U.S. halftracks unlimber an anti-tank gun battery.

More Action at Fall In: A British film crew was on hand to film Lee and Meade fighting it out again at Gettysburg!

Civil War soldiers "making time" with the Film Crew Girl

Lee and Meade discuss tactics after the battle, hey wait a minute!; why is Lee using his hands like he was a fighter pilot? Did I miss something?

Action at Fall In: Blogmeister Keith fires his "random number generators" during a Flames of War game.

Keith is shocked by the results (the other chaps snicker)

Desperate, he calls for air support, but he is playing the U.S. side, isn't his cell co. owned by Deutsch Telekom? What will respond; P47s or Stukas?

Desperate Rearguard Action in the Burning Sands!

This time we tried the Hold-the-Line scenario in the Flames of War rule book. It has a lot of good special rules that work really well. The Reserves and Ambush rules are particularly effective in making for a tense game!

A German panzergrenadier company in a rear-guard position is charged with holding back a victorious British advance while their “komeraden” are in full retreat. They are on the defensive and dug in. Half of their units will arrive randomly as reinforcements. Two are being held in ambush positions. The question is; will this be enough to hold back the British Desert Rats tank company that wants to block the German retreat? "Tune in" below to find out!

"The Thin Feldgrau Line"

Panzergrenadiers are dug in and waiting, the sound of tank treads grows stonger and they see dust plumes all across the horizon!

Enemy sighted; Tally Ho!

British Grant tanks maneuver around the escarpment

The Desert Rats Prepare to Charge!

The panzergrenadiers hunker down on the objective

A concealed 88 battery reveals itself by spitting hot lead!

The attackers start taking losses

A tanker's life can be short and brutal!

The Grants try but fail to silence the 88s with machine guns

Meanwhile the Stuarts and Bren carriers hit the left flank

The furious British charge breaks through and reaches the objective!

Overdue panzer reinforcements finally arrive...

...and make their presence felt, decisively!

Objective in flames!

The last of the British Armoured squadron dies on the objective.

Armored Forces Clash in the Desert

A panzerkompanie of the 7th Panzer Regiment is sent forward to retrieve a missing tank recovery vehicle. They are looking in the right place but what they don't realize is that a British tank company has already found it. Both sides are surprised by the sudden apperance of a strong force to their fronts. A meeting engagement in the open desert between armored forces! This is going to be fast and furious! The orders "Button up, Action Front" are passed down the line on both sides. The German Mark IIIs open fire at long range while the British commander sends his light tanks barreling toward the advancing German infantry in an atempt to cut them down before they have a chance to go to ground.

Panzer IIIs at the jumpoff point. These are pretty solid little tanks, with the L50 5.0cm gun. Rate of fire is high enough to make up for the lack of power.  

Grants lined up on the right flank preparing to move forward. And die.  

Grants lined up to protect the lost German recovery vehicle. 

Turn one, the Grants and 'Honey' Stuarts prepare to do their thing. The 'Honeys' will move forward like lightening, while the Grants hold the objective.  

Second blood to the Brits. A Panzer III burns. 

On turn one, the British Bren Carriers speed forward to shoot at the unprotected infantry. Along with the three 'Honey' Stuarts', they killed all but two stands and the commander of the Panzergrenadiers. On turn two a combination of the StuG IIIs and the SdKfz 221/222 recon squadron hosed down the Honeys and the Bren Carriers. The Brens all died, one Honey died, and the command Honey bailed.  

One Grant remains on the right flank. He aggressively moves forward only to be pummeled. 

The last British tank on the right flank burns after his brave, but foolish charge forward. 

A StuG III advances past a burning Honey Stuart. The command tank is bailed, so the center tank didn't move for about 4 turns. It ended up getting bailed, then finally near the end of the game remounted and ran to the rear to cover the objective. It died there. 

The Commander and 2IC prepare to meet the Recon forces as Panzer IIIs move in from the other flank. The two Honeys that are not burning are bailed. They were bailed on turn 3 and stayed that way until only one remained. 

The last StuG III burns beside the decimated Panzergrenadiers. To the left, the three Bren Carriers that hammered the Grenadiers on turn one burn. 

The 2IC tank burns as the last 'Honey' Stuart prepares to die fighting. 

Panzer Kompanie Commander moves past the last of the burning Grant Command tanks. 

Objective taken! Recon commander gaurds the recovered recovery vehicle. 

With the British Armoured Squadrons' command tanks burning and the Panzer Kompanies' Recon commander sitting on their objective, the game ended in a German win with a victory point score of 5-2. (The victory points come out of the rule book, and result is given due to the fact that the victor only lost one full platoon.)

