Club Sunday 5th August

Luke and I headed up the club on a Sunday for the first time in quite a while to play the Ras-el-Madur scenario from Wargames Illustrated 263. We having been planning to run this for a while. We used the force list from the magazine, but the organisations and stats from Hellfire and back as more suitable for early war.

Luke took the defenders and I took the attackers. My initial advances went well as the defenders failed to see my troops and my pioneers cleared wire and minefields while my tanks knocked out MG pits. However as I advanced the going got tougher as I came in range of 2 and 25 pounder fire and began to lose tanks, while the artillery and small arms fire was beginning to inflict very heavy casualties on my pioneers.

However, although some reserves had arrived for the defenders, I had weathered and destroyed their ambush and the Italians has arrived. They were now moving up towards the battered defenders. The first unit tool heavy casualties and was wiped out, but not before damaging the defenders. I then launched the feared Italian tankettes (!) at the box, and got totally hung up on the wire. A second attempt was more successful and the box fell to the Italians as the tankettes occupied it followed up by their infantry.

To the left of the box the German armour was struggling on the inner minefield and covering 25 pounder, but to the right I was rolling up the MG pits and managed to destroy the 8th I needed to claim victory just as the nearly indestructible I tanks arrived (fortunately these kept breaking down keeping them away from me for as long as possible).

The Axis forces had just managed to claim victory, but it was a really tight game and great fin and proves that FoW can be used for historical scenarios as well as points battles and works just as well.

Above: Attacking the first box, below: Massed armour moves to outflank it

Above: Even of the first position is cleared there was much more to go, below: the Italians move up

Above: The last Aussies in the forward box await the next attack, Below: The last survivor is saved as the Italian tankettes get hung up on the wire

Below: The Italians take the position to claim victory

Club night 27th July

I ran a couple of small (8-900 points) Flames of War games for David and Dan, two of our newer members. The first game was American Armour against German Panzers. David took the Germans and Dan the Americans. David won the roll off for table side and chose the side with the village, so stayed in good positions while the Americans tried to close to make their firing effective. Once the Americans on one flank had broken, the Germans began to advance and rolled up the surviving Yanks.

Having got the basics of moving, shooting and morale nailed down with just a few units we played a second game, this time with two infantry forces, adding artillery to the mix and objectives rather than just killing each other. Both players kept the same nation and the same table edge, but this time both had to move. On the US right the Yanks advanced on the village and got pinned down short engaging in a viscous firefight. On the other flank both sides advanced and the US artillery proved spectacularly effective, blowing great holes in the German lines. These were expanded by the following up infantry and once the Germans broke the Americans stormed forward to victory.

This was a fun couple of games that just proves that you don't have to use big armies and hopefully has got two new members more involved and keen to try some more games.

Above: US infantry line, below: German line (the big white squares are labels for terrain to help out the new players)

Game night with Luke, 24th July

Luke and I managed to fit in our first mid-week game for quite a while and went back to the good old Flames of War. We decided to ply mid war, and by coincidence both try out something different. I took a Compangnia Carri with some allied Panzers and Luke took an Infantry company with I tank support.We played a no retreat mission.

I decided to mass most of my forces down one flank in a single-minded drive for one objective (above), while Luke spread his force more evenly, with slightly more against my main attack, but the other side had a town to complicate matters (below)

As I launched my main attack I quickly encountered problems. We play that we roll a general terrain type up from the 2nd ed. rule book and then roll for type when contacted using the tables from Hellfire and Back. This meant I knew that there were wrecks in front of me, but it was only as I moved forward I discovered most of them were actually minefield which channelled my force even further. To make matters worse my first assault by armoured cars was driven back by defencive fire.

On the other flank I had discovered the 2pdrs in ambush and attempt to assault them but was repelled, so my armour swept to support the other flank. Here I had managed to assault again, but was again repelled except for the last platoon I could attack with, that managed to drive the Brits out of their defences.

