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