An Encounter in France 1944: A Rommel AAR

I've never played any of the Honour Games.  However, I've been intrigued by some of the novel designs described at the website.

It was the announcement of "Rommel," a Grand Tactical rule set for World War 2, that finally induced me to pull the purchasing trigger.  I put my order in upon release.  I also picked up "Maurice" and "Freejumper," but they will have to wait for another day.

The PDF arrive instantly, but the actual book was not far behind.  Cheers to Honour Games for the prompt service!

Rommel uses company size units as the maneuver and combat elements that allow the fielding of entire divisions.  This is exactly the scale that I've been interested in and playing at for the last couple of years using Field of Battle: WW2.

I quickly read through the rules.  The instructions for the basic game aren't that long.  Overall, I'm happy with the formatting.  I like the army builder sections.  The scenarios allowed me to quickly assemble 91 point German and American armies for a test drive.  This effectively put two American regiments against 3 German Kampfgruppe.

Here are my lists:

Unit	#	Cost	Total
Germans
Panzer Grenadier Battalion	1	11	11
Motorized Inf. Battalion	1	8	8
Panther Battalion	1	12	12
Field Howitzer	1	3	3
			0
Panzer Grenadier Battalion	1	11	11
Motorized Inf. Battalion	1	8	8
Panzer IV	1	10	10
			0
Panzer Grenadier Battalion	1	11	11
Motorized Inf. Battalion	1	8	8
Hetzer	1	9	9
			91
Americans
Elite Infantry	3	10	30
105mm Howitzer	1	3	3
Shermans	1	10	10
			0
Elite Infantry	2	10	20
Infantry	1	8	8
105mm Howitzer	1	3	20
Shermans	2	10	0

I had just made a felt mat with a grid for "To the Strongest."  The squares aren't 6 inches (as called for in Rommel), but closer to 5.  It was a little tight, but worked.  I'm working on a 6 inch grid to be used for Rommel, and a grid based Maurice.

I used the encounter scenario which seemed fairly balanced.  Here is a look at the layout:

No need for roads which get abstracted at this level.  I'm grateful, because it always frustrated me to see just how many roads there are when you start having battlefields of greater than 8 by 16 kilometers.  The Urban, Mountain, Bockage and soft ground (wheat fields) cover 2-4 squares.

The American used the initiative that they won and some ops to charge across the battlefield.

This might have been a mistake.  The hope was to grab some good protective terrain and keep the Germans well away from the American controlled objective squares.  The Americans attacked given that the Germans were in open terrain.

Some key tactical ops, plus the armor advantage repulsed the attack.

The Germans successfully counterattack:

Hills/Mountains are tough to take for both sides:

Pushing the Americans out of the town, not so easy either:

German reinforcements arrive first! 

The Germans use the off road ops to push through the relatively open center and take the American objectives!  Top of the picture in the two towns.  American reinforcements have just arrived, but the Germans got troops on the unprotected objectives before the newly arrived forces could move into them.

Nearing the end of the game, the American desperately counterattack.

The above was isolated and destroyed, but below the Germans were able to feed more troops in by resetting their ops and using off road movement again.

American infantry even try to push in from their occupied town to seize a German objective.  Tank shock stopped that for the most part.

The swing in initiative to the Germans meant the American never really had a chance to reset their headquarters.

A before and after of the German OPS file.

I really had fun playing this game.  I plan to adapt the Operation Luttich scenario for it soon, but I want a couple of more small games under my belt first.

The only problem I had was with the order of retreat.  The rules state that Attackers retreat at the conclusion of combat, while the defenders can retreat after the combat (as long as its not evasion).  I've read enough papers to know that the conclusion is still part of the paper, while after is, well, after.  So I thought the defenders could retreat after the attackers did.  It didn't feel right though, and you know, if it doesn't feel right, then maybe you shouldn't be doing it.  The good folks at the forum straightened me out, so all is right as rain. The defenders decide whether to retreat first.