A USA WW2 Blog for Ian

 Here we go...

and click on the photo's if you need them any larger. 

Back to Rapid Fire

 We haven't played Rapid Fire for some months but today we returned to the game with a heavily adapted scenario based on the 'Cambes' scenario from the Normandy Battlegame's book. We had to replace the British troops with Ian's American forces. I also had to swap the terrain about a bit as I did not have enough road sections. As suggested in the book we allocated points values to all the main buildings and crossroads but played a straight, who was in control of the most points after 16 turns. 

Ian and Phil were in charge of the Americans whilst Nigel and I were the Germans. 

To celebrate getting back to Rapid Fire I painted up three more Panzer IV H, only two survived the game. 

So at the start of the game the Germans are dug in around two villages. The Americans have to push them back and try and claim the villages, taking points from the Germans for each building and cross roads taken. 

Turn 1 the American Recce unit enters the board. 

Turn 2 the American Recce unit gets blown up!

Meanwhile some Panzer IV enter at the far end of the table to support the German forces. . 

But the Americans are coming onto the table in force now. 

My pak 40 bags a Sherman. 

The Panzer IV's take cover behind some brewed up Sherman's. 

The American's start to take control of the main village, Cambes.

Loads of Americans all over the place, despite the Germans destroying quite a few of their tanks. 

View from the American entry point, they Americans now control most of Cambes. 

One of the Panzer IV's takes a lucky hit from a Sherman. 

As time ran out we had only played 12 out of the planned 16 turns. The Americans had taken about 40% of the objectives but did look set to take over the whole of Cambes in the next few turns which would have won them the game. 

We really enjoy Rapid Fire for our WW2 games. It is as fast moving as it's name suggests and manages to keep all players involved for the whole game. We aim to play again next week.  

General De Brigade in 25mm

 For our first game of 2023 Nigel had very kindly invited us over for a game of General de Brigade using his wondeerful 'old school' collection of MiniFigs, Lamming and Hinchliffe figures.

 He even provided lunch, what a legend! The table looked great with lots of well painted resin buildings adding to the overall atmosphere. Nigel had also cooked  up an imaginary scenario of British v French fighting over two objectives, a village and a large hill. The dice decided that Phil and I commanded the French with Ian and Nigel in charge of the British. The two sides were fairly symmetrical in design with a few slight differences in troop quality. Phil and Nigel ended up fighting over the village whilst Ian and I contested the Hill, a far simpler objective. 

Phil's Infantry Brigade approach the the village. 

The view across the table after deployment. 

Here comes Nigel's British Infantry, also  aiming for the villlage. 

On the other flank Ian's British Infantry Brigade with cavalry support rush for the top of the hill. 

However, my French Infantry also rushed the hill supported by some Hussars who proceeded to chase Ian's cavalry from the board. They then swept round onto the French Infantry's flank and rear causing mayhem.  

A good view of the tussle over the village as both sides seek cover to fire from. 

My French Hussars in the bottom right about to chase of some British light cavalry. Although my dice throw's were fairly average Ian's were dreadful. 

The British trying to take the village. 

Where have all the British Infantry gone? The top of the hill claimed by my French Infantry after defeating the British aided by the Hussar's. 

The firefight in the village was fairly even. The British column top centre, try to charge the French line behind the wall but get stopped by the French shooting. 

Eventually the French firing cause Nigel's British Infantry to 'Falter' just as my Brigade start to swing round and advance on their left flank. Game over with a solid victory declared for the French. 

General De Brigade gave us great game although we do need to check one or two things in the rules to make sure we were playing it right. I found them easier to understand than some aspects of General D'Armee but a few rules/areas were also a bit predictable such as melee casualties although the morale checks caused by melee were far less predictable.

Very happy to play this again and Nigel's 'old school' armies are just brilliant!  

The Standard of Teshub : 6mm Chariot Age Hail Caesar

 

For our final game before Christmas we decided to get the 6mm chariots out again. I adapted a scenario from the 'Age of Bronze' book for a 4 player game. 

The Standard of Teshub

Four x 300 point armies (three commanders per 300 points). Scenario loosely based on the Battle of Isuwa p90 of the Age of Bronze. Dice for who allies with who. The two highest scores ally together as do the two lowest. All leaders are Command Level 8.

Terrain: use map on p92. Dice to see who chooses which table edge. Dice again to see who deploys first (each side will deploy a division at a time, taking turns to do so) and then again to see who takes the first move.

Objective: set piece battle to break the opposing army and also gain control of the Standard of Teshub.

