Midway

Remember a few months ago I posted about creating a CY6! scenario for the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Midway? Well, I started building the ship and buying the planes ages ago, but I got bored of it and started painting other things like the supers. I didn't forget about this project, though, as it was booked into a First Tuesday slot at the Phoenix club. So, over the past couple of weeks I knuckled down and got everything finished just in time and the game was played tonight. We had about 12 or so players evenly divided between Japanese and American pilots. I refereed the game and moved the bombers. The scenario was based on the Japanese counterstrike against the Yorktown, but with some concessions to playability and decision making.

Historically, the dive bombers hit the Yorktown about an hour and a half before the torpedo bombers arrived. They hit it with 3 bombs and caused some fires to breakout, such that they thought they had crippled her. However, American firefighting and damage control techniques were up to the task and an hour later the fires were out and she was back under way. The repairs were so effective that the torpedo bombers actually thought they were attacking a second, fresh carrier. So, as far as the scenario goes, I decided to compress time and have both the dive and torpedo bombers attacking at roughly the same time. The dive bombers (D3A1'Val') were placed closer to the target, though, to ensure that they would arrive a few turns ahead of the torpedo bombers (B5N 'Kate'). The numbers were:

6 Vals

6 Kates (3 in the clouds)

6 Zeros 

12 Wildcats

The bombers were placed on the table and then the Wildcats were placed around the carrier. Finally, the Zero fighter support was placed. Three Kates began off table and appeared from a cloud bank to the north of the carrier on turn 3 (roughly as it occurred on the day).  The Vals were placed in a wide arc to the south, basically all coming in individually. The American players decided to weight their forces against the closer dive bombers and left only 4 Wildcats to take on the 3 visible Kates. The Japanese players then decided to escort the Kates with all 6 Zeros.

The Wildcats mob the Vals while a deadly wedge of Kates and Zeros approach from the north.

The initial pass of the Wildcats bagged 3 of the Vals, but their head on tactics meant that they lost too much speed turning and only one more Val was shot down, leaving 2 to dive on the exposed carrier.

Two of the 2 Vals slips past the Wildcats. The rearmost is shot down by the tailing Wildcat, but the furthest begins it's run amidst the flak.

The first Val to dive misses. The second can be seen off the starboard of the island about to tip over. It  is pursued by a trail of flak, but the Wildcats are too far away.

The last Val sores a direct hit!

Meanwhile, the 4 Wildcats to the north engaged the Kates in another head on pass, but the resulting furball only sees one carrier attack plane in the Pacific. The Zeros pounced from behind the formation and summarily destroyed over half the enemy fighters, but not before they emptied their magazines at the Japanese torpedo bombers. Somehow the airframes were up to the pounding, though and they slipped past the defenders and on to the target with their deadly Type 91 torpedoes. 

As the Vals begin their dives the Kates press on past the Wildcats and through the ever  present flak.

The critical point of the game! The first Kate delivers it's torpedo and the Yorktown  is heavily damaged.

After the first torpedo struck home a second Kate managed to drop its payload, but that missed the carrier by a whisker. A third plane was also inbound and may have managed to drop it's ordinance, but we had to call it a day as we'd run out of time. I called this a Japanese victory due to the torpedo attack. As per the history, the Yorktown was damaged enough to remove her from the fight, but not finish her off and I think that was probably all that could be hoped for. The Japanese carrier fleet was soon to be finished off and the Yorktown would meet her demise in a couple of days at the hands of a Japanese submarine.

Final thoughts! I think this was a really good game. The players all seemed to have fun and the focal point of the carrier gave a real excitement as the Japanese planes started to break through. The flak was simplified for the size of the scenario, to speed things up a bit. Rather than rolling for every battery I made some flak markers (mostly for the aesthetic of the puffs of black) and if any plane flew through them they would roll to be hit. Throughout the game, though, not a single Japanese aircraft was hit. There were plenty of rolls to hit, but even when the 1" guns came into action no hits occurred. I think this was slightly down to bad rolls, but when I run this game again I think I'll adjust the rolls to make the flak a bit more effective. Overall, though, I was very satisfied with the scenario design and look forward to trying again at some point!

Catching up!