There now started a couple of bitter turns of fighting as Luke desperately tried to hold on and prevent my victory while waiting for reserves. It was now a race for me to drive him off properly before the I-tanks arrived and stared rolling me up as I had very little that could cope with them. Fortunately I as just able to drive him off, they had arrived, but had not got near enough to be a threat. The burning wrecks surrounded the objective (below), but the Italians had captured it and won very a hard fought battle.

Club Night June 22nd

Steve K and I decided to do a mid-war FoW desert. I took my favourite RECAFM force with the usual mix of light tanks and armoured cars, but with some heavier guns backing them up as I know Steve may use Grants so didn't want to get caught out. As it turned out Steve took an infantry company so I needn't have feared and found myself attacking in a Hasty Attack scenario.

I set the objectives in opposite corners and Steve placed his in the middle so his force was stretched across the entire table before removing one of the flank objectives. Despite this I still planned to attack on both flanks in a pincer, so I would either capture the flank objective or turn the flank and drive for the centre objective.

On one flank I attacked with most of my light armour, the other was my motorcycle mounted infantry and some armour support. The Sevormette supported this flank and the 90mm on Lancia trucks the other flank. While I rushed forward these heavy guns used their giant shells to shoot the Bofors out of their fox holes in the centre, as these high RoF guns cause my light armour real problems. I did lose one to return fire from a MG platoon, but the other was out of range so was safe to engage for the entire game.

My Motocilisti struggled at first as they failed to Avanti off their bikes, but the 25pounders right in front of them failed to do damage and they were able to assault and gradually roll up the heavy guns. On the other flank the armoured cars were stopped initially by defensive fire, but a second attempt was more successful and despite mounting casualties they drove off the infantry platoon and its attached mortars and started to turn for the centre.

However on the other flank the Motocilisti had pushed on and seized the objective and the British had nothing left to drive them back and so the Italians claimed a hard fought victory.

Club Night 18th May

Luke and I played the next in our very slowly running early desert axis of attack campaign. This time the British were attacking, and had rolled a hold the line scenario, so the Italians were not only defending but had extra defences to help them out.

While the Jock Column is good on the move it really doesn't have the strength or heavy firepower to assault a fixed position and suffered accordingly to massed defensive firepower where the small number of men in the units to enable the truck mobility meant they could ill afford the losses and it was an easy Italian victory.

D-Day Game, 28th April

On Saturday a group of us headed up the club to play a slightly tweaked version of the D-Day scenario from Wargames Illustrated. I tool the Americans on the right Allied beach. Although I had plenty of troops facing me was a wall, bunkers and dug-in Germans. It was not going to be an easy task.

Above: The calm before the storm, below: Americans begin to land onto a crowded beach

As I began to make my landings I came under fire from every angle, but was able to rush up to the sea wall and take cover as I prepared my assault troops to attack and knock out the bunkers, but before I did that I had to deal with the village on my left were lots of fire was enfilading my approaches. With my engineers and rangers armed with flamethrowers able to close up in a very small blind spot I was then able to start attacking and driving the Germans back.

Above: Pushing into the town on the left of my beach, below: "You get moving!", Steve K issues orders to the British armour!

With the village cleared I was now free to start attacking the bunkers. I was able to use the blast wall of the 88mm bunker to avoid fire and close and then assaulted across the barbed wire and survived the final bursts of fire and knocked out the bunker. This just left the machine gun bunkers in the middle which now drove my assaulters back. However with the 88 knocked out I was able to bring some armour off the beach and engage it and knocked it.

Below: And they are off (the beach!)

But as my armour advanced further in shore they came in range of a platoon of PAK40s and quickly started to brew up. But my infantry was beginning to advance and the British were making equally good progress. More importantly to me the American paras were beginning to attack the Germans from behind and had seized their primary objective and was just about holding off the German armour counter attack. Unfortunately 6th Airborne had not fared as well, but as we ran out of time it was clearly an Allied victory.

