I’ve posted a few images on Social media of game play from The Gamers Tactical Combat Series – Omaha as it occurs and the question arose about the level of Pillbox  destruction & success.

So despite posting things out of order and before my planned June 6th release of the game play, I thought it might be interesting to address those questions and seek out any feedback from the gang of readers who maybe able to spot errors or opportunities to improve.

The Landings Scenario opens with 4 LCT [R] Landing Craft Tank [Rocket] which is one hell of a way to open up any sort of scenario. With a BANG!

The Rockets strike must scatter, and must then deluge the area EIGHT hexes around from point of impact….OMG. So given that the opening of this scenario sees just pill box and German Nebel Werfer emplacements +1 company of troops from 352nd,  we save the counter clipping and place ‘to hit’ or Fire For Effect Markers on each hex that has a unit [Pillbox/Rocket Pit] in it. These fires will not affect the obstacle hexes. These strikes above, are occurring near La Grand Hameau,

which is situated mid map above in front of Fox Green and East Red landing zones the Blue area above and the one to its immediate right.

As a visual effect I placed the 8 pip die and surrounded it by blast counters to give you a sense of range and scale of the attacks, and put markers on the pillboxes.

5/9 kills. As best I can tell from the conversion rules and cross referencing the old rules, we are looking for AT fires on the Arty table. Meaning a 10 or more +/- mods will kill a PillBox which has 1 step.
We opened with box cars and went from there! This set of strikes feels overly effective, and interestingly the Designers notes in the rules suggest they think the US got of lightly given the significance of the overlapping fields of fire of these pillbox locations!

Moving center to left as we are really only focused on this part of the map for our scenario [1^st Divisions landings], we can see scatter is just 2 hexes 4-5= 2 hex drift. The results here will impact the troops coming in from Easy Green and Dog Red.

The E-3 Draw takes out 5/13 pillboxes and rocket sites. This is huge!
With these losses not only will eventual landings be safer, the approach to the obstacles, shingle and sea wall will be less devastating….we hope! The E-1 Draw looks very exposed, but will the Op Sheet attack plans support this?

The La Moulins strike has a 4/9 effectiveness after drifting or scattering well for us.

We can see that while there are still 2 strong points on either side of this draw below the entire left of it is wide open!

Back on the right side of the map the last rocket strike is into des Bateaux. Only six sites are in range.

But with amazing rolls again 4/6 are destroyed. This almost clears the beach in this area. Fox Green looks very tempting. But once again the plans are drawn and now the troops from 116^th Regimental Combat Team will have to sort it out on the beach.

Lets move to the landing phases and the losses that will be inflicted by the land fixed defenses, beach obstacles and the like. We have destroyed 18 pill box emplacements and rocket pits. Lets hope it has an impact!