Wow! It's been 2 months since I last posted to this blog! It's pretty much been work and other RealLife(tm) factors that have kept me away from blogging, and gaming too, in fact! Haven't played a wargame for quite some time now...possibly as far back as the last post bout MTS! I've managed a few boardgames in that time and have also managed to direct what little time I've had to painting and that has actually been quite nice. Been brushing up on my skills, if you will! :)

So, thought I'd kick off the blog again with some stuff I've managed to do and then start a 'work in progress' series of posts as I paint a fantasy Dwarf figure that I picked up and intend to try out a range of techniques that I wouldn't normally use on a wargames figure, namely feathering, non-metallic metals and 5-colour highlights!

So, first up we have the last of the foot for the FoG Roman starter army. This is a battlegroup of Campanian hoplites from Magister Militum with Veni Vidi Vici shield transfers. I must say, although the unit looks good enough, it was a real bore to paint! All those browns! Sheesh!

Next, I painted some more of the British WW2 troops up that I had lying around. I actually did these just to re-energise myself after the hoplites nearly broke my spirit! I had also found a palette for the uniforms that comes straight out the bottle that I wanted to try as it doesn't need any mixing (it's from this blog Crac des Chevaliers). The colour triad is Vallejo Chocolate Brown, English Uniform and Khaki Grey. I think the results are pretty good although someone might come along and tell me that it's a little too light, at which point I'll tell them the uniforms are faded! :)

Finally, we have some plastic Caesar German Fallshirmjaeger for Crete. OK, it's a little late now, but George (from the club) and I are adamant that we are going to play the SkirmishCampaigns Crete books and this little lot will go a long way to meeting most of the OOBs. I have some SHQ stuff to add, like mortars and MMGs, etc, but it should all be ready for the game in a couple of weeks. I have to say I was quite impressed with the plastics! I must admit that I was a little bit snooty about buying them, but they painted up quite well, despite a bit of a slap-dash approach (don't have time to do a proper job on them). Also, 2 boxes cost about £12! How much would 30 metal figures have cost! Plus I have a bag full of left overs (mostly carrying FG42s, so inappropriate for Crete).

Adlertag

Last night saw the second game in the club's Battle of Britain campaign and this time my camera worked, so I thought I'd post a report here.

For this game I took a couple of scenarios from the BoB sourcebook and had 2 flights of Luftwaffe bombers, each of 6 aircraft. One flight consisted of Ju-88s and the other He-111s. Escorting these were two schwarms of escorts, one of Bf-109s and one of Bf-110s, each of which was assigned to a bomber flight and had to start and stay within 5 hexes of any bomber until attacked or any bomber was fired on. The ranking German player was given the option of holding 2 aircraft of his choice off table as hunters. He opted to keep 2 of the Bf-110s off with orders that they could deploy the turn after any bomber was attacked, but must not start within 5 hexes of any enemy fighter.

The RAF players had three flights of 3 aircraft each, 2 flights of Hurricanes and 1 of Spitfires. The ranking British player rolled a die for each flight to determine the table edge they would appear on. Fortune favoured the RAF here and the Spits appeared directly ahead of the Heinkels and both Hurricane flights off their starboard side. It was going to be a tough day in the office for the Heinkel pilots!

The Hurricanes came at the Heinkels through the far cloud bank in the picture above and split their fire amongst the escorts and bombers. They very quickly damaged one bomber and drew the Bf-109 escorts away, leaving some of the RAF fighters to get amongst the bombers.

The very next turn saw the hunters descend into the fray and attempt to bounce the attacking Hurricanes (this elicited the classic quote of the day from Michael - 'Where did they come from?!').

Unfortunately for the Luftwaffe, the hunters didn't press their advantage well enough and failed to bag any of the RAF aircraft. More disastrously, 2 of the 109 escorts were shot down in very quick succession and a third suffered a lucky hit that saw the pilot lose control and spin out. This pilot only managed to salvage the situation after dropping from TAL 5 to TAL 1 so was effectively out of the combat. By now the concentrated fire had sent the damaged Heinkel into the Channel and damaged a second. Meanwhile, the Spitfires had looped around the front of the Heinkel formation to take them on from the far side (you can just see the bases past the nearest clouds in the following picture).

In the last few turns the Spitfires attacked and the damaged Heinkel was shot down, quickly followed by a third. A fourth Heinkel was damaged late on, too, effectively destroying the striking power of that half of the bomber formation. Two Hurricanes had to disengage after expending all their ammo, too. The Ju-88s all managed to slip into the clouds and proceed to their target, but the RAF had done their job. The British actually only lost one green pilot when he decided to attempt to take on the Ju-88s himself and was pounced on by the escorting Bf-110s. The last photo really tells the tale of this game. You can clearly see how the Heinkels escorts were separated from their wards and kept out of the fight while the RAF managed to keep very concentrated.

