Ian (German), Nigel (French) and myself (British) have been quietly painting some 15mm forces for Early War Rapid Fire. Today was the day to get some of them on the table for the first time. We used the Cassel - The Citadel scenario from the Blitzkrieg Battlegames book but used our own forces that were based on different battlegroups. The larger German force had to try and take a well defended hill town from the British. As Nigel had painted up a few French, we put them out on the British right flank to hold the villages of Zuytpeene and Bavinchove.
My 25pdrs were deployed to the left of Cassel - they didn't hit a thing all game right up to the last turn when they did destroy a german artillery piece.
The British infantry were mainly deployed inside the houses of Cassel.
Nigel also deployed his French infantry mainly in the two villages houses. Ian's rapidly advancing German infantry soon overwhelmed the French forcing them to fall back.
Note here that all buildings were counted as intact at the start of the game but we used some ruins in some places as that is all we had.
Ian sent on some motor bike riders first and Nigel promptly shot some of them.
Ian's main German advance, heading straight for Cassel.
Turn 1 and my Matilda and my 25mm AT gun had some fun with the German tanks.
When Ian later deployed some german AT guns I sent my Matilda 1's on a mission to destroy them. Just behind them my 25mm AT gun had just been hit by HE killing the crew but not harming the gun which I later re-crewed.
Most of Ian's German tanks could not harm my Matilda's and they could not damage them in return so the two forces moved past each other on their separate missions.
After destroying or damaging quite a few German tanks my poor old Matilda II, after absorbing so many shots at it got finally got destroyed.
It took all game but Ian's Stuka finally arrived and took out one of my 25pdr's.
My solitary AA infantry stand failed miserably in it's attempt to fire back.
As our gaming time was coming to an end, Nigel's French who had been slowly whittled down by the Germans became surrounded, failed their Morale test and thus surrendered. Ian's German forces had been so badly damaged that he felt he had little chance of taking Caessel,thus an Allied Victory was declared.
Another great game of Rapid Fire and our first in the Early War setting. We learned quite a lot about the abilities (or lack of) of our varying troop types. We are all looking forward to playing again.
