overwhelming.
Things took a twist early in the game when the Steve’s tank crew deployed behind a wall (hard cover) came under some rather accurate fire from Tim’s French as he dropped two of them almost immediately and it was kinda downhill from there as neither survived the card draw after the first joker popped up.
Steve did manage to get the tank about 2/3rds repaired when the combined fire from Chris, Ravi and Tim downed more crew. Meanwhile Jules supporting infantry came under fire but was luckier in the post Joker card draw and popped back up only to be downed again next turn despite the hard cover.
Chris closed on the tank with a couple of advanced infantry men only for Jules to explore the grenade rules that dropped both of the figures. This distraction did allow Ravi to get in a good shot silencing the German LMG and taking advantage of a good action point card he closed to melee finishing off the menace.
Ravi’s British trooper had a weapon malfunction when he fired earlier in the turn as noted by the Ace card that he is carrying with him into melee in the center of the table.
With some players available time expiring along wth most of the German forces we called the game for the combined Allied forces.
A Thank You to all the players who came out and our ongoing appreciation to Miniature Market Rock Hill B for their continued support.
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