Operation Lightbeer - Flames of War MW Desert AAR

Driven back to hasty the fortifications at Alamein, the Australians and British dig in and prepare to repel the relentless advance of Rommel and his Desert Afrika Corps. Outside it was wet and miserable but on the table the heat was relentless, the foes implacable and the result as close as could be. Can the Germans capture the objective and save themselves from a diet of lightbeer?

On the defending side we had a 2000 point British Guards Motor company consisting of motor platoons, heavy machine guns, Royal Horse Artillery, 6pdr portee AT, Grant tanks and carriers plus a 2000 point Australian rifle company consisting of rifle platoons, towed 6pdr AT, heavy mortars, carriers, Valentine infantry tanks and Crusaders of the Div Cav with Hurricane IIDs overhead.

On the attacking side we had Rommel in command of 2000 points of Panzergrenadiers consisting of schutzen platoons, panzers, heavy artillery and nebelwerfers plus 2000 points of Panzerpioneers consisting of pioneers, panzers, Lorraine Schleppers and Stukas.

RHA dug in behind the trench lines

Aussies on the objective, prepared to fight to a bitter end (pun intended!)

View from the German left flank, it was here the initial breakthrough came

The table was 8" x 6" which meant for a wide frontage and a lot of barbed wire. We played Trench Fight which meant minefields were short in supply due to cost in points. Deciding to force the DAK into a path covered by the AT guns, the Allied right was left without mines - a bad decision as it turned out. The preliminary bombardment did little to disrupt the infantry but did knock out a couple of 25pdrs. More crucially it all but destroyed the 6pdr AT guarding the Allied right.

View from the Allied left flank

German AT on the ridge in the centre, panzers advancing behind

The Germans made a determined attack on both flanks. Initial success on their right was slow with infantry sacrificing itself to clear a path for the panzers.

German right flank - panzers forward!

The Guards holding fast as the Germans advance

The German rear, artillery preparing to blast the defenders

German start line showing the whole table

On the German left massed panzers advance across the wire, following a path which had been covered by Allied AT before the bombardment. With no minefields and only infantry in their path there is little to stop them. Allies reserves are disastrously late, arriving first on turn three and only in dribs and drabs. This was to be crucial...

Panzers force the gap on the German left

With the Allied infantry cleared, the panzers advance

At last the Allied reserves begin to arrive. It looked far too late with the panzers within one move of the objective but the Valentines and 6pdr portees worked wonders, stopping the panzers and plugging the narrow gap with burning wrecks. Successive waves of panzers then foundered on the trenches to be destroyed by the few remaining 25pdrs firing over open sights.

The Valentines come to the rescue with empty gun pits everywhere

A growing park of buring tanks and the German breakthrough grinds to a halt

Meanwhile on the German right the panzers and pioneers have forced another gap and advanced. The panzers halted and engaged in an ineffective long range gun duel with late arriving Grants but made a critical difference in preventing the tanks advancing to support the objective. The pioneers broke into the trench network and advanced lengthwise under cover. They finally threw the Aussies out but not before they had destroyed a platoon of panzers with pure guts and sticky bombs.

Desperately weak pioneers have the objective. Destroyed Valentines abound

Too little too late the Grants and carriers arrive en masse. Appalling Allied reserve rolls mean the Germans have ground their way onto the objective with reduced opposition. Another turn would have seen an Allied victory due to increasing numbers with all but two of the dozen panzers brewed up.

In the end it wasn't to be an Allied victory. What had looked a certainty for the Germans swung back in Allied favour before a critical turn handed victory to Rommel.

Flames of War Desert Defences

We've got a large Flames of War desert game on tomorrow - 4,000pts per side in Mid War North Africa.

We're pitting two Commonwealth infantry companies in defence (British Guards Motor and Aussie Rifle) against two German infantry companies in attack (DAK Panzergrenadiers x 2). The game is sort of a prelude to Second Alamein, where the Commonwealth forces have just been driven back to the last line of defence.

The scenario is a Trench Fight and for that we need a network of defences - trenches, minefields, barbed wire and gun pits. I've spent the last week and a bit beavering away producing a pile of suitable terrain and here it is. All of it is hand made, even the mines and barbed wire.

For those who are interested, total cost was something like $80 Aussie. In terms of "entertaining stats" I went through about 40m of wire, 50 tubes of super glue, 6m of timber quadrant and half a kilo of sand to name just some of the ingredients.

Mr Millsy aka "Spare Hand One" was a great help holding the other end of the barbed wire while I cranked my hand drill to give the appropriate twist. Is there nothing a good Aussie girl can't do???

Plenty more pics to follow tomorrow when the table is loaded up with figs and more terrain.

Cheers,

Millsy

A Plug for the Gruntz 15mm Sci-fi Barracks Tool

Hi Folks,

Just a quick plug for the Gruntz 15mm Sci-fi "Barracks" profile card builder tool. This is a really neat idea for knocking up unit profile cards for a cracking game which is soon to get a much anticipated updated version of the rules.

The Barracks tool is being crowd funded on Indiegogo so pop over and check it out. The Gruntz rules and Barracks tool are an absolute bargain for the price considering what a great game it is.

