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

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!)