The Standard of Teshub: the god Teshub is worshipped by all. All 4 players dice to see who is control of the Standard of Teshub, highest throw wins and deploys the standard with his C-in-C. Ownership of the Standard improves that commanders leadership level to 9. If at any time during the game, that command figure retreats, withdraws, is defeated in melee, fall backs or routs etc... then he loses control of the Standard and his Leadership level falls to 7. The Standard then falls under the control of the nearest opposing commander whose leadership level now rises to 9. If the new owner ever falls back etc...his Leadership will drop to 7 and the new owner rises to Leadership 9...and so on through the game until one force is broken.

The dice decided that Charlie (Elamites) and myself (Hittites) deployed on the left and Ian (Egyptians) and Pharaoh Phil (also Egyptians) deployed on the right. 

Each force was 300 points, so 600 points per side with 6 leaders per side.

The Standard of Teshub was granted to my Hittite C-in-C. 

On turn 1 I was able to move rapidly and grab the hill on my flank. 

This hill became a real central point of fighting on this side of the battle. 

The Hittites await the advancing Egyptians. 

Long line of nasty Egyptians. 

The Hittite chariots (bottom of photo) advance in the centre with the Standard of Teshub towards their cowardly Egyptian counter parts who run off!

There was also a very bloody clash between Charlie's Elamites and Ian's Egyptians on the left flank. Another real blood bath. 

On the 'hill of death' fortunes seemed to swing in my Hittites favour initially, but then suddenly back in Pharaoh Phil's favour. All divisions over here were close to breaking. 

Spot the green disc under the Hittite command chariot, this was the Standard of Teshub. My commander spent all game driving around the battle field and he managed to cling onto the standard for the whole game. 

After seven frantic, action packed turns the Egyptians had lost two divisions and the rest of their force was badly damaged. The Hittites and Elamites had lost one division but were also looking fairly battered. However, as they still possessed the Standard of Teshub we called it a very narrow victory to the Hittite/Elamite alliance. 

This was one of the bloodiest and closest fought battles we have ever had. Great fun. 

A closely fought Billhooks battle

 With Charlie busy elsewhere and Ian ill it was left to Nigel, Phil and myself to fight out a small, 120 points per side battle. The dice decided that Phil and Nigel took charge of the Yorkists whilst I led the Lancastrian side. Terrain was fairly symmetrical and deployment was quickly done leading onto the manoeuvre phase. I was happily surprised to be allowed to move two skirmish units up to the central wall ready to pour missiles on the slowly advancing Yorkists blocks of Archers and Billmen. 

This photo was taken showing the initial deployment, note the wall top centre. 

View from behind the Yorkist lines, note the skirmishers now lining the wall, top centre. 

The skirmishers then fired on Phil's troop starting the battle proper. 

Note also my piece of artillery in the centre (right). For the first time ever, artillery fire was effective and didn't blow up. Points well spent this week. 

Although my skirmishers took some casualties themselves they had inflicted a lot more casualties on the Yorkist archers. 

Then disaster, a special event card gave the Yorkists an extra unit of skirmishers which they cannily deployed on the right flank just behind my skirmishers. Two turns in and suddenly I did not feel so confident of victory. It was time to pause for tea and cake!. 

After some chocolate brownie the Yorkist skirmish crossbow advanced round my left flank and were a real pain. I just did not have enough troops to counter them.  

I managed to rush a unit of bow armed skirmishers across the table to see off the Yorkist extra skirmishers just visible top right. The game was turning back my way.  

(I forgot to take any more photo's at this point). 

Both sides were running short of arrows by now so we were getting ready for melee. Then Phil threw a disastrous Melee Crisis throw resulting in the loss of a whole block of infantry. This opened up the centre and as I moved forward the Yorkists lost their last Morale tokens whilst I had two left, a narrow and hard fought victory to the House of Lancaster. 

Billhooks providing us with a really fun game once again. 

Back to Kings of War

 We last played Kings of War before Covid and lockdowns were a thing and that was in 15mm. Weirdly now, both Chris and I fancied creating new 28mm forces. Chris opted for a Human force whilst I went for some Sylvan Kin using mainly the rather excellent Oathmark Elf figures (because I bought loads of them and hadn't used them for anything yet). You may notice from the photo's that Chris has given his very nicely painted Human/Kingdoms of Men forces a Ukrainian themed colour scheme, his aim being to auction off the army when completed with the funds raised going to an appropriate charity. A most generous gesture. 

Metal Oathmark Elf character figure, otherwise known as Emyn Lockharn who was to prove to be a very effective 'Master Hunter' on the Sylvan Kin list. 

Chris recently pointed out to me that there was a 'new' version of 3rd edition KOW out that was just rules and army lists, perfect for me as I am not keen on the KOW background fluff, I just want to play the game and prefer to make up my own lands, characters and scenario's. It was this new 'Red' version of the rules that prompted us to get our acts together and get a gaming day sorted. 

