A little Cold War 'warming up'..

 

Phew what a scorcher! Turn to page 3 to see why Sam Fox loves the British Summer. In other news, the Kommie Krauts ambushed our boys in Germany in a minor skirmish and the Kremlin fat cats are calling it a victory.. watch out Ivan, bulldogs bite!

Ahem.. enough of that nonsense! 

On Saturday, I trundled over to see Scrivs, newly (ish) returned from the colonies, to have our first game of 'Seven Days to the River Rhine'. During lockdown, and corresponding via satellite or transatlantic cable , we've been building up some forces to give this set of rules a go.

I'd made a modest start in 1/144 .. or around 12mm scale, as I thought at first I'd be playing this solo, and I made use of the Plastic Soldier Company's Northag range, as well as finding this a good scale to use my 3D printer to create some vehicles too. Scrivs doesn't do things by halves, and within a few weeks had bought up the stock at Timecast to build a soviet force!

I have no previous experience (and indeed very little interest in) of playing 'moderns' and learning a lot about formations, equipment etc as we go. I had the WRG rules, and TTG 'Challenger' set, but they were amongst the many rulebooks collected and never played. 

It's a sobering thought that 1984 is now nearly as long ago as WW2 was in 1984.. perhaps not so 'modern' after all?

I won't go through the game in detail, as Scrivs does that very thoroughly over on his blog here.

Despite some truly awful dice rolling which really frustrated my efforts to turn things around, I enjoyed the game.

The rules played very well.. we felt that 600 points was probably about right as it gave us enough to think about and some reserve too. The use of event cards was a nice touch and not too powerful either. Although I learned early on that it was really good practice to hold on to command chits in order to react to enemy actions, I also learned that it's not always possible when you're having to throw them at units which refuse to co-operate with your orders! We played around 6 turns before the BAOR breakpoint called a merciful halt to proceedings.

We played a 'meeting engagement' game across the diagonal, which worked okay, it will be interesting to see how different scenarios play out. There is even an interesting campaign that's been shared on the rules Facebook group that may be worth a try.. Suffice to say, more armies are being planned!

The objectives were placed a little randomly, in future certainly something that would warrant some thought, as I had none anywhere near me at the start of the game.

general routes of movement, the Saxhorn team on the hill (circled) sipped vodka as random mortar rounds dropped ineffectively around them.

scrap one (more) Challenger

What's round this corner? (3D print challenger, PSC FV432 and Timecast FV438)

Many explosion markers were used.. on British units

The battlefield was quite hilly, not something immediately evident from the overhead pictures

I did hit something! T64B hit by MILAN team

Boots on the table.. a 1940 game

Every wargamer in the western world seems to be posting 'first game back at the table' posts on social media these days.. here's another one!

Yesterday I took a short trip over to Toms wargames shed for a game of 'Chain of Command'.

About a year ago we agreed to have a go at a 1940 campaign and during lockdown we've been building up forces and terrain to play the 'Fighting Withdrawal' mini campaign from the TooFatLardies Summer 2016 magazine.. I'm playing Germans and Tom the BEF.

Neither of us have had lots of CoC experience (yes, yes..) so a 'practice game' was agreed. Tom set out the terrain before I arrived with a silly amount of boxes, adding a few bits to the table. We decided to play the Attack/Defence scenario from the main book, with Tom fielding a 1939 regular platoon, and me taking the 2nd Wave German platoon, both from the 1940 handbook.

As tempted as I was to take a StugIII for support, (because I have one), I settled on a pre-game barrage, the IG18 infantry gun and an armoured car (SDkfz221).. all of which proved to be pretty essential players on team Deutschland today. The BEF as I recall, brought a Vickers HMG, a Boyes AT.. and I think an adjutant.

I won't  go through the game blow by blow.. the patrol phase was a disaster for me.. rolling a 1 for initial moves and some questionable placement, meant I was starting on the table edge and going to have to work hard to push into cover and force some morale checks. The pre-game barrage really worked in my favour here, limiting Tom's ability to bring stuff on, and encouraging me to get as much on the table as soon as I could before that advantage was lost.