All in, this was a very fun game to run and I think everyone really enjoyed the game. The clouds added a nice dimension to the game and the random RAF deployment and Luftwaffe hunters added some spice to the proceedings.

On patrol

Last Friday saw a couple of cracking games take place at my brothers. The first was a Nuts! game which saw a patrol of British clashing with a patrol of Fallschirmjaeger and the second was a Check Your 6! scenario plucked out of my newly acquired copy of 'Over the Channel' (a scenario and campaign book from the publishers of the rules).

On patrol with Tommy and Jerry
First up was the Nuts! game. This was the first time that either Carl or James had played Nuts!, so I just officiated. It's also the first time James has ever played a skirmish level game, and probably the first time Carl has since we played WH40K in the dim and distant past. The table was prepared with plenty of hedges and walls for cover and a single hovel in the middle. Both sides had orders to send out a patrol and check the area out, so they were just going to 'bump' into each other. Carl sent his Tommies straight towards the building while James split his squad and approached frontally with his star leading the MG-34 team and a couple of riflemen, while his Cpl led the rest around the flank.

This led to a flanking shot at the advancing British from the NCO's MP-40 which sent them scurrying back to cover. The rest of the game was a bit strange as both sides concentrated their forces around the building and a straight up fire-fight began. The Germans already had the upper hand, though, with some Tommies ducked back from the SMG fire, so there was only ever going to be one outcome - grenades! James' Cpl readied his grenade and bravely charged forward to lob it over the hedge, stunning his victims. He promptly charged forward and dispatched a poor soul with his knife - those Fallschirmjaeger are a dastardly bunch!

However, revenge was taken as Carl's Bren team managed to set up and hose bullet's in the German's direction, killing him outright! The game was up, though! More 'potato-mashers' began landing amongst the British troops and soon enough the casualties began to mount and their morale waver, such that Carl conceded the game and the British section was captured by the enemy patrol.

Come fly with me...!
The next game took the fight into the air with a pure fighter based scenario set during the Battle of Britain. As we'd all played CY6! before, I didn't need to umpire so we all played. James had a schwarm of 4 Bf-109s (led by an ace - the scenario is based on Adolf Galland, I think) which were bouncing two flights of 3 Hurricanes.
Phase1 - Although the Luftwaffe were outnumbered 6:4 they had the tactical advantage of starting above and behind and at faster speeds so the game started very quickly. James' lead aircraft had a pass at us, but fortunately missed with everything and the 2 Hurricane flights split right and left. James' lead rotte tailed Carl's flight, while his second scythed across the first's path, causing the ace pilot to rely on his cat-like reactions and avoid a collision. I imagine that there would be a dressing down if they both survived the mission!

Phase 2 - The second phase of the engagement saw Carl ducking and weaving like a madman to avoid the guns of the enemy, and true enough, James just could not get a good enough firing solution to hit anything. I split my flight, sending my Vet and Green pilots after James' lead rotte, leaving my Skilled pilot to bravely engage his two other fighters on his own. A very well timed and unsuspected Immelman saw my pilot loop over and appear on the left quarter of one of the 109s at point blank range. The burst of rounds resulted in black smoke streaming from the German fighter, which duly twisted and dived away. This let my other two Hurricanes slip away from that tussle and set off after the fighters that were chasing Carl down.

Phase 3 - End game! Carl's acrobatics had inevitably cost him altitude in order to retain speed, which had dragged James lead rotte down with them. This let my two planes get the advantage and with a spectacular long range shot, the ace pilot's wingman was shot down in a single burst. At the same time, his other two planes were actually on the defensive against the lone Skilled Hurricane! It didn't look too good for the Luftwaffe at this point. One pilot was downed and one was struggling with engine damage. It was time for the Ace to act and he finally managed to get a tailing shot against Carl's Hurricanes as they bottomed out at TAL 1. The fearsome cannon claimed their first victim of the engagement and the trailing Green Hurricane of Carl's flight fell out of the sky and into the Channel. But in his concentration, the Ace neglected to watch out for my Hurricanes who pounced from above and amazingly it was my Green pilot who landed the telling shot, causing the Ace's engine to smoke. The game was up! James conceded defeat and we left it there. His Ace probably was going to end up in the drink and his other two would probably manage to fight their way home! VP wise it was an RAF victory, but if James first pass at us had been better, then who knows how this might have panned out.

