Club Night 12/10/15: France 1940

So I’ve finally shrugged off the bastard chest infection that I have had for the past few weeks, (which was probably not helped by going out to the club a couple of times when I should’ve been staying in bed!) so time to catch up on what I’ve been doing game-wise. As this happened a couple of weeks ago and I was quite fuzzy headed at the time I’ll just give a quick description of the game.

We were using Blitzkreig Commander rules with Philips lovely 10mm kit, I was French and he was German.

Scenario was simple he had to secure the road exits off of my table edge and I had to do the same on his, so a typical meeting engagement. We both had a tank Btln and infantry Btln supported by some air support and artillery (me) and engineers (Philip)with which to do this.

The Battlefield – French table edge nearest the camera. The woods would see much fighting.

My armour – ‘les Caramacs’ – lovely Somua’s.

Poilu’s ready for action.

Artillery support

Air Support – lovely model of a Potez.

I won the initiative on the first go and decided to put my Infantry Btln into the wood on the left to try and control the road. My tanks would move to the wood on the right and await developments before I committed them. Philip came on table in a mirror image of me, his infantry went for the wood on his left, his tanks on his right.

Infantry heads for the woods.

En Avant les Caramacs!!

Dastardly Bosche appear

I did manage to get my infantry debussed and in position in the wood before Phillip’s panzers got close but it was to no avail as he attacked me with an attached engineer company supported by his Pz I’s and Pz II’s which went through my defence like merde through a goose and pushed me all the way back to the base of the wood by the buildings.

German assault through the wood on the left grinds on.

Over on the right Phillip quickly took possession of the wood as I didn’t have anything on that side to counter him – I definitely wasn’t going to trundle my tanks in there – so had to rely on bringing in artillery or getting the air support to help, unfortunately my first attempts failed and the nasty Bosche even made a foray out of the wood with some engineers to take out a tank, as well as taking one out with their AT gun.

The main Panzer force had moved to the crossroads and a tank battle broke out between the Pz III & IV’s and the Somua’s which went very well for ‘les Caramacs’ – I went on a great run of keeping rolling well on my command rolls and started chalking up kills on the German armour and at one time I won initiative back so got a ‘second go’. My gunners finally finished their afternoon vin and started firing on the German infantry and the Potez got involved too which kept the bulk of them suppressed for the remainder of the game and nullified their threat.

Somuas hold on whilst the artillery mullers the Germans in the wood.

Panzers taking hits.

Germans clear the wood on the left.

At the end of the game we decided on a draw as neither of us had achieved our objectives and although my infantry and taken a right kicking I had crippled the German tank force so about evens on the KO score too.

All in all a cracking game – at one time I really did think of chucking in the towel as my Poilus had been beaten, I’d lost a couple of tanks and my gunners seemed to be on strike (and to add insult to injury Philip had chucked a couple of double 1’s which had allowed him to get double moves in) but the dice gods switched sides and I started to chew up his panzers and completely smothered his infantry with some hard hitting artillery strikes.

Looking forward to the next one and might be investing in a force myself, thinking either Poles or maybe going left-field and making a Czech force for some what-iffery fun.

Some gratuitous pretty model shots.

Club Night 14/07/15

Setting: France 1940

Rules: Blitzkreig Commander

Scale: 10mm

Another game put on by Philip using his completely lovely 10mm early war French and German kit – mostly/all Pithead I believe.

Scenario: After a successful local breakthrough the glorious forces of France (spot which side I was on) was tasked with re-taking a town in the enemy’s rear to secure a road junction and also, if possible, to destroy a workshop that was nearby.

To carry this out we had:

1 Group consisting of a Char B1, a H35 and a Lorraine mounted Infantry coy.

1 Group consisting of a H39, a mounted Cavalry and a truck-borne infantry coy with a 75mm gun pltn.

1 Infantry Btln with a 25mm ATG and a coy of H-35’s in support.

There was also off table Artillery in the shape of a 75mm and 150mm battery.

The evil Hun had an Infantry Btln in the town, the workshop had a motley collection of kit being worked on which could spring back to life once the French got close this included an 88 plus a couple of other guns and other odds and sods. We had been warned that some Panzers were on the way to help out too.

Unfortunately I yet again forgot to take any photo’s until about a third of the way in so I’ll just post them up at the end of the write up as the kit on show was far too nice not to – I will get better at this, promise!!

Anyhow, the game seemed to start well for us, (even though the Bosche got lucky and activated the Panzers on the first go and they rolled onto the table) Warren took the Cavalry group down the right and began taking out the workshop – destroying an infantry gun and a 20mm Flak gun whilst brewing up nearly everything else with his H39’s. However, the 88 managed to relocate to the road from the town where it began setting up ready to take on the Char B’s which it failed to do spectacularly, only getting one shot off which did no damage and then succumbing to a full volley from the Char B1 company. The infantry were a bit reticent in crossing the bare arsed field in front of the town and I just couldn’t roll up the artillery to lay smoke for cover so they just moved up to the hedgerow and hunkered down.

Then things began swinging the German’s way. After taking out the 88 Philip declared his worry about taking on the Char B’s with his Panzers and started moving towards Warren’s Cavalry group over the wreckage of the workshop and kept going – Philip finally got the Panzers to carry on activating and he went (we had been lucky up to now with him failing on the 2nd attempt for the past couple of moves) on the rampage, taking out the H39’s and the 75. Meanwhile I started inching my Group over to assist Warren but the French’s low movement rates meant that I couldn’t get there in time to assist. With time running out and the Panzers looking threatening on the right we decided to charge forward to the town with the Infantry which promptly got chewed to pieces by the defending Germans – their Infantry Gun was particularly nasty – even with eventually getting some artillery support which just managed to suppress one or two bases.

The Infantry Regiment was now broken due to taking savage losses and the Cavalry group was reduced to some encircled Poilu’s hiding in a wood and with the town firmly in German hands and the Panzers about to clean up the rear arrears we decided to call the game with a clear German Victory.

All in all a most enjoyable game even though, apart from Philip, we were all new to the rules I particularly liked the activation mechanics, indeed I’ve been thinking on how it might be adapted to bolt on to FFT3, and look forward to having another bash. I think if we had a different initial disposition we might have made a better fist of it and not being able to call in the artillery for a few moves really was a pain in the derriere, but c’est la geurre!

Here’s the photo’s.