Review Look Sarge

Look Sarge No Charts is one of the latest LMW Works publications and here is what one gamer had to say about it.

Hi Buck

Had the first game of Look Sarge no charts last night. Had comments like "this seems complicated" , and "I hope you know what your doing because I do not"., after I had explained the basics of the rules. By the third turn every one had got the hang of the mechanisms and with 5 players with me as GM it had switched from me suggesting what action they could take to trying to keep up with requests for markers, fire missions and judgments on cover and visibility. We will definitely be trying more games.

We played the Holding the Line scenario with a reduced orbat of 2 battalions per side with light support weapons and 1 company of tanks with the French having only 2 platoons. Or first hitch was road columns of multiple units. With the activation system moving a such a group is not straight forward. We just used the standard rules and this delayed one flank of the Germans. Do have any house rules for this? I think in future that I may adopt a rule where, provided that the units were all in contact, they move on the lead unit and the other activations are ignored for that turn. My aim her is to speed up play at the start, where the activation effects will not be significant.

The Germans just walked a company towards the town and got shot up artilleried out of existence. Then they started to sort out the machine guns and mortars that should have been supporting the attack. The funniest thing in the game was the blind German machine gunners. Despite being fired on, and slowly being killed by of all things a platoon of 25mm AT guns, they took ages to spot even with 5 dice.

On the Germans left flank the tank company supported by and infantry company and light 75mm guns faced a brief probe by the French tanks who were disposed of by the German tanks and some AT support from the centre only for a single AT hit from the French to cause the Germans tanks to retreat. The Germans then held the woods and hills in the centre while hoping the tanks would unpin, which they did not before the game ended.

The only German success was on their right flank where the French were finally out flanked and subjected to accurate artillery that caused two companies to fail their morale, one pinned, one retreat. The pinned company was then assaulted in the flank and wiped out. While this created a path to the bridge the town was still occupied by the French and the Germans had few weapons left that could effectively deal with infantry in Hard cover.

I think that as well as the woods there should be some light cover available on the table such as hedge lined fields and roads. The very open terrain resulted in the Germans being killed as soon as they were in range.

I will ask some questions that have occurred as a result of the first game in a separate posting.

Regards

Tony Cane

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