The infantry gun did solid work, I seemed to get a 1 on every turn, keeping heads down, and by the time the first turn was up, I was in a slightly better position to push.. actually taking one of the BEF jump offs and using a CoC dice to end the next turn. Not long before that I had actually said that I thought this was going to be a very quick game with the Germans coming off worse, as the initial force morale setbacks were all on me. Such a pessimist!

Tom used Ambush to spring an Boyes AT attack on my stationary Armoured car, but the shot missed, and although the team worked their way around the field for another shot, that one bounced.

We played until the BEF were down to 3 or 4 Force morale points.. the Germans weren't much better at 6, but we agreed that the outcome seemed pretty certain, with pressure on remaining jump offs and not much of the BEF remaining on the table.. Tom called a withdrawal, leaving the field to the Germans.

It was great to get back to 'proper' gaming and despite inevitable rules mistakes, we enjoyed the game. Might be another 'warm up' next.. or perhaps we'll just jump into the campaign.

Infantry sections advance under Bren fire

German senior officers proved very useful

Germans mass their fire 

A cautious approach

Sdkfz221 adding MG fire

Plucky BEF HMG team under heavy fire

The Germans try to sweep around the British held buildings

A horrible German patrol phase!

Like falling off a bike, or something.. (a return to the blog)

I'm at that age now when any event marking the passage of time prompts me to declare "Blimey!" .. for example, apparently it's 25 years since Alanis Morissette released Jagged Little Pill ?!

Conversation in recent months about wargaming blogs made me realise that it's almost five years since I last posted here!

Blimey!

So, I've been sitting on my typing hands for a fair bit of 2021, wondering whether I ought to start this blog up again, and where to start etc, as the realisation dawned upon me that this really is a 'first world problem' and considering that nobody is likely to read the thing anyway.. why not just pick it up again as a way of recording and encouraging myself to keep up hobby momentum!

I won't try to recap the last five years.. games have been played, new shiny projects have come and gone.. but in fairness, playing with trains definitely took precedence up until around 2019.. and Youtubing became very much my route to 'share' hobby stuff, rather than using a blog. (See my channel here by the way, I've even posted a couple of solo Dragon Rampant games, which hasn't pleased the model railroad followers!)

I got talking to Tom and James at one of the shows, rolled some dice.. and we started organising games..Tom's covered much of it on his excellent blog. 

Lockdown happened which has obviously had an impact on all of that, although like many people, we managed to get some virtual games done too.. including a fun Muskets and Tomahawks campaign set in the French Indian wars played out on Zoom.

Tom and I are planning a Chain of Command 1940 campaign (we've even built terrain pieces and painted armies!), so looking forward to that.. as well as trying out some cold war gone hot with Scrivs, newly returned from the colonies..

So.. I'm going to try to post regularly again.. even if it's brief and rubbish.. I think it might be a good exercise.

A super-brief highlight reel of some stuff that's passed over my table in 2021 so far (excluding Zoom games):

Painting up Perry Wars of the Roses army.. 3D printing stakes for archers.. starting a 'Bag the Hun' collection for the Flying Tigers.. building, painting and rigging 'Black Seas' ships.. building and expanding fantasy Dragon Rampant armies for my own 'Nordmark' setting.. getting some HeHe based and realising how many more I need to start playing 'Death in a Dark Continent'.. building up a British BAOR force in 1/144 using Northag plastish models and 3D prints (and 3D printing Soviets) to play 'Seven Days to the River Rhine' with Scrivs any time soon! .. rebasing some ancient 15mm 18th century stuff for some ImagiNation solo games...

Playing some solo 1866 games using 6mm armies and Neil Thomas 19th Century rules.. starting a big project to rebase and re-arm my Arthurian armies back to WAB.. 3D printing tanks from 1/300 to 1/48.. more Dragon Rampant.. scratch building and kit building real estate for 1940 games.. and painting up gorgeous Aventine EIR romans for Infamy Infamy (which I will probably never play)

(the buildings are all actually the right way up in real life, that is to say, with roof skyward.. but I thought I'd get you to tilt your head to one side, just for fun!)