Development screen shot from the Mac version. PC also available at the time of release

Nug and I have played a few games of Gruntz now and we absolutely love it. Check out the AAR of our latest game here if you're interested.

Cheers,
Millsy

When did you last read Featherstone?

If you're not a wargaming nostalgia buff you're probably going to want to skip this post...

Over the past ten years or so I've been slowly extending my collection of "classic" wargames books. These are books written by the "founding fathers" of the wargames movement and include such revered authors as Donald Featherstone, Chales Grant, Stuart Asquith and Bruce Quarrie to name but a few. These gents boldly went where no man had gone before and dreamed up a lot of what we take for granted nowadays both in terms of game mechanics and also ways of transferring that to the table top.

Many of the original editions of these early wargaming books are increasingly hard to find, potentially quite expensive and in less than perfect condition due to age and use. You take a bit of a risk buying these books and you have to be willing to end up with something you're terrified to open in case it falls apart in your hands. Despite all that I still find these books captivating in so many ways and I find myself constantly wanting to expand my collection.

There has been a plethora of material published since these early books appeared, much of it with better images and production quality, enormous depth of content and covering a vastly wider range of topics and periods. So why are these early books so fascinating to me by comparison? I've thought long and hard about what they mean to me personally and the answer is this - the books themselves as a physical object are not that significant but what they contain and what the represent certainly is. The language, concepts and themes in these books reflect the time when they were written. This was a "glorious new age", an "age of exploration" if you like and THAT alone makes them interesting. Many gamers are history buffs as well and in a way these books are part of the history of recreating history if you know what I mean.

In these early books wargamers are referred to variously as "chaps", "fellows" or "gents", not "noobs" or "lamers". The authors never considered the idea of "uber lists", "min-maxing", "power gaming" or my personal favourite "codex creep". Instead they talked of fair play, club nights with fellow gamers and sharing their hobby by any means possible. Their concepts and ideas were presented without a sense of absolutism and usually a good dash of enthusiam and even a little theatre. Some of this style remains today but a lot of it has been lost.

Instead, many of today's authors strive for accurate representation of myriad weapon systems and situations (even in sci-fi games!), create increasingly complex turn sequences and invent endless new mechanics to solve problems that were put to bed decades ago. They often do so at the expense of basics like simply having FUN. Are we really GAMING when so many of the tenets of what makes something a GAME seem missing? I'm willing to bet Don Featherstone never described a victory as "smashing his opponent's face in" and Charles Grant almost certainly never got marked down on a comp score for playing with  unpainted miniatures. He probably made the jolly miniatures himself for starters.

It's probably best I wrap this up about now, lest I find myself (perhaps rightly) consigned to the category of grognard or worse. If you're interested in learning more check out The Universal General and look under Wargaming History and Shows. There is a good four pages worth of books listed, many of which I've got in my collection already and others which I'm still hunting for. Those curious as to what I've got on my shelf can rummage about in my wargaming LibraryThing.

If you've never picked up and read a copy of Feathertone's War Games, Grant's Battle! Practical Wargaming or any of the others listed on The Universal General I encourage you to do so. You might well find something we lost along the way as gaming became the province of the sweaty masses as opposed to a very talented few...

Cheers,
Millsy

Federal Army Peacekeepers for Gruntz 15mm

This is the beginnings of my second force for Gruntz - Federal Army Peacekeepers (aka F.A.P.). The theme this time is a lightly armed force, similar but a deal more "pragmatic" than the current UN peacekeepers.

Whenever there is an insurrection, disturbance or even the hint of trouble within the Federated Planetary Systems these guys are dispatched to restore order and "ensure lasting and absolute effectiveness of local authority". Many worlds that have been visited by the F.A.P. argue that the only kind of peace they bring is the peace of the graveyard. The F.A.P. counter this by saying that they only ever respond in kind, never starting fights but always finishing them.

These are all the vehicles the force will have, anti-armour support being provided by mechs more suited to close urban terrain. Gruntz are transported in APCs by Old Crow (vehicle chassis and weapon pods) and preceded by fast recce in the form of Old Crow six-wheeled scouts with GZG weapons.

I've gone with a plain colour scheme to represent the varied theatres these troops fight in. There are plenty of unit symbols and aerial recognition markers to help with the fact guerrilla forces will use a lot of Neural-Net attacks to disrupt IFF, targeting and comms. The Mk I eyeball plays a big role in preventing blue on blue for the F.A.P. (or should that be green on green?)

I'm really struggling with silvering on the decals at the moment despite doing all the right stuff like gloss varnish underneath and solvent as well. They look OK to the eye but it still shows up in photos. Go figure...

Infantry are on the painting table at the moment but an epic ink fail due to magic wash "going off" means they're on hold until some more floor polish arrives from the US. Why on earth can't you buy anything decent in Oz any more???

I must say before I finish that the quality of these Old Crow vehicles for the price is superb. Very clean casts with almost no faults and lots of detail and character. They're also very well sanded underneath, nice and even unlike many other resins I've bought.

Anyways, hope you like the models and back story. Feel free to leave comments and suggestions...

Til next time,
Millsy