Tuesday 27 January 2015

Kampfgruppe Peiper - WWII KGC game

Last night's entertainment at the club was a WWII Battle of the Bulge scenario laid on for us by Colin. I found myself on the US team, commanding 3rd Bn 119th Infantry Regt, defending Stoumont against Kampfgruppe Peiper's King Tigers, attacking from La Gleize on 19 December 1944.

This was quite an ambitious game, with 4 German battalions (I think) attacking initially 3 and eventually 4 US battalions. We had 6 players (plus referee), some of whom were new to the rules, and there was also a lot of information to digest from the scenario briefings. Since we were using Kampfgruppe Commander II - my favourite WWII game because of its beautiful command & control, activation/response mechanisms, but quite a complex game - this did slow things down about. Even so, by the end of the evening both German columns had traversed the length of the table and even though we were some way off playing through the scheduled 8 turns, we had reached a satisfactory result. I felt sorry for Bruce, whose tactical options were essentially limited to one - charge down the valley of death and run the gauntlet of my minefields, bazookas, and AT ambushes - but whose King Tigers had still managed to break through (albeit his battalion was reduced to a platoon). Overall, a bit chaotic but a good fun game, and a good-looking one thanks to Colin's beautiful 1/300 scale models.

I knew about this action in general terms, but having played the game I have a better understanding of what actually happened. I guess I need to read this though:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Devils-Adjutant-Jochen-Peiper/dp/1862271569











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