Having a look through the hundreds of photos of games played in 2025 I came across this 15mm Chain of Command Normandy '44 game played last February...
With Phil and Jenny providing th figures and terrain it looked as wonderful as usual.
The British were tasked with evicting the Germans from the Norman farmhouse, basing one section in the farmhouse, one in the neighbouring building and the third in the orchard to prevent any outflanking.
The problem that now created from a game point of view was that the British player was aware that there were Germans in position to prevent a flank attack, despite the fact the battlefield was covered in hedges and trees (I appreciate I could have held off deploying them, but the game mechanisms may well have resulted in my not being able to subsequently activate and deploy them leaving the flank undefended). I find the inability to deploy hidden units, as you can in I Ain't Been Shot Mum with blinds, is frustrating.
This was evidenced by the British player advancing a section up to but just outside visibility range of the supposed hidden Germans that in real life he would not have know were there (or not) without scouting.
To reinforce the ludicrousness the British deployed their mortars...
...and dropped smoke in front of the Germans they didn't know were there!
The British then brought up a Sherman, which they kept well back from any potential panzerfaust ambush points...
Having a big bag of cotton wool, they then dropped even more smoke on the battlefield! :-)
The British then pushed a section up on the German left...
Suppressing the defenders in the house...
But coming a cropper against a dynamic German counter-attack by the section who had been twiddling their thumbs on the right (again not sure whether real troops would leave an occupied position to run blindly down a road towards the sound of gunfire but...)
Meanwhile in the centre the second German section opened up on the British creeping through the orchard...
A brief firefight occurring with minimal casualties on both sides.
At this point we called it a day, the British were unlikely to be able to dislodge the Germans and no one fancied not moving and just rolling dice for the next hour when the pub beckoned...
As you might have gathered as lovely as the game looked, it wasn't a particularly inspiring game in itself and somewhat reflected my experience with Chain of Command in 2025. Everyone tells me it is a great set of rules but most of the games were not a lot of fun to play.
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