The title of this report could be referring to the ease of the historical victory of CCA, 4th Armored Division over 113 Panzer Brigade near the town of Arracourt on 19 September 1944, but it actually refers a game that I ran specifically for children to play. A friend of ours has been organizing an annual gaming weekend at a local recreation center. Last year, I ran a few Flames of War games that were very popular. Our friend asked me to host a FOW game again this year, and he added that some of the guys who played in the games last year would be bringing their sons this year. So the challenge was to run a game that children could quickly learn and enjoy playing.
Discussing this task at the pub, my buddies offered the following helpful comments: “Kids like tanks.” “The scenario has to have good guys and bad guys.” “The game has to be easy and fast to play.” “Lots of stuff has to blow up.” To these thoughts, I added: “The game has to be very large and spectacular to look at.”
Thinking about all of this, I settled on the Battle of Arracourt as the scenario. In the historical battle, the Sherman tanks and Hellcat tank destroyers of CCA of the US 4th Armored Division utterly trounced the Panthers and Pz.IVs of the 113 Panzer Brigade. Infantry played very little part in the battle, and the effect of the US artillery could be factored in by simply reducing the German order of battle, so the scneario could focus only on the tank battle. At this point in the war, the very experienced US tank crews would be rated as “Confident, Careful, Veteran” (in FOW V.4 terms) and the newly recruited German Panzer crews would be “Reluctant, Aggressive, Conscript”, so the higher quality of the American crews would offset the higher quality and numerical superiority of the German tanks. The battle was fought over an area that measured about 1.5 X 6 miles, so it would fit the 5 X 20 foot table that we had. The battlefield was mostly open, rolling terrain, which was ideal tank country. The battle began in the fog with a series of ambushes, then developed into a massive tank battle. It seemed like a perfect scenario for the kids.
To test the scenario, I ran it for our regular group of FOW players. A total of 51 Shermans (with a mix of 75mm and 76mm main guns) and 8 Hellcats took on a total of 24 Panthers and 40 Pz.IVs (which were all the models of these types that I owned). We started the game with the first ambush at one end of the table, then proceeded through the next two ambushes and finished with the final big battle at the other end of the table. The tank vs. tank aspect of the game worked pretty well, but the scenario had a few flaws. First, the game ran way too long. Fighting all of the ambushes to a conclusion, and moving all the German tanks from one end of the table to the other took too much time. Second, the final battle was a dud, with two static lines of tanks shooting at each other. Finally, the game was too lopsided. The veteran American tanks were able to take advantage of a ridge crest for cover and had a massive advantage over the Panzers, especially the Pz.IVs, so the Germans had no chance to break through to Arracourt and win the game. A historical result, but not a great game.
I still believed that Arracourt was the right scenario, but how we played the scenario required some major changes….
The first amendment was to the ambushes. Rather than play continuously from one ambush to the other, each ambush would be played as its own mini-scenario. The first two ambushes would only be played for one turn, with the Americans shooting at the Germans, and the Germans shooting back, and only the third ambush would be fought to a finish. This was actually more historical, as the Germans quickly broke off from the first two ambushes. The first ambush pitted five Shermans against four Panthers. The second ambush matched 12 Shermans against 14 Panthers. The third ambush had four Hellcats against six Panthers. The Panthers that survived would be used in the final battle, along with 40 Pz.IVs. The surviving American tanks would be withdrawn and two fresh Sherman companies and a fresh Hellcat platoon would fight in the final battle.
The second amendment was to the rules. To simplify and speed up play, I discarded the rules for company commanders, platoon coherency, and platoon and company last stand checks. These rules sometimes challenge veteran players and without them, we would have a lot of tanks fighting a lot of other tanks to the death, which is what I wanted. I retained the special Tactics rules, but only the fathers bothered to use any of them, so I could have cut those rules too.
The final amendment was to make the fog last all day, and to set the maximum sighting distance at a constant ten inches. This wasn’t really historical, but the effect of the fog would require both sides to continuously maneuver, and would provide opportunities to get side and rear shots.
On the day of the game, everything went great. We had six boys and two fathers in the game, and they were suitably impressed by the very large table and the masses of tanks. The amended ambushes worked very well on the day of the game. The first two ambushes gave the boys an opportunity to learn the basic rules of the game (which they picked up very quickly), and the third ambush let the two fathers play a competitive mini-game against each other before the main event. Twelve Panthers survived the ambushes to reach the final battle. Streamlining the rules meant that the boys only had to learn how to move and shoot their tanks, and how to calculate armor saves and roll firepower tests. As the game evolved, the final battle divided into fights on two fronts. The two fathers were able to umpire one of the fights, which was good for me (I should have enlisted a second umpire at the outset). The continuous fog made the final battle a real donnybrook, with tanks from both sides moving to maximize their firepower and to get shots on their enemies’ vulnerable side/rear armor. Lots of stuff blew up. All of the participants had fun, and running a game for the kids was not too different from running a game for our regular group.
I was too busy to remember to take a lot of photos — all of these pics are of the final battle.
- TJ