This was a really fun game. Despite its size the scenario had been well designed and by using the same forces as in the magazine we had quite balanced force and I really enjoyed playing it. Maybe next up should be something big for the desert?

Salute 2012

Salute is always worth a visit. It is by far the biggest show in the UK and it is always great to meet gamers from across Europe and often even further afield. Traders bring new releases and works in progress for some sneak peaks and a bargain is always to be had. For the club it was the debut of our 2012 game. This has been a pet project for Rick and Steve D and they did us proud with Brave little Belgium. A stunning set of scenery, really well presented, with nice Figures. With our new display board and fancy tee-shirts we are starting to look like we might know what we are doing!

Above: The club members in our fetching yellow shirts, look out for us at a show near you soon, Below: Reserves move up through the Belgium town

Above: Refugees flee the German advance, Below: The Belgium lines

Above: The German lines, Below: Belgium forward lines

Above: Illuminated by its street lights the Belgium town appears to be aflame, Below: The Belgium town

Above: Belgium's favourite journalist and his dog, Below: Vitrix 54mm game using their new plastics

Below: More of the Vitrix Game

There were a number of good games this year, although many were closer to static displays than actual games. I didn't see anything that particularly excited me on the trade stands, but I wasn't looking too closely, as I was after pre-orders from PSC for making a DAK force. More on this to come.

Club Night 16th March

Luke and I decided to give V3 another good play through (since the campaign had been V2 the finale was also V2 rules), and to try out some proper mid-war forces. Luke took a Grant squadron and I took my Squadrone Esplorante supported by tanks and self propelled guns. The first mission saw Luke attacking a breakthrough mission.

With my light armour dashing around to get flank and rear shots on the heavy Grants it quickly degenerated into a proper knife fight engagement, while my infantry tried to hold onto the village overlooking the objectives. However the heavy weight of the British armour proved my undoing and I was defeated in a great game.

Unfortunately our second game was not anywhere near as fun. It was the surrounded mission with me in the centre. With the open terrain and little room for manoeuvre and heavy armour on both sides I was smashed by the 75s using semi-indirect fire as I tried to close to a position where I could actually engage them.

Two games vs Luke. RECAM vs Grant sqdrn. Breakthrough, then surrounded.

Club Sunday 4th March

We finally managed to reschedule our campaign finale for Operation Crusader. With the British attempt to break out from Tobruk a failure it was already an Axis victory, but now I launched my forces in a final attempt to take the city against their reduced defenders.

To make a proper finale Luke came up with a 3 linked battle scenario. A force of Italian Bersaglieri had broken trough the lines and where in a cauldron scenario, whole another force launched an all out assault on another part of the lines, while my RECAFM force of armoured cars and light tanks launched a break through. The idea was that the breakthrough table led into the Italians side of the cauldron table, and the British side of the cauldron table led it the rear of the defences on the all out assault table. Forces could only move off one table to the next once they had won their table and took a full turn to arrive (the dust and noise signaling their potential arrival). In addition all undeployed troops formed a reserve pool and could be committed to any table, although no table could receive more reserves than it rolled to arrive.

I took my RECAFM force against Steve, while Luke commanded the defences against Scott's assault and new member Colin took the Allies against Rick on the final table.
I started with my usual recce moves and then smashed into one flank of the defenders and began rolling up their line, while on the other flank I chose not to dig my guns in and to use their full ROF to remove all threats. This very nearly worked, I certainly removed most of the anti-tank threats to let my armour roam free, but failed to knock out the MGs that then caused massed casualties among my artillery.
Meanwhile my vehicles swept around the flank and pushed on towards the objective. On the main assault Scott was pushing forward , while Rick had destroyed the immediate threats to his positions, but was coming up massed artillery fire and was unable to respond effectively.

