September 2025 Report

The Autumn is here but it’s been a good one.

Our first game of the month was Samurai using Battles in the Age of War (BAW) set in the Sengoku period (1467 – 1650) with some local amendments to suit our take on the period.

Our commanding generals (or Daimyo) were Tokugawa Ieyasu and Ishida Mitsunari, each commanding 3 divisions of 3 sonei each (well one had 4 but who’s counting). Under Tokugawa we had the Date, Maeda & II clans and under Ishida the Shingen, Kenshin and Uesugi clans.

After we had done the pre-game stuff (treachery, scouting, weather, etc), which does take a while but is fun and gets you into the period feel, Ishida was declared the defender and Tokugawa the attacker with a couple of objectives (a wood and temple area) and the ultimate objective of killing the other guy – points are awarded for objectives but the big points are in killing the other side. Ishida did really badly in the pre battle manoeuvre and ended up with his largest division off table and so having to dice for each sonei to get on the table each turn; accordingly he spread his forces thinly across the range of hills to his front and prayed he could hold on.

Tokugawa advanced slowly with little co-ordination between the clans. Maeda got into the temple area with ease but the slow going through it (and the wood) meant that they were effectively out of the fight – good news for Ishida 😀 The most aggressive of the Tokugawa divisions was the II clan on the left, who had the best general but failed to form a cohesive line of battle and as they closed the Shingen clan pounced, ultimately routing 2 sonei (lots of points!) and by game end had surrounded the remaining one.

On the Tokugawa right the large Date division spread out across the table and dilly dallied allowing time for Uesugi to get his off table sonei onto the battlefield and link up with the left of Kenshin. Thus by the time Date and Maeda launched attacks by single sonei they were easy meat for the now superior numbers of Kenshin and Uesugi leading to more routs.

And that was the game. A classic lesson of the fate of over cautious advances and uncoordinated attacks.

Next up was our old favourite, Iran Iraq. Another narrative driven game based loosely around Operation Badr, March 1985. It was a 12 turn game so stretched over two playing days.

In this scenario the Iranian 37th Armoured were dug in around the town of Ajairda supported by off table SP artillery. Forward of their position was the river Tigris with two possible crossing points; the steel bridge directly to the front over which the main highway ran into the town and the old stone bridge off to the right over which ran the old road alongside a dried up stream bed, a long derelict bridge over to the left was of no use to road traffic. The narrative required the mechanised infantry battalion to be deployed within the town limits with the option to entrench individual platoons (bases). The two armoured battalions (one M60A1 and one M48A5) had the options of deploying on table with optional berms or deploying off table and dicing to arrive once the shooting started. The player spread his infantry amongst the buildings and entrenched a number of platoons on the right of the town along with half of the M60s in berms while the other half were on the left of the town. The splitting of the M48s did give operational problems in the game as the commander couldn’t be in two places at once! The M48s were off table behind the hill on which the FAO took up his position.

As the attacker the Iraqis had all the tactical problems to solve but also more kit to do it with. They started with the 26th Armoured – two battalions of T62s, one battalion of mixed T54s & T55s, and one battalion of mechanised infantry plus an attached battalion of elite commandos. In support they had off table SP artillery, similar to the Iranians, but in the Iraqi case each armoured battalion controlled its own artillery – this should have proved to be an advantage but…… Also in support was a wing of Mirage ground attack aircraft under the control of an FAC. Several jump off points were available along the Iraqi baseline although their recon elements could be deployed further forward and the commandos could start at the banks of the Tigris.

Unbeknown to the Iranians the Iraqis had the option to deploy pontoon bridges over the where the ruined bridge was which they duly did. The commandos were a bit of a surprise too!

The Iraqis opted for a three pronged attack. The weaker T54/T55 tank battalion supported by the infantry would assault over the pontoon and pin the Iranian left, in the centre one T62 tank battalion would barrel over the bridge and on the left the other T62 battalion would cross via the old bridge and, using the dried stream bed as cover, turn the Iranian right while the commandos assaulted across the river in support. It nearly worked!

The initial Iraqi moves were all about getting into position while the air and artillery pounded away, unfortunately this was largely ineffective.

The first sign that things were not going to go according to plan was the commandos, they came under fire from the dug in tanks (somebody didn’t think about the better ranges of US supplied kit 😮) and within a couple of turns were down to half strength which forced a rethink and the remainder of the battalion worked their way along the river bank to cross via the old road in the company of the T62s.

