The Defence of Carentan: 15mm Rapid Fire

 We haven't played Rapid Fire for probably a couple of years so today's game was very much scaled down to be a learning game. The scenario pitted Ian's Americans (as 101st Airborne) against my Germans (as the 6th Fallschirmjager) and was based on the 'Defence of Carentan' scenario in the Rapid Fire Normandy Battlegames book. Ian and Nigel were in control of the Americans and I took on the role of the Germans in this all infantry encounter.  

We used numbered tiddlywinks as markers to try out the concealed deployment rules. With my Germans scattered around the small town of St Come-du-Mont Ian and Nigel had to both take the town and get at least one unit past a point on the far side of the table in 15 turns-we managed just 5 turns even with our reduced forces.

The Americans enter the table, heading for St Come-du-Mont, trying to spot the German defenders. Each numbered tiddlywink was part of the German force, the blank tiddlywinks were dummy's. It took an observation roll to spot the actual forces. 

Ian advanced quite rapidly whilst Nigel tried to work his way around the table edge to get a unit off the far table edge. Ian managed to knockout most of my forward command group apart from one figure. This figure opted to do an heroic action and with some excellent dice throwing he ran towards the Americans and threw a grenade over the hedge and killed 3 of them, a truly heroic action. The remaining Americans then shot the poor chap.

My Pak 40 AT gun was nicely tucked away behind a hedge and was doing some damage to Nigel's units. He retaliated by concentrating his fire on the Pak 40 and destroying it. 

Both forces had done a similar amount of damage to each other but the larger American force was able to absorb the damage without needing to take a Morale test. Sadly the Germans were getting quite depleted by now and towards the end of our gaming time they failed a Morale test and withdrew leaving the Americans to advance into St Come-du-Mont. 

This was a fun game, a bit slow at first as we kept referring to the rules but we gradually speeded up. Next week we aim to play again introducing a few vehicles this time. 

10mm Hail Caesar, Imperial Romans v Britons.

 We hadn't managed to get a game in for a couple of weeks so it was good to get back together again today. I had quickly thrown together a scenario based on one in the Age of Caesar book but using Early Imperial Romans instead of Caesarian ones and tweaked to suit our figure collection. A quick dice off decided that Ian would take control of the Romans who only had one Command figure in control of their six units of legionaries. That left Nigel and I commanding the Britons in three divisions. 

The scenario had two units of Roman Auxiliary units foraging ahead of the main army suddenly confronted by a large force of British troops. Ian also won the dice off to take the first turn and he quickly recalled the foraging units and formed his Romans into a long line of battle. So Nigel and I did what the Ancient British like to do, we advanced into range then charged! 

Initial deployment, British on the left, Romans on the right, with the foragers already safely recalled.  

Ian sent his Moorish Light cavalry off on a flanking manoeuvre, an act which I tried to counter with my skirmish slingers but they were not very good at following orders. 

On our left Nigel is advancing, our plan was to defeat Ian on the flanks then wrap up the centre. 

Sadly it didn't work. 

Here you can see the strength of the Roman line. In the centre my large Warband had heavily damaged the Roman cohort facing it, but had taken heavy damage themselves to the extent that Ian's Auxiliary Archers managed to finish them off. 

Off run the large warband. 

Nigel commits his left flank troops and after an epic tussle, his warbands were defeated and the division broken. Over on the right flank despite breaking a couple of Roman units my division was also broken so game over. This was quite an emphatic win for Ian and the Romans even though some of them had taken heavy casualties. 

Great game as always.