Chocks away!

Last night I put on a pretty big game of Check Your 6! at the club. I brought along my fighters and Ron brought some more. Paul donated his 9 Heinkels to the fray and we were all set to go. The turnout was better than I expected and from the start we had 12 players with an extra player added later on for a total of 13. On the German side we had 6 players flying 12 Messerschmitt Bf-109E (2 each) and on the British we had 7 players flying 4 Sptifires and 10 Hurricanes. I randomised pilot skill by providing a bag of little stickers with the skills written on them for each side (2 Ace, 4 Veteran, 8 Skilled and 4 Green) . The stickers could then just be stuck on the aircraft roster sheet!

I didn't try anything fancy with regards to the scenario due to the amount of players so I just plonked the bombers in the middle and allowed the Germans to set up around them and the British then came at them head-on. The British pilots executed a pincer attack on the middle flight of bombers quickly damaging all of them, although the Spitfires got a little tangled up with the fighter escort and had a couple shot down by the destructive power of the low velocity cannon (including an ace who was bagged by a lowly green pilot!). After the inital pass at the bombers a confused melee began and I honestly began to lose track of all that was happening, but that was OK as by then most players had a good enough grasp of the rules to continue themselves allowing me to just move around and advise the players and answer questions.

Eventually we ran out of time and had to call it a night with the final score as follows :-

Luftwaffe

• Downed - 2 He-111, 1 Bf-109E
• Damaged - 2 He-111, 2 Bf-109E

RAF

• Downed - 2 Spitfire (1 Ace pilot), 1 Hurricane
• Damaged - 2 Hurricane

The result was a resounding victory for the RAF, despite having 5 planes damaged or destroyed and a further 2 planes run out of ammo. The lead flight of bombers was the only flight to getthrough unscathed with the middle one being all but destroyed, so it's fair to say the RAF did their job.

So what's Check Your 6! all about and why do I like it? First of all...it's a game! It's not an air combat simulator, but then, wargames are not really the complex maths exercises they once were. I think that the rules' strength is a simplicity that belies a real sophistication in it's representation of the 3-dimensional aspect of air combat. But that's not all; the key factor in the game is the aircrew skill rating. The turn sequence is pretty straightforward - all players plot moves for their aircraft first. A move consists of a turn code that is chosen from a set for the aircraft's speed which details the hexes that are to be moved across combined with a vertical maneouver, such as climb, dive, level flight, etc. There is also a set of special moves such as Immelmans and Split-S that can be chosen. Then the aircraft all move in order of skill with all green aircrews moving, followed by skilled and so on. This is where the key concept and mechanic kicks in, though. The more skilled aircrews are allowed to execute what's called 'pilot reaction'. This allows the player to change the chosen turn code to some extent in reaction to planes that have moved in a segment before them, or maybe to attempt to shake a tailing aircraft. This very simple mechanic creates a very satisfying ebb and flow to the move sequence and really makes the rules shine. Finally, shooting is performed simultaneously.

That's it! OK, there are a couple of caveats that make the life of a miniature fighter pilot quite interesting, such as tailing. A tailing plane gets to plot after the tailed plane has plotted and indicated the intention of the move, as well as getting to move directly after it regardless of skill level. Overall, the movement mechanism is really quite easy to get to grips with but nicely gives a feel for aerial combat. On the approach everything seems fine and dandy, but as soon as a dogfight develops it becomes very hard to maintain both airspeed and altitude as you try to outmanouever your opponents.

Shooting is pretty simple, though there is maybe one too many dice rolls for some people. The 'to hit' score is determined initially by range and is adjusted by about 4 modifiers at most. It is then rolled against on 2D6 with doubles potentially leaving the luckless pilot out of ammo! If a hit is scored then a die is rolled for each weapon being fired (the actual dice vary per weapon) and the result is cross-referenced against a robustness table to determine the save. A failed save results in engine or airframe damage, but fail it by a big enough margin and you can be destroyed outright. Again, this is all very straightforward, but the key to the success of this is in the stats of the weapons and airframes. The 8 MGs on a Spitfire perform very consistently across all the range bands (those bombers are really hard to destroy, though), but the 2 cannon on a Bf-109 can be devastating at close range.