'Bwana' Bill played an excellent game, recovering well from what seemed an initial setback. After my Honey Stuarts and Bren carriers hammered his infantry on my half of turn one, it was looking grim. However, his StuGs were nearly impervious to my fire (mostly due to my poor die rolls! Have I mentioned I have demon-possessed die?) while his long 7.5cm guns were more than a match for the mediocre (POOR!) armor on the Grants.

One thing that I didn't do in the game was to attempt to fire both the guns on the Grants. If I fired the turret 37mm as well as the sponson 75mm, I'd get two more shots per turn. The problem with that is that I have to roll higher on the die to hit due to the vehicle commanders' attention being split between guiding the gunner and trying to aim and fire the turret gun himself. (Both guns are +1 to hit when fired simultatneously.) I chose not to fire both guns, since I already needed 4/5 to hit. That was tough for me to roll, so making it a 5/6 would just mean that I didn't hit as often as I did, which was rare! Hindsight is 20/20 they say, and I think now that if I roll more die, I have a better chance of hitting. So, perhaps I'll try that next game... and we are having a rematch!

While the game may have seemed very lopsided, it was actually very close up until near the end and could have gone either way at various points in the battle.

I think I won't let him bring his StuGs next time! ;-P

I've entered our results for this game into the Race for Messina on the FoW official website.

I'm sure my fellow "Brits" will not appreciate my contribution... oh well. Perhaps I can pull a win out next time!

Uniform Painting Rescource!

(Not Bwana) Bill sent me this link to the New York Public Library. It's an outstanding resource for ideas on painting of uniforms.

Most historical gamers really want accuracy. Hey, what better source than a library?

Enjoy!

Trench Wars Night Fight

Charlie was the only 'regular' to show up, but we still had a blast!

Seems no one really considered night-fighting and true 'small unit' skirmish in Trench Wars! Ok, that's harsh - actually it's only the night fighting they didn't touch on enough, but there is also a definite push for larger, grander games.

I took ten German trenchfighters, one officer, and two NCOs against Charlies' three ten-man squads and a unit of four Royal Engineers - Signalers, and their lone sentry. One of those squads was the crew of a pair of field guns. The Field guns were the objective for the night raid.

We started the game off with me rolling for a random entry point on the table. As fate would have it (or my demon-possessed dice!), I rolled to pop up right in front of the sentry.

But that was ok, since my next roll for "noise and light discipline" was passed easily - so the sentry at least didn't hear my guys!

Unfortunately, since they came on the table so close to his guys, I gave Charlie a roll to see if his sentry could spot them. They were less than six inches away! He made the roll, spotted the raiders, and fired a warning shot.

He missed, but the Royal Engineers in the dugout awoke and one started running to raise the alarm. In addition one of the ten-man squads awoke and started thinking about moving towards the shot.

Next turn, my lads poured into the bunker and a one-sided brawl ensued where the Royal Engineers died valiantly defending their dugout without slowing my lads down very much. Still, there was a lot of ground to cover, and since it was dark, we could only move six inches.

A couple of turns went by with us just maneuvering, and with the last two squads waking up and moving to the sounds of battle. This was not going to be good.

Charlie had one of the gun crews manhandle a gun away from the bunker it was behind and prep it for firing, while the other crew ran up to greet three breakaway trenchfighters.

On my left flank, my officer, an NCO and a handful of trenchfighters ran towards a unit that was firing at medium range in the dark. The raiders took a few casualties, but closed into Bergman range and opened up with two submachine guns and a pistol, kiling half the Brit squad.

The three breakaway lads charged into the five gunners and beat them to a pulp, directly after which the other five gunners opened up and close range with the 18 pounder. It was a direct hit instantly Annihilating all three lads.

A reserve unit came on not long after and hammered the last of my lads, ending the night in a valiant, but futile attempt at spiking the guns.

We had a great time, making rules on the fly that made sense. Charlie liked the game and drew a map of the terrain layout so we can try again sometime.

Fortunately I remembered the camera!! Unfortunately it didn't have it's "memory stick" in it, which is why this is a text-only report. Fear not gentle readers, Eye Candy is on the way soon!!

Trench Wars World War I WARNORD

On Friday night I'll be running a game of Trench Wars at our local shop. Charlie is bringing some newly-painted Brit field guns (I'll try to remember the camera this time!) which we are going to use as objectives for some small-scale skirmish.

The scenario is basically a night-time deep recon, beyond the first trench line. The Germans will be attempting to find and, if possible, spike the guns.

We will have to use the night-fight rules from Warhammer 40K and adjust them a bit.

Trench Wars is a one to one scale World War One skirmish wargame based on the years 1916-1918. Although it is technically "late war" we also do "early war" battles as well.

The rules are straight-forward and easy to understand, and there are additional levels of detail that are "optional rules".

Trench Wars plays quick and easy, and it's always a hoot. Check it out at Old Glory Miniatures.