As Chris was hosting it was his turn to devise the scenario's we would play and this is what he came up with... (as we are still building our new forces we opted to use the 'Ambush' rules for smaller games and opted for 500pts each on a 4' x 4' table.). 

BATTLE FOR THE GLADES OF ENGROTH

Humans have been settling on the edges of the Engroth Forest, a land traditionally belonging to the Sylvan Kin. The settlers believed that the elves would contact them if there were any problems, but no contact was made, so they assumed they had the elves’ blessing.

Unfortunately, the elves, typical of their kin, took time deliberating the best way to deal with their unwelcome visitors, and found several areas of woodland cleared and hamlets founded. Rather than a peaceful meeting to thrash out details and boundaries, the settlers were met by a small elven war party determined to drive them out. Fortunately they were sturdy folk, and had a ready defence force equally determined to push back.

The first game is an Invade scenario representing both sides trying to push the other away from the glades. The terrain should have areas of woodland, preferably several small rather than a few large woods. Some signs of habitation may be appropriate around the centre of the board.

Invade

At the end of the game, add up the total Unit Strength of each player’s units that have the majority of their footprint on the opposing player’s half of the board. This is the total number of Victory Points that each player scores.

Some of Chris's Kingdom's of Men forces deploy ready for battle. 

Kingdom's of Men mounted scouts,my favourite unit that Chris had painted. They were the first casualties of the game as they were shot to pieces by elf archers. 

My elves deployed close together on the right hand side, archers to the front. 

Sylvan Kin are expensive units, here is all 500 points of my force, deployed and ready to give battle. A Master Hunter hero, a troop of Sylvan Gladestalkers, a troop of Silverbreeze Cavalry and a troop of Kindred Tallspears. 

Being wary of the Kingdom of Men easily outnumbering my elves I played a very cagey first game. I spent six turns avoiding contact and shooting as often as I could. The Human Scout cavalry were destroyed in the first turn followed by one of the spear regiments in turn 3. By turn 6 the Kingdoms of Men only had one regiment of spear left plus their hero. Sadly for me I was having so much fun shooting humans I forgot to stay aware of turn numbers and crafty old Chris had his remaining troops firmly placed in my half of the table scoring 3 points for his unit size (Regiment) where I had only 2 troops in his table half to score just 2 points. Thus a narrow victory for the Kingdoms of Men despite the fact they had lost most of their force and not a single elf had been harmed!  

I need to learn from that mistake. 

The second game is a Salt the Earth scenario representing the elves trying to wipe out the humans and save their sacred tree which is unfortunately right in the middle of one of their settlements. The humans believe that possessing the tree will grant them ownership of the forest, or at least give them bargaining power with the elves. Terrain should be similar to the first battle, with the addition of a tall tree as the central marker.

Salt the Earth*

Before rolling off to choose sides, place one Objective Marker in the exact centre of the board and then the players take it in turns placing Objective Markers until both players have each placed two Objective Markers. Roll off to see who places the first Objective.

After a player has completed their Turn, they can choose to destroy any Objective Markers which they control (except for the Central Objective). Repeat this process at the end of each of the player’s Turns until the end of the game. Destroyed Objective Markers are removed from play and have no influence on the rest of the game.

Victory Points are awarded at the end of the game as follows:

• 1 Victory Point for each Objective Marker still in play that you control.

*Scenario Special; the central objective is a sacred tree, neither side may destroy it, but it is worth two Victory Points at the end of the game.

At deployment I grabbed two objective's whilst Chris took the two in his half of the table. However Emyn Lockharn managed to shoot/destroy the human scouts freeing up that objective. Sadly characters can not claim objectives otherwise Emyn Lockharn would have run up the table to grab that one (top right). 

Both of Chris's phalanx's of spear, the near one is from his old warhammer Empire army, on loan for todays game whilst we grow our forces. These two units moved forward to claim the central tree objective.  

My single troop of spears, stood atop an objective token. They did not move all game.  

This game was really tense and fast moving. Trying to claim the objective tokens forced us into a few rounds of melee. Emyn Lockharn was confronted by the human hero and had to use his 'Inspiring' special rule twice to save from being routed. One of the human phalanx's charged the elf cavalry but were routed by turn 6. This game then went into a 7th turn where the elf Gladestalkers managed to rout the human archers, claim an objective marker and claim a last turn victory for the elves by 3 objectives to 2. 

These were two great (small sized) games of Kings Of War (and I didn't take enough photo's) which have rekindled my love for the game. I am already looking forward to our next game where we plan to go up to 750 points per side. My only problem is trying to decide what to paint up next.