As reserves began to arrive, we committed the mobile forces to my table and my motorcycle infantry joined in on the attack on the objective, while pioneers supported the main assault. With a secure position Rick received very few reserves. On the allied side Luke was left holding his defences with only the few units he started with, while Rick found more and more artillery added to his opponent and I faced all the light armour and anti-tank they could muster to stop my armoured cars.
Gradually numbers told and my force broke, while Rick had been pounded and with the arrival of Steve's forces was in an untenable situation. The bright spot for the Axis, is with no reserves Luke was in an increasingly stretched position and Scott finally became the first player to breakthrough and win an all-out assault.

Despite losing two and the three games and so losing overall, it was a Pyrrhic victory for the Allies as they had ultimately lost and their offensive had been repelled.

Club Night 2nd March

Luke, Steve and I played an early war Flames of War as our first test of the new 3rd edition of the rules. I took an infantry force, supported by all 12 of my new tankettes and Luke took a Jock column with Steve assisting him.

With two relatively immobile forces and a meeting engagement scenario this was always going to be a slow game. The British sat back, while I attacked with my tankettes on both flanks and initially made really good progress with massed machine gun fire and the limited anti-tank the British had. As I closed on the objectives it all went wrong though.

Under massed rifle fire I rolled massed of 1s and 2s and saw many of my tankettes stopped in their tracks or destroyed in the ensuing combat. Having been neaten back I launched an infantry assault on my left flank, but this met similar resistance.
At this point I know I was near to breaking and pulled back to try and stem the British counter attack, which was then launched and, with the loss of my CO, when I did reach breaking point they one.

I actually found this a very frustrating game as I was forced into attacking in what should have been a meeting engagement, and instead was an attack by me on an equal force that was really doomed to failure from the start.

On a more positive note I think the 3rd edition rules are exactly what a new edition should be. Eased by the fact 2nd edition players got a free copy, I think the club was always going to move onto the new edition, but I think this is a good thing, all the changes are for the best and see to properly evolve the rules, rather than changing for the sake of a new edition. The only thing I am less happy about is the auto-range in for aircraft. It makes sense in most theatres, but in the desert with no terrain to hide in they can become very powerful, especially when with the Italians I have very little AA compared to the Germans and, especially, the British Bofors.

Club Night 28th December

As a mid week, post-Christmas game Luke, Duncan and I decided to play a flames of war desert game. Duncan has been reworking his Germans to suit early war as well as mid, but only had tanks done, so we played 3,000 points, with me using my army I have been using against Luke in the axis of attack game to provide the infantry and he provide the Axis armour. Against this Luke fielded a Crusader company. We played the desert dust up scenario from Hellfire and back.

Luke started with his artillery, infantry and machine guns on table, while I dug in my infantry around our objective. The German armour then began a head on attack on the British positions, pressing them hard, and demonstrating the difference between the quality of the tow Axis nations vehicles as Luke struggled to knock them out.

As the Germans pushed centrally and my Italians dug themselves deeper in around our objective we could see the reserves could be decisive. And here we had the luck, a few British tanks turned up but had to manoeuvre around the wadi, bringing them towards the centre of the board, in range of the anti-tank guns and German armour. By the time the rest arrived it took so long to get into position it was too late as on the other flank the Italians had won it.

The Italian reserves hurried on in the opposite corner and despite casualties pushed on towards the objective, managing to overrun the machine gun platoon. Once again the L3 tankettes proved their worth. Finally the demolisher platoon pushed on to the objective, only to have their commander gunned down, but we then discovered he was an unknown hero and I could now pass my motivation on a 2+, which I did, hanging in there to claim the objective and victory for the Axis forces.

Club Sunday 6th November

We gathered up the club to play the finale in our Crusader campaign, but some events conspired and so we could not really proceed. Instead we threw together a quick total war game using the desert forces we had. Due to numbers I found myself on the Allied side so took a compact little Divisional Cavalry Squadron, to fight alongside an infantry company and a tank squadron against a Panzer company and a Bersaglieri battalion. Rather than recount all the details as lots happened I will just illustrate them with some photos.