I would thoroughly recommend anyone interested in WW2 air combat to check out Check Your 6! It's quick and easy to pick up (my 12 year old nephew had the game nailed in 5 minutes!) and gives a fun game that really does give the flavour of the type of combat. Are there any negatives? Well, I've tried hard to think of some to give the review some balance as I'm aware I'm sounding a bit like a fanboy, but there really is not much that I dislike about Check Your 6! and almost everyone I have introduced it to has enjoyed it. It is very easy to break a tail using the special manouevers, but as long as you realise the granularity of the moves then it is still largely right as you're probably going to be able to reacquire the tail in a couple of moves, or your opponent is going to end up losing speed or altitude, or both, allowing you to retain the initiative. Other than that, there's nothing else that really niggles me. The rule book is only soft cover and is black and white and is not the prettiest thing you've ever seen, but the rules themselves are laid out in a sensible order following the turn sequence and there are some diagram sequences to help you grasp the rules. Once the rules are absorbed the game can be played from the 2 page QRS, which seems crammed to begin with, but you really only need a few of the tables or charts for the majority of the game. The rules themselves only take up about 20 or so pages of the book, with the rest taken up by various scenarios and a small narrative campaign, but that's not something that bothers me. I see the cost of the rules as a fair price for the effort and research undertaken by the author.

To sum up, the rulebook quite prominently quotes Chuck Yaeger - "it's the man, not the machine" - and Check Your 6! delivers a game that pivots on the aircrew skill rating. Aces really do manage to run rings around green pilots, but luck can play a factor. It's quick and cheap to get started too. The rules are relatively inexpensive and planes are cheap. I purchased a battle set from Raiden Miniatures (who I can't praise highly enough on the quality of their castings) of 12 fighters and 6 bombers for about £20 complete with stands (not those shown, though). The only other thing you need is a hex mat, but these are readily available online.

Ready to fly

After a bit of a chaotic fortnight involving tiny nappies and cleaning up baby sick, I managed to find the time to finish off a couple of the easier items on my to-do list. These were the 1:285 Battle of Britain fighters I got a wee while ago. They bring my count up to 10 Bf-109, 6 Hurricanes and 4 Spitfires (I also have 6 He-111, 2 Bf-110 and 4 Ju-88, the latter unpainted yet). I'm now fully prepped to put on a pretty large Check Your 6! game at the club. With 2 planes each, I can support 10 players and I believe that others may be bringing some fighters, too!! I intend to write a short appraisal of the rules when I report on the game, so, for now, here's some photos of the assembled fighter forces...

Nuts! vs Flying Lead

Last night I played my first game of both Nuts! and Flying Lead at the club. We played the same scenario both times to see how the outcomes and general play felt. The scenario was a handful of Fallschirmjager have arrived at a weapons canister and setup an LMG to cover the rest of the squad coming up. Meanwhile, a British section has spotted the canister drop and have sent a patrol to secure the area and prevent the Germans getting the weapons. We set up the table as per the sample scenario given in the Nuts! rulebook, except instead of trees we had a couple of olive groves and I also moved the building to the right and put a walled field down on the left. Note that I set up the German figures the same in both games. On the left is a single rifleman; on the right at the house is an LMG team and an NCO with MP40. Reinforcements were a Star with a pistol and five rifleman. Here's a couple of shots from behind the Germans (played by me). I got carried away playing and forgot to take anymore :-

Let's examine the games then :-

In the first game, using Nuts!, the British split into fire teams and attempted a flank move to their right. The left section moved up and around the olive grove and, as expected were forced to duck back by the LMG. The right flank easily overwhelmed the single rifleman who's reaction fire was insufficient to stop the group advancing. The reinforcements came on and one of the riflemen managed to put one of the British left flank rifleman out of the fight. I tried to get the SMG armed NCO and a couple of rifles over to protect the German left but the Brits had managed to get the Bren gun set up and the enfilade fire managed to 'obviously dead' or 'out of the fight' pretty much half the remaining Germans. At this point I conceded defeat. All in, the game took about an hour and we had a very satisfying conclusion. I should point out that we did a couple of things wrong. First off we rotated any figures shooting as a reaction to face the target, which we shouldn't have. This did not affect the result, though. Second, we did not allow groups of figures not accompanied by a leader to form groups during reaction. So we ended up having one British soldier jump out and resolve the whole chain reaction against one German before moving onto the other. This was not right and the Germans could have formed a group and all fired before the Brit took the 'received fire' test. Again, though, I don't feel this would have really swayed the outcome. Peter, my opponent, showed a shrewd understanding of the tactics required to attack an LMG position and executed them well. The LMG dominated it's field of fire, as expected, but was susceptible to an aggressive flank attack. The reinforcements came on a little too late, as the Bren managed to setup and decimate them as they attacked. All in, it felt right....the LMGs were totally pivotal to the outcome and rifle fire seemed to have the right level of effectiveness. It didn't hit often, but when it did it was reasonably lethal (we just removed OOF figures to simplify things).

