Forward Command Battle Report

IN my first few posts I mentioned a set of rules I'd been developing called Forward Command ('ForC' for short!), which aim at capturing company-level actions during WWII. Last week I made a rough draft of these available through the Pendraken Miniaures Forum along with some equally raw army lists. These have met with considerable interest, with Ronan of 2 Dés à 6 faces blog being not only kind enough to play a little solo game, but also to publish the results. Merci Ronan! Also Jack of BlackHawkHet infamy has expressed interest in the system and hopes to get some games played in the future. I'm very curious to see which twentieth century conflict he fits them to! Given all this (and also because Jack told me to) I decided that I should write up a batrep myself as a way of introducing people to the system. For those of you who didn't read read my prior posts on this topic, here is a recap of the design criteria with which I approached ForC:

(1) It should be company-level, with one infantry base representing a section, and support weapon/AFV bases at 1:1.

(2) It should be built around each side generating a random amount of commands per turn.

(3) It should amalgamate most weapons into broad groups or "types".

(4) It should treat infantry and armour similarly.

(5) It should merge damage and morale and make them cumulative like "wounds".
(6) All this should fit comfortably onto no more than four A4 sheets.

Happily all of these criteria have been met, which the exception that it has crept onto five pages (barring army lists, of course), but I'm sure this could be solved in the final version by some layout wizardy. I have even gone so far as to mock-up a cover:

Rather spiffy, eh? However, the rules still need some tweaking and so I am offering them to any interested parties who wish to give them a whirl with the proviso that they come back to me with any questions and suggestions. For instance, I am still not convinced by the Orders system and would be interested to hear your opinion on this mechanic and how it might possibly be improved. I shall put links to the rules and the army lists (all 1940 Europe, I'm afraid!) in a gadget to the left of this article. I think that's probably enough of my waffle for the moment: on with the batrep!

German Reinforcements

AFTER a few months of inexcusable hobby inactivity I have at last got the bit between my teeth and got the majority of the German infantry and support weapons completed. This just leaves three platoon and one company HQs and a few more AFVs to paint up before I am finished. Actually, the situation is precisely the same with my BEF force too! I need to grab a few more packs of infantry before I am able to achieve this, however. Once these forces are completed - or nearly complete! - I will start on the French, who I have been greedily eyeing on both the Pendraken and Pithead shops. I like that the Pendraken range has enough junior officer types (well, two...) to create some variety in my HQ stands, something I have found extremely difficult to achieve with their early war Jerries and Brits. In fact I have recently ordered some BEF Infantry from Pithead in order to make the British HQs more interesting.

With regards to the French, I will again be looking to create an infantry company, plus assorted support weapons and armour, with especial attention being paid to the latter as I am looking to recreate some the actions of the three-day Battle of Hannut, the first major tank battle of the conflict, with over a thousand AFVs involved! One aspect about this new venture I am decidedly not looking forward to is painting French AFVs! All I can say is that thank God the Germans did not continue to use Buntfarbenanstrich on their own vehicles, otherwise I'm quite sure I wouldn't have got them painted nearly so speedily. As usual, thank you for looking and feel free to comment. 

15 cm sIG 33 (Sf) auf Panzerkampfwagen I Ausf B (Pithead Miniatures)

The beast can be seen in action in a propaganda video below.

Pendraken German MG42 Teams posing as MG34s

Pendraken 3.7 cm Pak 36s

Platoon 1 (Pendraken)

Platoon 2 (Pendraken)

Platoon 3 (Pendraken)