a World War I encounter

Mark has a lovely battle report on his blog describing our recent WWI engagement. Instead of trying to gild his lily, I'll just comment on my plan and how it worked.

He placed one objective (the one that wouldn't disappear as the game went on) over behind the town/village/villa (BUA), making it obviously the easiest to defend. I tried to set the others in open ground and spread out, so that they would be a bit easier to take and so that he would have to stretch to cover them (since capturing even one would give me the battle).

He deployed well, with infantry covering each objective, the artillery behind and covering "his" objective, his MGs in the center sweeping all the open ground I'd have to cover, and saving his light mortars to use as an ambush. I needed to keep him spread out, so I wanted to commit one platoon against the objective furthest from his strength, the objective on his left. Since cavalry move well in difficult terrain (not as fast as trucks or armoured cars--ACs--do on roads, but faster than wheeled transport do off-road and faster than foot move), I posted them to my far flank. If they got lucky, they would take their objective, but mostly they were there to force him to defend there and hopefully to limit his choices as to where to spring his ambush. And being recon troops, they were able to steal a march before the battle started and sneak forward through the wood.

I knew I would have to beware of his guns firing over open sights, but the opportunity to use the road to move the ACs and truck-borne infantry forward rapidly was very appealing. That objective would be there through the whole game, so I could concentrate forces on it without it "expiring", so I stacked up the bike troops, the motorised troops, and the ACs on that flank.

The artillery...here was my first mistake. Ignoring even what I've learned in WWII combat, I started them up limbered, with the idea of moving them forward to the top of the central hill and fire over open sights onto the Germans below with greater effect than if they bombarded. What I should have done was either deploy them somewhere where they could spot enemy targets themselves or, if I really felt I had to keep them limbered, assign them a target they could move to and unlimber *swiftly*.

The RFC let me down, in that I got one 'plane the whole game, but I wasn't expecting much from them, as my area wasn't a priority for their support.

My second mistake came when I moved the cyclists forward without dismounting, thus giving his MGs a load of good shots at them. One general is supposed to have said "speed is armour", but those bicycles don't have that much speed. :-)

The ACs did a good job of softening up the enemy in the town, and we were able to use the town to shield them from the MGs and the German field guns. After they had hammered the Hun for a while, and while we kept them pinned down, the truck-borne troops (now on foot) were able to rush and get a foothold, which despite his counterattack I think we would have been able to hold (we did beat off one attack). I really needed both of the cycle platoons, though, to carry on to the objective, and the ACs to either support that or keep the heads down of the Germans int he center of the battle area.

The cavalry did well at what they were asked to do. They ended up becoming combat ineffective, but they pinned his left and forced him to commit his reserves.

If I had either set up the arty behind the hill or brought them up behind the left-wing attack and fired over open sights at his men in the centre, they would have been effective. As it was, I didn't start registering hits with them until I had lost half the battery, at which point the barrages I was delivering were too weak to do much good.

All in all, I think my plan would have worked if I had been less "bold" with the RHA and the cyclists. Live and learn...