Howdy all,
For anyone about to be OR already under a heat-dome, good luck and keep hydrated & cool. Following up my previous ‘timely’ Cangames post and battle report, I thought I’d get #2 posted up. This time, I signed up to try out the Rapid Fire ruleset that my buddy Ed was using for his Eastern Front WW2 game. Of course, as with my last post, I have made sure enough time passed so that I cannot remember specifics.
I do recall that I found that the ruleset seemed pretty easy flowing. Admittedly, Ed does an excellent of GM’ing and guiding players through…so while the learning curve is there, he is handy with the values need for the roll. I think Rapid Fire might have a bunch of tables, but again that would be guessing as Ed was the man with the numbers. I did like how easy it was to do hits, casualties, and movement…so that’s a solid bonus.
The game was a river crossing on the Eastern Front with Soviet troops pushing hard to overwhelm German defenders. The Sov’s had the ability to call in air support (Il-2’s) and at some point had the River Navy to bring extra direct/in-direct artillery support. On the Soviet side it was pretty clear, the main feature being the 4 launches and docks for the river crossing. On the German side, the village was spread across the table edge, there were a variety of entrenched positions and ruins for the defenders, and for both, each side had an array of reinforcements that they could call on (if they rolled appropriately, each unit designated by a numbered poker chip).
The setup as described above…the docks included a set (1 at either side of the picture) of small boats/canoes more for infantry troops, a large barge that could take heavy armour, and 3 transports that could get infantry and light gun troops across.
The view from the German side, flank to flank. As you can see, early morning fog as well as Soviet Gods of War have laid down an impressive pre-emptive strike with HE and smoke munitions. The first wave of Soviet infantry have leapt from their landing craft and stormed the riverbank.
As the first wave push towards the German lines, the first wave of river crossers head across…given the width of the river, it would take 2-3 turns to get offloaded on the opposite riverbank.
Infantry, heavy machine gun support, anti-tank gun, and mortar platoons load up and start their crossing.
Wider view of th above shot…the smoke/fog is clearing…you can see the rafts beached on the German side. The first wave is closing in on the edge of the town, casualties shown with red X’s on the stands. If you look closely you can see some buildings that are empty, these have been cleared of defenders with massed shots at range.
The Sov’s make it to the centre and right blocks in town and they are taking the outer wall of a few others…there’s still some smoke to obscure line of sight, but casualties are mounting.
No rest for the river flotilla as reinforcements start to queue up for their turn. River monitors start to shift position to bring some fire to bear…and you can see the stands of air support rushing in to provide close air support. We actually didn’t do too terribly with the air support - we had to roll to bring it on table, we had to roll for target visibility, and depending on the outcome, the aircraft could be diverted off target or even end up engaging friendly forces. All in all, we were successful bringing on a few sorties, I think one of them ended up targeting some of our unit (luckily they missed), and we put some hits on high value targets when we needed them most.
Overview shot of the flotilla and diverted air support sortie.
And here you can see an Il-2 roll in to engage German defenders. The Sov’s are making some progress, in bottom of the pic you can see HMG troops in the first line of ruins providing support to infanteers pushing to the second line of buildings.
Heavy tanks pushing to the riverbank now.
A furball of activity…the Sov’s had some favourable events cards that brought on Partisans…they provided some much needed bodies to support the assault. You can see armoured elements mixing it up as German Panthers try to push assaulters back to the water.
Final move of the game, our tanks try to rollover the Soviet positions and lay down some late game hurt. At this point, I think we were able to achieve an extremely minor victor given the losses…we had put out some pain, but had some tough rolls that kept the Germans in the game.
All in all an enjoyable game and I would like to try Rapid Fire again to get a better sense of the actual mechanics…but a great first bite.
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