VIII C motor pool: M4, M3Lt, M8 AC, 2.5T trucks.

[LouCoatney]

As some folks know, I design my cardstock paper model ships for naval miniatures wargaming – usually at 1:700 and big enough to see, but I’m doing 1:1200 Japanese to go with Wiking’s and others’ plastic models at that scale.

I have almost finished my 1:1200 Japanese task force set, and I have posted photos of the ships. A few others here have already built them – better, more skillfully, as usual – but I’ve been doing my wargame designing as an easier break from my spending HOURS writing political comments about … the world situation.

I have just finished a new postcard game of mine, Postcard Brittany, about Patton’s westward breakout into Normandy. It has only 11 US units: 4th Armored Division’s Combat Commands A, B, and C, 6th AD’s CCs, 83rd Inf Div’s 3 regiments – one slow and heavy with divisional artillery – plus another inf regt the 121st, and finally Patton’s innovative Task Force A which contained an armored cavalry recon group/regt, a battalion of heads-up self-propelled tank destroyers, and an engineer battalion to deal wth port fortifications.

Anticipating a long drawn-out attritional campaign across France requiring Allied supplies from major seaports, VIII Corps was sent into the Brittany peninsula to grab the ports before the Germans could fully man and fortify them. Many German units were outside the ports, foraging food and/or trying to suppress the French FFI resistance. No one, including the Bretons, was prepared for the suddenness of our breakout (thanks to our tank-mounted hedgerow cutters, first conceived by a Tennessee hill man. Even then, the Germans couldn’t form river defense lines, because the French had grabbed and were holding the key bridges for us!)
Thanks to his rapport with the French … who were eager for Liberation and like Patton believed the ports could be seized if we Americans moved fast enough … Patton had high expectations.

However, VIII Corps’ Troy Middleton – later of Ardennes/Bulge fame – was the conservative corps commander, and the individualistic but highly competent commander of 4th AD, John Shirley Wood, was outright against the 12 day campaign, believing they should be heading east toward Germany instead of west into Brittany.
(And with hindsight, foresighted Wood was obviously right. Think of the possibilities if Patton had been given 12 more days to pursue the German remnants across France – right into even more unprepared Germany!)
Wood and 4th Armored were sitting on a hill overlooking Lorient with the French begging them to move down and into town with their considerable infantry help, before the Germans could infiltrate troops into it and organize its fortified defense. Wood wouldn't move and 24 hours later the Germans had a defense ready which held out until the last days of the war!

Regardless, it is a fascinating game scenario, and I’ve done a fast and simple little postcard game about the Brittany foray, which anyone is free to print off en masse in 4x6/A6 or 5x8/A5 postcard size and format to mail/give to family and friends.
I do my own tank, truck, plane, ship, etc. icons for my boardgame pieces, but I was wondering if doing little 3D pieces for the US (mechanized and motorized) units might spice up the game and atract general gamers’ interest, and so voila!

And they seem to work! One of the leaders of our Ares Krigspillklubb in Oslo who otherwise eschews wargames stopped in his tracks to admire these, and I may be able to snag even him into a (typically 20-30 minute) game.

Attached are the build-tested plan, photo of them on the (much enlarged) gameboard in contrast to the flat unit counters, a closeup of them, the front of postcard, and the back of postcard with the (necessarily abbreviated) rules and address block. Its webpage is www.CoatneyHistory.com/PostBrit.htm, where the movement factor track player’s aid is.

LOVE this little game, which is just as good for solitaire play as for multi-player.
You can see here the very start of the first turn. The FFI groups have discovered/reconned a German unit, a blank, and an undefended Strassensperre – a fulsome German word, for sure – roadblock which they can destroy … greatly helping advancing US units. (A roadblock otherwise costs a US unit 1 extra movement factor to clear, if it is undefended, or costs each attacking US unit a movement factor, if it is defended.)

And if the Germans do get sufficient units into the ports – think of whacking moles before they can get into their holes – a siege can drag on as long as 3 of the 6 turns (even if successful), thanks particularly to the elite German parachute units recovering from Disruption sooner.

ANYway, with these 3D playing pieces, I’m intending to treat my fellow members to RMM RMM, CLANK CLANK, BAM! BAM! sound effects … OK, so maybe just once.

Guns yet to install and edges yet to blacken.

[LouCoatney]

As far as I/we know, there isn't a wargame dedicated to just the Brittany foray.

There is a game by Yves Roig - Brittany 1944 - as part of the re-issue of the Polish Phalanx Games' 1944: Race to the Rhine game using their unique Euro-type logistics/supply/resources game system, but that's not due out until May, and there may be more delays.

I can't patiently wait for Phalanx Games to finally start printing, so more than once I have come up with my own more conventional, in this case hex&counter, games. (A game system/text can be copyrighted, not a game concept/scenario.)

And I have gotten a delighted e-mail from a Breton wargamer who says he's going to show off Postcard Brittany at a convention in Rennes. What's more, he posted this photo of his grandmother and 4 of her children on Liberation Day in Betton, 1Aug44! (I assume that is a grandfather or family friend, since her husband was off in the FFI fighting the Germans.)

Incidentally, St. Malo was finally taken a week or so after 4 and 6 ADs had redeployed east, and Brest was taken some months later after a prolonged siege, and of course the Germans demolitioned the port for the rest of the war.

Again, a motto of mine on my webpage is War must be confined to history books and games and museums ... and models, come to think of it.

[georgerutherford1861]

Excellent work, Lou!

I like how the vehicles have their unit designations underneath them. I am going to have to give this one a try (in between those rare moments of card modeling!).

Doug

[LouCoatney]

Thanks for your interest, Doug.

Even for the German units only being hidden in the solitaire game, their semi-random hidden deployment makes every game a new one.
Beginner players should get to be the Allies with no German (1 victory point) garrisons. Then they should be the Germans, if it's a 2-player game, and I have standup units for them on its webpage ... which need to be updated ... hmm.
And THEN they get to be the Allies going up against the Germans *with* the garrison factors.
The French FFI add A LOT asymmetrically with their various abilities to infiltrate/recon unknown German units, destroy undefended roadblocks, and act as "Zones of Control" in adjacent hexes, stopping German movement and/or blocking German retreats.

Feel free to show this around the AWC community. Even Con Crane might like it.

Allied air supremacy is reflected/abstracted in the slow German movement and overall relatively superior US combat strength.

Finishing the guns and turrets right now.

[LouCoatney]

Lorient was under-garrisoned and fell as soon as Turn 2 for the first time. St. Nazaire held out long enough that I couldn't get adequate forces to Brest North or South soon enough, thanks to road congestion. (Entering a hex with a friendly unit costs +1 movement factor ... with 2 friendly units +2, etc.)
I then had a 2-player game against my erstwhile Ares opponent Tor with me as the Allies, and I won it! He tried to delay me with units outside of the fortified ports ... too soon.
Wisecracking about both Brests being an objective in the game, of course.