Arnhem 'Tiger' Route - Post Campaign Thoughts

So with the campaign drawing to a sudden and rather bloody end earlier this evening, as mentioned I thought I'd jot down some thoughts in no particular order, based upon the three games so far.

ToE

I really noticed the lack of heavy weapons that the British had, compared to the Germans, even compared to Krafft's Training Battalion. Now I know it's pretty hard to find out exactly what Krafft had to hand, but even with the reduced support weapons I gave the Germans, the British were still out-gunned. Although the British had better stats for the Paras, only having one MG & 3" Mortar did not compare favourably with the Germans, who had double that amount.

Now this has not normally been a big issue for the British in other games, as they rely heavily upon artillery and air support as they did historically, so at least can achieve parity with the Germans and their mortars etc. However here only only having limited artillery support and no air support really impacted on their ability to prosecute attacks, especially against BUA's.

German Mortars

As in the historical battle, the British did suffer mightily at the hands of the 81mm mortars, which could just bring down an overwhelming amount of firepower at times, something that the British really didn't have an answer to. Keeping them back until the third scenario was right and anything earlier might have led to an even shorter campaign.

Fastest With The Mostest

The British have no options other than to keeping pushing forward as fast as they possibly can. With no artillery or mortar support early on, they simply have to keep probing and hope to outflank any German positions they come across. As we saw, this naturally carries risks, as it exposes you to enemy fire and if you take casualties early on, it's pretty dmaned hard to recover because you simply do not have any reserves. Even giving the British 'D' Company as a 'bonus', they had already pretty much shot their bolt in terms of maintaining an offensive stance due to previous losses.

2nd Kompanie

One could argue that with the sterling performance of 2nd Kompanie in the first two games, the British had lost any chance they realistically had and were on the back foot from then on. To have a chance it felt that they had to overcome the 2nd Kompanie quickly and with minimal loss, to allow them to push on and prevent the Germans forming defensive positions to the rear. 2nd Kompanie certainly managed to replicate the 'hit & run' tactics that kept the British off balance from the off, allowing them to maintain control of the engagements that followed after the first.

Smoke

This worked well in all the games, whether it be from the HQ's representing to Company 2" mortars, or the British artillery in game three. I think I got the balance right in terms of its usage and it's something I want to carry forward into other games.

Terrain

This helped the Germans as they could keep falling back to good positions with decent fields of fire as well as BUA's, whereas the British couldn't take time to make and plan an attack, but almost fight straight from the line of march. As was seen historically, when the Germans had to attack against the British, even with overwhleming firepower, it took a long time and at great cost to all involved.

Tanks

Apparently Freddie Gough asked for some tanks to be included in the first drop, which might have helped his Recce Squadrons push forward as in the first few hours, the Germans would have had very limited equipment with which to stop them. However the lack of any decent HE shells might have limited the actual usefullness of the tanks, but psychologically they might have been more effective.

Solo vs FtF

As a campaign as it stands, I feel it would not be fun for FtF games, certainly for the British player. As a solo one it was more interesting as it didn't matter to me either way what happened, as I let the narrative evolve after each game and based around the scenarios from the magazine. Maybe if the British had had a better start, it might have been more challenging, but I struggle to see how.

The Scenarios

It was interesting to try and scale the scenarios up from Platoon to Battalion level, but I'm not sure how well they worked. It certainly felt right and historical in terms of outcomes, but if I were to do this again, I would use them more as a basic framework from to work on, rather than as something to follow closely. 

What If?

Anyone interested in the Market-Garden Campaign should really read 'Operation Market-Garden, The Campaign For the Low Countries, Autumn 1944: Seventy Years On' in the Wolverhampton Military Studies Series, published by Helion. Having re-read some of the articles last week, you really do get the feel that the plan was more or less doomed to fail from the start. However in looking at all the issues involved, it does give you a good basis from which to form a plausible 'What if?' campaign, which I think would make for a more challenging, interesting and enjoyable campaign. Again whether it would have worked is naturally open to debate and would rely upon some form of boardgame or map to factor in XXX Corps etc, but it would be fun to do: maybe one day...

Summing Up

Despite all of the above, or maybe because of it, from a solo perspective I really enjoyed all of the games and felt that I learnt a lot about the challenges faced by both sides. It also gave me ideas and pointers for future campaigns which, as I hope you have seen here, make you think about the wider picture and when to hold and fight on, or whether to withdraw to live to fight another day is the better option.

So I hope you enjoyed the three games and my summing up and hopefully I the lessons learned can be taken forward to my Normandy campaign later in the year...

TTFN.