Above: Initial deployment on the diagonal
Below: The Australian Cavalry dash into a depression and try to hold on against the Italians
Above: Another shot of the position in the depression
Below: German armour surrounds the Aussies, Grants arrive to the rescue and artillery continues to land in the depression

Above: German armour arrives behind the British artillery

At this point I got all caught up in the game and forgot to take any more pictures. It really broke down into two separate games. The fight around the depression had more armour from both sides thrown in and finding fire lines through the burning wrecks began to prove tricky and neither side really made any progress. On the other flank the German tanks caused problems behind the British lines, while in front of them the heavy Panzer IVs shelled the dug in infantry with their 75s, while staying at a range that the British anti-tank was ineffective. This gradual crumbling on the far flank eventually cost the Allies an extremely close game and I am keen to try some total war again in the future.

Club 2nd November

Luke and I continued our desert themed axis of attack campaign, with my Italians forced to attack in a hold the line scenario. As a primarily foot force this was always going to be a tough ask. I decided to try and use smoke more effectively and plastered his artillery with guns and mortars to prevent them shooting as I tried to push forward as fast as possible, flanking him with my motorcilisti and L3's.

However this was not enough and under constant heavy fire my relatively immobile force just could not bring enough combat power to bear, quick enough to force the breakthrough and the Italians were thrown back and yet again the attack moved in neither direction.

Club Night 12th October

Luke and I headed up the club for mid-week game and decided to start an early war axis of attack campaign, with Luke using a Jock Column force and me using a Bersaglieri company. Our first battle was the Jock column attempting a breakthrough. Luke made a brave gamble by keeping his infantry as part of the flanking force and committing just his armour and artillery to the main attack. I used my numbers to surround him as best as possible and keep my armour in reserve.
I used my reconnaissance move to hurry my motociclisti into the town to my rear and occupy it ready to repel the flank attack
Luke through his armour at my forces, but a combination of 47mm gun fire and the amazing pluck of my fearless conscripts in the front line they defeated the first attack.
I then began to hammer the artillery with air power and my own artillery. By now my reserves had started to arrive, but the other element of the jock column appeared to be lost in the desert.
I even was able to launch my tankettes (my new favourite unit along with the mid-war L6 light tanks) against the 25 pounder battery. This proved the last straw and the battered attackers broke.
So the Bersaglieri had been victorious and are now on the attack and ready to push forward to Egypt.

After this shorter than expected game I tried to introduce Luke to Malifaux with a basic game. He took my Lady Justice crew and I tried out Pandora for the first time. And she is touch to play. Initially I seemed to have the edge with my multiple moves and distance spells, but once I got in too close Lady J and her Marshalls did what they do best and dispatched my physically weaker crew with ease.

Club Night 7th October

Rick and I took an early war Compaignia Carri against Luke and Steve with a Jock Column defending in a fighting withdrawal. With all the fearless veteran RHA we knew it would be tough, and our 8 million bayonet rolls did not help us. We decided on a flank attack with the motociclisti troops attacking towards one objective, with the armour in the centre free to support or attack to another objective as the game played out.
The flanking troops hurried forward with tankette support and managed to destroy the universal carriers sent out to meet them which prevented their reconnaissance move. In the centre the armour force advanced on mass.
As the flank attack pushed forward we unfortunately lost our coastal artillery trying to move it into a less exposed position. Despite coming under artillery fire the Bersaglieri pushed on with their own artillery providing support. But now I failed possibly a key roll as I failed the motivation to perform an avanti move and dismount to enable me to assault the pinned down defenders.
With this failure and the appearance of the RHA 2 pounders in the centre we were on the back foot and beginning to take unsustainable casualties and eventually our company broke before we could threaten the British withdrawal.