Comments/suggestions for a Dieppe mini-CG?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Looking for feedback/ideas/suggestions here...
I'm a newbie, but interested in designing a mini-CG for Operation Jubilee, the Dieppe raid. They are a few design challenges:

1) The whole raid was 9-10 hours so no campaign days/refit.
2) It was a slaughter historicallly, so how to make a fun replayable game while maintaining historic accuracy.
3) With OVHS around, people might be sick of the Canadians by now, eh?

There were 5 main landings. Two commando raids on the wings in pre-dawn to take out headland guns. The 2 main assaults on a very tough beach, and the SSR landing on the wrong side of the river Scie, having to cross a tough bridge.

There's a lot of ASL meat here I think:

a) Naval Bombardment
b) Amphibious landings
c) Shingle/Seawall/Esplanade
d) Fortified, partially destroyed casino
e) All kinds of tets and other anti-tank traps
f) Caves, shore batteries, cramped city fighting (tobocco factory etc)...some civilian collaborators.
g)If all had gone well, an asssault on an aerodrome.
h)Air support with *HUGE* dogfights.
i)Opposed bridge/river crossing -> village assault
j)Then....you have to get them all off the beach!

-It's a fortified port! Wow!

OB) Landing craft, Canadians, Engineers, Valentines, 50 US rangers, Royal Marine commandos and 2 squads of free french, German 2nd line troops, guns, mortars, machine guns and pillboxes on parapets with wire, oh my! About 5.000 allied troops in all.

I was thinking of 5-6 individual scenarios that could be combined into a single ubermonster. The beach would be a historical map (4 scenarios), The river scie crossing (1 scen), and use a geoboard for the aerodrome (only 1 scen). Phase 1 the commando landings, Phase 2 the beach landings, Phase 3: town/casino/factory + commit the reserve, Phase 4 (if allies have not been butchered), the aerodrome.

Garrison commander (Germ) sets up defenses.
Rolls for weather, scattering due to naval intercepts, alert level due to naval intercepts. Canadian commander decides how to commit reserves based on successful land to shore radio contact sitrep after phase 2.

 

[SamB]

This is JMO, but if there is no refit phase - then why even try to make this a campaign?

This sounds like a monster sceanrio, but not a campaign.

Sam

 

[Anonymous]

Why a campaign? Good Question

Hi Sam,

It's a very good question, and I'm not sure CG is the right word for what we're proposing. Maybe "One Day Phased Operation". The allied player can't purchase coys etc., everything is already afloat. 20%-30% of the force never landed and some were kept in reserve to land later. We hope to allow the allied side to commit certain regiments to land after the inital commando raids based on shore to ship radio contact. The allied commander decides which units to land and on which of the areas. The German got reinforcements every hour and we hope to make the German player decide when/where to reinforce and with what. The scenarios are linked by progress and perimeter. I may be able to find some way to link ALL scenarios together as a 40 turn ubermonster played on 1 historical map and 4 geoboards.

In that sense, it's not a refit more of a reinforcement/assault wave phase. The German should be able to purchase, the allied able to choose from a list of available. Both the Allied and German can decide which units to deploy and where. The allied will be more constrained due to tides etc. Here the VC stay as they were for the operation objectives (The aerodrome, certain gun positions, an RDF tower etc)

Alternatively, we scrap all that, and just do a real big beach scenario.
I worry here that we get too historical in terms of OB and results and the Canadian wins if 6 HS get to the seawall instead of the historical 5. Surely, we could offer the fully historic variant, with VC being "do better than history". We could probably give people both the historic beach/commando only, or the more open ended original objectives mini-CG. Heck we could even throw in the paradrop in a hypothetical operation Rutter

I don't know how to do a monster map that would do the beaches, the commando raids, the village and the city/aerodrome. Maybe some of those should be dropped to focus on the beaches.

Granted, it's a bit of a new concept...one day phased with no refit.
Frank is bold when it comes to new things ASL. He's working on a command-control ASL variant that uses simultaneous movement and gets rid of advance and rout phases. It's already quite polished and is undergoing playtesting.

Frank: Yes 1 beached destroyer. I'm not sure about the French resistance. There were definately collaborators. I'd like to put more French in the OB...

 

[Anonymous]

To Moderator....

Any chance we can delete the 2nd copy of this I misposted by mistake and change the name to "Andy" (and include FrankH's reponse).

BTW sorry for misposting. Thanks.