Our community has taken the Art of Tactic WWII system as a trophy after Russian aggression (and after Zvezda discontinued supporting the system).
Now we are choosing a new name for the game as some people don't want to try it because they think it's a Russian game although we changed a substantial part of the rules and added lots of non-zvezda units.
Our current favorite is Tabletop Tactics which may be shortened as TT or TTT.
Full name variant:
Tabletop Tactics: Hex-Based WWII Game
Having found my Art of Tactic collection intact upon returning to Bucha, out of euphoria I invited to my home the only player who remained in the vicinity, Arlink, and we played a huge two-day offline battle. 25 turns, 12 Hot War mapboards, 40+ units for the British and 30+ for the Germans... North African December of 1942 replayed in spring Bucha recovering from Russian occupation... That was epic.
I'm gonna publish a more detailed battle report later when I have time.
https://youtu.be/FYuzwa6xass
https://youtu.be/BuCmDorb8pE
It was loosely based on the Battle of El Agheila or Mersa Brega, 12-18 December 1942.
British troops were advancing on two roads, the coastal one (5th Royal Tank Regiment with reinforcements) and the desert one (5th Infantry Brigade).
The Germans were defending with one infantry regiment, one of whose battalions will arrive only on Turn 7. After Turn 13 move, reinforcements from the 15th Panzer Division were to arrive for a counterattack.
The positions of the Germans were divided into two zones, A and B. In each zone there are 7 key hexes, marked on the map with the appropriate letters. In El Agheila, a German ammunition depot is located in a hex with the letter B in a circle.
На початку січня
відіграли дистанційно (Telegram + Discord) цікаву партію — наступ британців на
німецькі позиції в умовній Італії-1943.
Грали 2х1: за британців
Андрій (Дніпро), за німців два Кирила (один із Дніпра, другий із Київської
області).
On October 15-16, 2021 we played the largest Art of Napoleonics battle so far. Finally, I got around to publishing a battle report.
There
were 5 players playing 2 vs 3 on my custom made hex mapboards. On Napoleon’s
side there were the French (Alex aka General Lusignan) and the Saxons (my son
Kolyan). The
opposite team consisted of the Austrians (myself), Wurttembergers (my nephew
Viktor, 12 y.o.), and Bavarians (my nephew Max, 11 y.o.),
Want to share some pics of a 2x1 remote AoT game we played in our community trying to approximately reproduce fighting for Letychiv Fortified District in July 1941.
Two German battle groups were tasked with breaking through the Fortified District from two sides.
The Red Army has six bunkers and several but no mobile units from the start. On the 10th turn, an armored and cavalry group (incl. two T-34 platoons and Katyusha) arrived to reinforce the Red Army to counterattack.
We played with fog of war.
The game was really enthralling till the last turn. Red Air Force had a very successful first airstrike eliminating StuG and a company of Gebirgsjaeger, and when the reinforcements came, the Soviets destroyed all the tanks of the Wehrmacht Player 1 with a powerful concentration of fire.
But then, amidst a heavily smoked battlefield (we played with the Strong Wind rule), Soviet tanks got scattered chasing German infantry in the open and couldn’t fight back crucial villages to win. So, in the end, the lack of experience resulted in the Soviet loss.
Napoleon believed in speed, Wellington in terrain.
***
The Column, whether by company or division, was a maneuver formation, which wheeled and formed (hollow) square up to 3 times faster than a line (French regulations of 1791 gave respectively 30 sec. and 100 sec. for forming square). In emergency a masse or closed-column square could often be formed even faster to defend against cavalry, a maneuver favoured by the Austrians, Prussians and Russians from their experience against the nomadic horsemen of the steppe.
