What do you mean 'Wargames Butterfly' ?

Although I haven't been doing the social-media.. and actually not been playing too many games.. a moment to reflect this afternoon, and I realise that I have been keeping the hobby juices ticking over. Is that a thing? Can you keep juices ticking? Whatever.

One thing is clear though, is that I have no focus! not only have I been making a bit of a start on a new HO switching layout, (which is now wired and running and entering 'testing' mode).. but I have also unapolgetically been butterflying wargameswise.

Tom and I had a game of Dan Mersey's 'Armoured Storm' using a bunch of 1/285 tanks that I've 3D printed.. I've basically taken the excellent Bergmann models and done a bit of tweaking and shrinking in Tinkercad to create reasonable little tokens that vaguely resemble the right tanks.

Dedicated Measuring sticks for next time!

The game was good fun, and certainly got ideas flowing.. I think scenarios are key to making this work, and as there are no lists or anything, making sure that we pick forces that aren't too unbalanced too. (Tom had outnumbered Crusaders up against a mix of Pz 2,3 and 4 and didn't really stand much of a chance).

We've also played a bit more Xenos Rampant.. I spun up a list using some figures that I've been painting for 'Five Parsecs' - mostly 'Light Infantry' and we played two games last night.. where they were pretty outclassed and outplayed by Tom's Orks.. back to the drawing board! Although I like the theme of this detachment.. a cobbled together force of ship's crew, local starport guards and miscellaneous civilians, supported by one unit of Heavy Tangermarines.

mostly Stargrave crew from Northstar

Wargames Atlantic 'Cannon Fodder'

Sergeant Satsuma steps back as the barrage from orbiting escort falls on his pursuers!

Lightly armed civilians unable to stop the Ork convoy

Lastly (for now) I've also just finished off a long term project, painting and basing 10mm 1848 Danish and Schleswig Holstein armies for playing Neil Thomas 19th Century wargames. I've already got a dedicated fleece cloth that I'd painted up and played before using 6mm 1866, so all set to play some battles!

4'x3' fleece painted up for these rules

1940 Fighting Withdrawal Campaign - Game Three

Having made a surprisingly fast breakthrough in the last game, the advancing Germans came across the next line of British defence on the outskirts of Risquons Tous. A line of anti-tank ditches and barbed wire covered another bunker and stretched from the cemetery walls in front of the imposing hospital buildings.

The Germans were faced with another march across open ground into this defensive line, again with the objective to push at least one team off the British baseline ('Probe' scenario in Chain of Command). The fact that they had 12 points of support to the BEF 6 should help!

In addition, in this very one sided campaign, the Germans are the 'NPC' and don't need to worry about casualties from one game to another, whilst the BEF player needs to be much more careful about losses depleting his slim resources.

The patrol phase allowed me to place jump off points high up on both flanks whilst Tom deployed in the graveyard and made use of the hard cover in the building and bunker. 

A combination of double phases, a number of 5s giving me a chain of command dice, allowed me to push up the jump off points even further, and the use of a pre-game bombardment to stall British arrival, all meant that in very short time I had pretty un-battered infantry assaulting the line. 

The arrival of a Stug, pouring effective HE fire in to support, was enough and the British were very soon beating a hasty retreat back to the next defensive line.

Opening games in the 1940 Fighting Withdrawal campaign - Part Two; Holding the line at Risquons Tout

Last night Tom and I played the next game in the 'Fighting Withdrawal' campaign. In this scenario, the Germans had one objective, as per the 'Probe' scenario.. get at least one team off the opposite side of the table.. very Blitzkrieg!

The scenario map, Germans attacking from the left

I actually gave a little thought the night before as to how to spend my generous support points. In this scenario the BEF have a pretty good defensive line along an Anti-tank ditch, with barbed wire and concrete bunker.  I opted for more firepower than speed, reasoning that it was likely that a roadblock would impede a wheeled or tracked dash for that end of the table. I chose a pre-game barrage to try to delay some deployment, along with an IG18 gun, some engineers and an off-table mortar battery.

The line of defence, German infantry pushing on the top

We had a cagey patrol phase.. neither of us too sure of our intentions and I definitely lucked out, Tom cursing his angles!

A Jump Off Point on the flanking edge, followed by a double phase and some good dice throws, found an infantry section rushing hard up on the one weak point in the British line. Tom managed to get some infantry deployed just before the 80mm mortars opened up, but the german gun crew put some fire into a section in the house, wounding the Junior leader there.

Despite the fact that the British Force morale was holding very well, some more lucky dice rolls ran the german section off the table and ended the game.

As it happened, the road had been left clear, and maybe deploying a 221 and gunning it might have yielded the same result? the Probe scenario is a tricky one to defend.

This was a really quick game, but it wasn't really a disappointment in that this is one chapter of the story. The British didn't suffer any losses and the next game sees them in a much tougher defensive position.. I suspect that I'll be hard-pushed to win that one on the first run!

See Tom's page for more photos and his account of the battle: 

http://tomstoysoldiers.blogspot.com/2021/10/chain-of-command-fighting-withdrawal_01007570048.html

Opening games in the 1940 Fighting Withdrawal campaign - Part One; Counter Attack at Avelghem

Tom and I have been planning for some time to play this 1940 campaign which we found in the 2016 Lardy summer special. Rather than a 'typical' pint sized campaign, where both sides track their losses and successes, this is much more of a narrative, a series of linked scenarios that follow the withdrawal of C Company of the Beds & Herts as they are pursued by the advancing Germans across Belgium and into France. 

Tom has taken charge of the BEF forces and I'm looking after the 'NPC' German forces (I don't need to track any losses and just need to keep piling it on to push the British back to Dunkirk).

Game One was the 'Counter Attack at Avelghem', where a small group of Germans had made their way across a demolished bridge, and Tom needed to push them back to prevent them forming a bridgehead. The table is quite open, drainage ditches providing some light cover.

German section on the bridge ramp took heavy aimed bren fire

British lined the ditches

Despite my initial doubts, the Germans managed to put quite a bit of damage onto the British and crucially manage to bring more forces over the river, although their morale was falling steadily.. Eventually Tom pushed forward, making really good use of smoke from his 2" mortars, and despite taking losses, managed to over-run a JOP. 

The assault goes in on the weakened German section

Shortly afterwards, I remembered that the Germans had a special rule; 'Handgranaten!'.. without hesitation, I decided that sounded like a great idea and soon learned that charging an enemy, even a weakened one, when your Force Morale is at 2 is really not a good idea! 

Game One, although a costly victory, went to the BEF. This will determine the number of games that are played. 

See Tom's write up and pictures here: 

http://tomstoysoldiers.blogspot.com/2021/10/chain-of-command-fighting-withdrawal.html