Battlegroup goodness to look forward to

Its no secret that I am a bit of a BG fanboy, so you probably wont be surprised that these two upcoming releases have me rather excited!

Just announced - Cold War BG!

This will be in the smaller campaign style like BG Wacht am Rhein

In the meantime, I'm going to try out BG in 28mm - all my games have been 15mm thus far.  Going to try some BG Fall of the Reich using my Paras.  Right after I get back from a midyear break away, that is. Ciao!

The Battle of Knackerville

Boys, Beers and Battle = Good times!

To celebrate the Queen's Birthday long weekend, Slowpainter John hosted a bunch of the club lads for a massed "toys on the table" game of Bolt Action.  The 4 x 8 foot table depicted the Alsatian town of Knackerville (famous for its horse retirement farm and unrelated but located next door sausage factory...), and its bridges over the Knacker River.  3 wiley German defenders would try to hold out a mixed Allied force of British Regulars, Brit Paras, and French. Reilly took command of my beloved Red Devils and all the recent additions from AHPC saw table action for the first time.

Western approach to Knackerville, through the horse stud and sausage factory. The River beyond is the Allied objective.

The Allies had some 40 order dice (!) to the Germans' 24, with the latter setting up hidden with a range of dummy markers.  To make matter worse, when Allied units first encountered one another, a d6 roll of 1 would see a case of mistaken identity and taking each other under fire.  To keep the action moving (and player involved), the game progressed by drawing lots of 4 dice and resolving the actions simultaneously.  Worked very well.

The Germans had clearly developed their defensive fire plan in detaill, accounting for the their uncanny ability to zero in their artillery and remove entire infantry sections in a salvo...Ouch!

Initial German artillery salvo - on target! a full section of British infantry was wiped out

"Ya! Ya! Gut job Hans - do it again!"

As you might expect it was a hard slog up the middle of the narrow table end.  And it make matters worse, with all those Allied units we had a real traffic jam on our hands too.  I put my new Sherman Firefly Assegai on a flank march up the left, while Reilly (remembering our game from CanCon, clever lad!) stuck two squads of Paras plus a FT and PIAT team flanking up the right.  Took a bit of patience but we held out and they proved rather key in the end.

A Panzerschreck team hidden in the ruins saw an end to the Churchill Minotaur, blocking the intersection

Para recon jeep locates a hidden PaK at the end of the road the hard way...

...enabling its neutralisation by off board artillery bombardment

A Para squad is destroyed by another deadly accurate salvo from the German gunners

Best on Ground for the day: Heer Artillery

The German rein of 6s and our continued spate of 1s was rather amazing.  In 6 turns our snipers never hit a thing, my medic failed every roll, and only a single artillery salvo hits its mark. C'est la guerre aplenty over 4 hours.  Then the game started to turn when the Luftwaffe appeared and mistook the rather unusual Panzerwerfer 42 Rocket launcher vehicle for an Allied threat.  The Me 262 rolled in and promptly removed it from the equation before it had fired.

BOOM! The Luftwaffe pilot earns himself a DSO!

4 turns in and our FT team dropped in, taking the Germans completely by surprise as they ran up to incinerate the squad in the building. Unfortunately, they rolled a 1 and missed.  They got the first activation in the next turn but mangled to fail their activation roll after getting a single pina nd were predictably eliminated.  The Germas thought that the flanking threat was over but then came a nasty surprise on the right as these chaps arrived - 5 feet up the 8 foot table!

Surprise Fritz!

Memorable moments - the time that PIAT actually brewed something up!

Meanwhile, over on the left flank the appearance of the German heavy armour made the Firefly's debut timely - Assegai rolled in and dispatched the first one with a nice rear armour shot!

"Scratch one Panzer Jim!"

The next turn the Pz IV spun round and the two tanks engaged one another but missed.  However, the French Char B1 saw his chance and rolled in for a stern shot on the Pz IV - Kill!

At the same time the second Churchill, Medusa, tried to overrun the Panzerschreck team that had dispatched Minotaur, resulting in mutual destruction.  It was a bad day to be a tanker on any side really!

At this point, the German position was untenable though they had extracted a heavy price for the Allied advance - a draw was naturally called!  It was a cracking day made possible by the hospitality of John and his lovely wife with great lunch, dinner, snacks, beers, endless coffees and wonderful camaraderie.  Thanks very much!

Kampfgruppe Kommandants (and Umpire with dice bag!)

Some FIW Gaming

Colonial Rangers scout ahead of the British Main Body

Over the last few months Alan and I have been progressing a FIW campaign and continuing to add to our forces.  So much so that we are now at the upper edge of what we can reasonably setup and complete in a club night.  Here is some eye candy of our forces in  recent actions:

Infantry column with a skirmish screen deploys on the left flank in front of a strong French position

My right flank infantry advance along a forrest trail

Alan's waiting French line

Vive la Roi!

My left flank advances, reinforced by Grenadiers

And deploys with rippling musketry!

I'm very happy how the Warbases came out - I think they look really good painted and flocked, and they save a stack of time during movement.

While my right column forms into line and does likewise

Take that Frenchies! Now back to Canada with you!

Its been very satisfying to see this force really develop - just one artillery battery to go until I am done (for now anyway!)

Hobby Highs and Horrors

How cool is this guy? Love the camo pants!

This week my Man Cave saw the best and worst of our hobby.


Firstly, a wonderful parcel arrived from Canada, courtesy of Snow Lord Curt himself - my reverse Curtgeld thank you for my assistance as a Minion during AHPC VII.

Opening the box...

 Thanks indeed Curt - I love this guy (and his strange similarity to the main character from Fallout New Vegas) but the message under the base is the best bit

This great treat more than made up for a far more frustrating incident from Sunday afternoon.  Odin the playful Beagle pup decided that my completed, based and varnished new Robot Legion / Scrapper force needed to be removed from the drying area and reduced to component parts again. Scrapped indeed.  

Needless to say, not quite the way I wanted to post these guys on the blog...

On the bright side, some bits are still attached... Little bugger!