The second game used Flying Lead. In this game, the British fumbled a few activations trying to get the flank attack into position and this allowed the German reinforcements  to arrive and get into a better position to hold off the flank attack. On the German right side, though, the LMG was a little less effective as in the Nuts! game. It managed to pin a couple of the British, but they were able to bring enough firepower to bear to manage to kill one of the team and the NCO. Of more concern, the NCOs SMG didn't seem particularly effective, even at short range due to the low combat rating, which I felt a little odd. Unfortunately we didn't have time to finish the game and it was left hanging finely in the balance with pretty clear battle lines exchanging fire with each other.

I have to say it was a very interesting experiment, playing the same scenario with different rules, but which ones did I prefer? I honestly felt that Nuts! gave a better game in a shorter time frame. I honestly enjoyed the Flying Lead game but Nuts! simply left me wanting to play more. In Flying Lead, there seemed to be a bit more mental arithmetic going on, with dice results being added to stats and then modifiers applied and whatnot...and then comparing the results against each other! OK, it's not as bad as it sounds, but the Nuts! system of adding a dice roll to the Rep and then consulting a chart that gives you a hit/miss decision was a bit more elegant and flows better. Second, with the reaction system and the 'outgunned' rule, the LMGs in Nuts! were virtually impossible to frontally assault, which feels right to me. In Flying Lead, they were a little less effective which allowed British riflemen to actually engage an MG-34 in a firefight. Hmmm! Lastly, the 'battlefield chaos' mechanisms differ somewhat. In Nuts! you roll initiative with only those characters with an equal or higher Rep getting to activate, but the highest roll getting to go first. There were only a couple of occasions where this left one player unable to do anything, but crucially, the reaction system means your men aren't standing there having bad things done to them without retaliating. In Flying Lead you can try to roll up to 3 activation dice for each figure or group and if you fail 2 it's turn over. As mentioned this actually affected the game in that it took the British too long to get round the flank. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily, as it adds some excitement and risk into the game, but I think I prefer the Nuts! system in that all the risks you take are realistic ones, not abstract. In other words, running out in front of an MG nest is all the risk you really need!

Let's go NUTS!

It's taken me a while, but I finally have enough figures painted to try out some of the skirmish rules that I think might work for the Crete games. The two sets I have are NUTS! and Flying Lead. I really like the idea of the NUTS! chain reaction system and in some of my 'painting table tests' they seem to give a very realistic result. Flying Lead I haven't tried yet, but it also seems to have some attractive mechanics. Hopefully, due to the relatively low numbers of figures (at most a section each side) I can try both rules at the club in one night. Anyway...on to the figures :-

The above are my first go at the Splittermuster 41 camouflage. Being colourblind these types of uniforms are a real challenge, but thanks to the wonders of the online paint guide, I think they turned out alright. I reckon I might be able to do a little better with more practice, but that's just the perfectionest in me! The following is an ensemble shot of all the Fallschirmjager that I have painted:

And of course, the Tommies who are going to miss every opportunity to kick them back to Germany (at least if history is to repeat itself)!

If I remember to take the camera with me I'll take some shots of the games and post a batrep here...!

Fanning the flames

Before I launch into last Friday's battle report, my DBA army turned up which was quite exciting. The Essex figures seem a little skinner than the Magister Militum, but they are roughly the same height, so should mix in as long as they're based separately.