Next it was the turn of the centre T62s, out ranged by the Iranian armour they took early losses and had a moment of ‘do we, don’t we?’ before pressing on over the bridge so as to get into range, after all the Iranians couldn’t shoot everywhere at once, could they?

Now the shooting had started the Iranians bought on their M48s to bolster the left.

By about the mid point of the game the Iraqis were over the Tigris; the T54/T55s were on the losing end of the tank duel on their flank but were holding out remarkably well once the infantry ATGW moved up in support, the centre T62s were over the bridge and the other T62s & commandos were advancing unseen behind the cover of the stream bed.

Then the Iranians decided to be stupid. Overconfident, the M60s on the right left their nice comfortable berms and moved out to try and pinch off the T62 salient at the bridge. Unfortunately this coincided with the commandos getting into position at the stream bed and letting loose with their upgraded RPGs, which rather made a mess of several Iranian tanks. This could have been a turning point if the accompanying T62s had gotten into the action but in the second half of the game they failed their command role 5 times in a row!! Yes 5 times out of the 6 turns left to play 😱

Over on the Iraqi right the old war horses battled on and quite frankly did themselves proud but a combination of the better M48s and some pretty spot on Iranian artillery ground the attack down and soon there wasn’t much left.

As the clock wound down the stuck T62s sorted themselves out and advanced against the Iranian right but it was all a bit late and the dug in Iranian infantry prepared to let loose with their RPGs.

At the end of the final turn the Iranians were still in control of Ajairda and it would take some serious effort to move them out. Yes they had certainly suffered a near disaster with the loss of half of the M60 battalion but on the other side the T54/55s were no more and the accompanying infantry were hunkered down along the banks of the Tigris while the centre T62s were slowly suffering losses as they sat in their salient.

This was a good fight, the scenario worked well and it was down to the last couple of turns. Analysing afterwards this could so have been an Iraqi victory but over caution and bad game management cost them – the famous 5 failures to activate wasn’t just down to bad dice it was fuelled by the player not recognising how he could help himself by managing the factors that influenced the roll, forgetting to fire the attached artillery multiple times didn’t help either 😂🤣

To round off the month we had a couple of skirmish games, a bit of a rarity these days.

First up was a WWII encounter with an intriguing little narrative. A senior British officer and his escort have crashed on a country road somewhere in France leaving him seriously wounded. They managed to get a distress call out before the radio packed up and a mixed arms platoon has been dispatched to find him, unfortunately the Germans have got wind of the potential prize and have sent out their own lads. Unfortunately for both sides a thick fog has descended and so each squad moves randomly for the first half a dozen turns leaving them all over the place as the game starts seriously, just as the umpire wanted 😁😁

German squad proceed down one of the many lanes having no idea where anybody is.

British take the high ground.

“Hande Hoch!” The Germans win the race.

And away they go. A fun little scenario that worked well.

Our final game was an away day Vietnam skirmish using ‘Surviving Nam’ a set of rules in development from a guy on LAF.

Now I’ve played a lot of Vietnam games over the years using my own rules and a myriad of commercial sets and I think I know a reasonable amount about the period and recognise the difference between popular mythology and reality so I approached this in the hope of maybe this will be ‘the set’.

The basic premise of the rules is that each player is a squad/fire team of say half a dozen figures, all Free World Forces, on some kind of pre ordained mission, there are no VC/NVA players. In an agreed order each player nominates a figure from his squad to activate by rolling one or two D20 die, if they pass (different skill level, different score required) then they can move, fire, etc. If they fail they draw a random event(s) card which has something happen, usually some kind of VC/NVA action, hidden machine gun opens up, fire team deploys, etc. And that essentially is the game.

Now if you are a big fan of dungeon crawler games then this could be quite ‘fun’ but it is somewhat reductive. At best it reduces the enemy to random orcs or xenomorphs who pop up for the sole purpose of killing or being killed, at worst it could be seen as downright racist as the brown people, and lets face it in these types of games it is brown or black people who pop up not the white guys.

Putting aside me perhaps being over sensitive the other problem with this type of game is that no one has any agency. The Vietnamese certainly don’t as their actions are driven by the cards and the die rolling for their actions, like shooting, are done by the players who drew the cards. But neither do the players have much agency because once cards start to be drawn the game becomes a glorified ‘whack a mole’ which is justified by a vague notion that this is what Vietnam was all about. Really?

Now all that said I had a fine old time with my ARVN out performing the US Marines by miles. Again, really? The other guys had great fun and are motivated to paint up some more stuff so success but Vietnam it aint.

And that was the month. Pretty varied and generally successful. What will October bring? Well Partizan for sure but no game from us just visiting.