It is already three years since me and Dave started our regular, PBEM (Play By Email) wargames sessions (really? time flies!) We went through all 12 CC Europe scenarios (Combat Commander Europe – playing all 12 Base Game Scenarios – statistical analysis) as well as eight battles in the Pacific series (Combat Commander Pacific Michal & Dave) – we shall finish those sometime soon! Of course, those sessions were interspersed by other titles (like Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul – playing as Gauls, Bayonets & Tomahawks – playing with Dave or Red Flag Over Paris) but still, Combat Commander was our main title.

So, when Dave asked me if I want to try another Tactical Combat System I thought, “why not?”. It occurred to be Last Hundred Yards, one of more successful GMT game series recently, which was intriguing me for a quite long time already.

The Game

The Last Hundred Yards is definitely unique in comparison with other tactical wargame published to date. It introduces innovative system of action-reaction, intended to model Small Unit Behavior in Combat during WW2. It is pretty fun, really fast-paced, and provides a very good simulation of what it was like to command combat units at the platoon or company level – both infantry and vehicular units.

The game is purposely designed to deliver a brisk yet intensive gaming experience that forces many decisions upon you as you take command of an infantry company in Western Europe after the D-Day landings. On top of this, it is marvelously published with one of the most beautiful maps I have seen so far.

The Mission

Mission 1 Scenario briefing

The base game of Last Hundred Yards presents us with the set of 12 Missions, which are growing in complexity, gradually introducing new rules. Mission #1 On Their Own is a small, purely infantry-based engagement, with no hills or more complicated terrain features. Two German Platoons (Dave, attacker) assault a well-defended village, occupied by US Troops (Michal, defender).

So, what is the goal of the scenario? Well, there are three ways to finish it (something I like and is one of better features of LHY – various victory conditions):

  • Germans has to control five wooden buildings plus church – they won automatically in Victory Check phase.
  • One of the sides sustained enough losses to reach its Casualty Limit. The other side wins.
  • The Final Time score (which counts elapsed minutes and additional points for casualties) reached at least 46. That pretty abstract number only means, that there is a time pressure on attacker.

That will be very interesting game to play!

The Session

Picture being worth a thousand words, I am going to show you how our session went using the screenshots from the game. Well, this is actually my standard and favorite way of depicting the titles I play (I am known for “those arrows” :)) and I believe help Readers to understand what was going on. So let us jump to report!

You can click on every image and enlarge it for better visibility.

Set-up of our Mission 1 – I have my units hidden and concealed in two buildings and two trenches in the middle of the map, on the outskirts of the village. Dave is approaching from the right, starting offboard. In red – they critical Church to be taken by attackers.
The action starts almost immediately. One German Platoon takes northern path, getting first wooden building pretty quickly. Second platoon tries to approach via woods in the center only to get under heavy fire of three sections of my platoon. Some of the Germans disrupt!
The LHY can be a crazy game. When you try to recover your unit, when you roll 10, your soldiers become Heroes for one turn, gets morale boost and… charge forward against closest enemy! Just like Germans did above, successfully taking one of the trenches.
Good turn for attacker – systematic approach of one German platoon in the North (three more buildings occupied) plus very precise fire against my forward position which disrupt me. On top of this, I miserably failed in my assault!
LHY can be a crazy game. This time my disrupted unit recovers and becomes crazy Hero, assaults German held building and routs all enemies!
Still, systematic approach of German units cannot be stopped, and they quickly recover lost positions.
Then Dave assaults last wooden building before the Church; another unit tries to circumvent the defensive position but is being disrupted by my fire. Still, I am pretty close to be overwhelmed.
But fate sometimes helps us. In his roll for initiative Dave gets two 10’s and I can rout one of his stacks 4 hexes back. What a miracle!
Before Germans could recover, regroup, and assault again, the clock arrives at 47 and US troops won!
Let me show you how that time calculation works; as you can see above, the clock reached 41 minutes but due to high German losses, (two more than I) I am getting another 6 time points, which in sum is 47, just behind the victory threshold for this scenario.
Causalities from the game – three on German side, one on Allied.

Summary

This was my first experience with Last Hundred Yards. I admit, I had to look up the rules quite often, but with the time the play gets smoother and more straightforward. It helped a lot that we had so few units and rather plain terrain. Still, the game surprised us couple of times – which is good as twists and turns of fate is what I like in that type of games – my Holy Grail of random events in Tactical Combat is still Combat Commander, but LHY also does decent job here.

More reports to come!