And so, onto Friday's Flames of War battle. This was the first time I've played as the Germans and my brother as the Americans, and it was the first time that James has played FoW, period! Carl had pre-prepared the terrain ahead of the game with no knowledge of the sides or scenario, which I decided without seeing the table. We decided that the Americans would be a good fit for James due to the size and robustness of the 9 base squads, so he and Carl split the company between them and faced up against the SS under me. As it turned out, due to the terrain, the battle devolved into a slugfest across the main road across the board with very little maneouver going on, but that was actually OK as it let us concentrate on teaching James the core of the rules (i.e shooting, close assault, etc). Admittedly, we forgot some of the 'flavour' rules, like the Stormtrooper move, but again, I think that was no bad thing.


So what happened? We set up a defensive battle with a US Rifle company defending against a counterattack at an important road junction. The Germans had a little more in the way of points to offset the defensive battle rules (dugin, ambush, etc). As mentioned there was a road running lengthways across the table with a trunk road heading off into the German territory. On the German left was a hill with a wee crown of trees and on the right a medium sized wood. At the crossroads was a small hamlet. The Americans had a wood on their right and a farmhouse in the centre. In and around all this was some bocage (ok...hedges, but we played it as bocage). The Americans split their forces quite evenly with a platoon on either flank supported by attachments from the weapons platoon and the center being held by their armour, a platoon of 4 Shermans and a platoon of 1 section of M10s. The mortars and artillery were kept to the rear. The Germans set up pretty much the same, although the platoon of PzIV were placed in direct support of the left and a lone Tiger sent up the middle :-

The battle progressed as the Germans pushed on to the hamlet on the right and got into the buildings. The American left flank decided to react a little too late and attempted to also get into the buildings, but they were punished quite severely in a close assault which they attempted without pinning the veteran SS platoon. The brave GIs charged into a storm of MG fire and were forced to retire after taking some losses. On the German left, the Panzergrenadiers and Panzers pushed up to the road and engaged the dug-in troops, but due to the intervention of the Shermans it took a little longer to get the Panzers into action against the infantry, so a heavy small arms fire exchange began. Which brings me to the centre! Before attempting to engage 5 PzIV, the 75mm Shermans decided to sacrifice one of their number against the Tiger to slow it down! I can only assume that the platoon commander who ordered such a suicide faced a war crimes tribunal if he survived the encounter!!! Needless to say, the Sherman was vapourised, but only after...quite stunningly...forcoing the Tiger to bail. Perhaps they mistook it for a Firefly!

As the infantry meatgrinder continued the Tiger got stuck on the bocage for a while (perhaps there was method in the madness) and the rest of the Shermans were destroyed...a lesson was learnt that infantry support tanks should not be used in a tank-killer role! A turn or two later the American left flank buckled under the growing pressure from the Panzergrenadiers and they left the field in panic and disarray. The M10s were deployed to provide a last line of defence which halted the infantry until the Tiger could be brought up. Alas, in accordance with the whole of the rest of the night saw some terrible dice roles only bail out one M10 after 2 rounds of shooting. It duly remounted and the combined fire destroyed the Tiger. All the while the German right was under constant air attack which was taking it's toll.

But it was all too late. The Panzers on the German left finally brought their HE to bear and managed to dig out enough of the GI teams to allow the tattered remains of the Panzergrenadier platoon to close assault and clear the bocage once and for all. Directly behind this position was one of the objectives which was unable to be defended and so the American position was lost.

Overall, it was a fun battle despite the lack of movement. The dice were absolutely terrible which led to some comedy moments! James was rolling 1's all night; at one point he rolled 4 dice for a result of 4 1's. My favourite moment was a critical roll to save an infantry team that pushed his platoon into a morale test. Carl piped up "don't roll a 1!". So James rolled a 2! Naturally the platoon failed it's subsequent morale test...!

The Raw Recruits

Well, preparations for playing some 28mm WWII skirmish games is coming along nicely. I have finished a section of British infantry plus a Bren gunner and assistant, although only 5 of their bases are finished. I really enjoyed painting these fellows and I think the result is quite pleasing. Strangely, they didn't take as long as I thought as the uniform is mostly the same colour.

Of course, the Tommies need some Jerry to oppose, so as I intend on gaming the Battle of Crete, a squad of Fallschirmjager or two is an absolute necessity. Here are the first 5 I have finished, though the bases need a bit of polish.

Again, these were a joy to paint. All figures are Crusader and I used Vallejo paints for the most part, with a little GW paint for the faces. My technique used to be entirely dry-brush based and I only recently started using a Dallimore-style 3 colour method and I think that looking at the Germans there is a little improvement already.