Coughs and colds have meant a bit of a lean month but we did have ‘The Other Partizan’
Our first game of the month was a 1980’s cold war attack defend scenario with the Soviets having to push on through after an initial breakthrough. The rules were Cold War Commander.
Outnumbered but not outgunned the Bundeswehr opted for taking the battle to the Soviets – big mistake!
The Soviets deployed a full tank regiment (3 x tank battalions & 1 x motorised infantry) plus air and artillery assets with the option to flank march (which they did) against 2 combined arms Leopard & Marder battalions and a small reserve Leopard battalion. The Soviets had to take the battle to the Germans and had 8 moves to do it in.
The Bundeswehr command decisions were not good and each mistake compounded another. The first was bunching one battalion up behind a fence line like a Napoleonic grand battery and never moving – originally this had some merit as the battalion was back from the fence line and so out of LOS but once up they were fair game to the HINDs and FAO/FAC call downs plus the added problem of this being the flank that the soviet flank march arrived on 😒
The second miss step was swinging the right flank tank battalion out of a perfectly good defensive spot and roar across the open countryside to try and turn the flank of the Soviets. This did have some merit as the Soviets had deployed en masse to their right (opposing the German left) but open ground in the rules (and in real life) is deadly. The better option was to utilise the cover to swing behind his own lines and reinforce the centre and left.
The Soviets made better use of the cover on their deployment frontage dumping off the infantry in a wood and using the BMPs to fire their ATGWs out from the edge.
As in all games there were some comedy moments, like the flank march that took FOREVER to arrive much to the frustration of the commander and the fact that the Napoleonic grand battery just plain refused to acknowledge it was there 😮.
Under the cover of their air and artillery (which didn’t eliminate anything much but did keep German heads down) the Soviets moved onto the high ground dominating the grand battery and with the help of the finally arriving flank march pounded the Leopards into dust – at odds of over 2:1 even inferior Soviet armour is going to mess up the opposition especially as the flank march was literally getting flank shots in.
By the end of turn 5 it was all over, the Germans were on the run and the Soviets pushed on through. Lesson to learn? If you are defending then defend, the longer range Leopard guns in cover will always have the advantage, as the Soviet player pointed out the German players just can’t resist roaring about the table 🤣.
Before our next game we had a group outing to ‘The Other Partizan’. This was our 2nd time of not putting a game on and the plan was to have one of the table sale spots to get rid of some of our excess stuff but someone screwed up the booking 😖😞😤. That said we were kind of glad the plan failed because the set up for those folk who were selling was poor. A gazebo/tent in the open in the generally better weather of May is fine but on a cold foggy day in October not so good especially as one side of the tent was open to the elements – thank god it didn’t rain. If the organisers are going to copy the idea of Hammerhead then bring it inside like they do and have the admissions & merchandising outside in the tented area, lets face it by lunch time the bulk of admissions are done anyway.
Now before I say anything else I need to be clear, I think Richard and Laurence do a fantastic job of organising the show – quite what will happen when they pack it in will be interesting, but it is billed as the premier show for quality games and I’m not sure that is so. In my view, and that’s all it is, quantity has taken over from quality, the number of games on display simply cannot all be premier league standard. The quantity also made it quite difficult to get around and view some of the games and I felt the games in the centre perhaps didn’t get a fair shake, again just my take, there are plenty of podcast reports out there lavishing high praise so I’m probably in a very small minority.
Next up was a refight of part of the 2nd day at Wagram using 15mm Volley & Bayonet.
Our chosen piece of history was the attack of Massena’s IV Corps alongside the Danube towards Klenau’s VI Corps while the main battle raged off to his right. The villages of Aspern, Essling and Breitenlee were his objectives.
The initial French moves were more of a stumble than a confident advance and the Austrians scored some early jabs in the developing contest overrunning some guns and seeing off an assault on Essling.
Not to be left out in the ‘how not to do it’ stakes the Austrians then obligingly sent Vincent’s hussars in against the cuirassier of St Sulpice and not surprisingly paid a heavy price.
The French still hadn’t quite got their act together and some piecemeal attacks got beaten back.
Aspern came under a far better co-ordinated attack and duly fell, the French were getting into their stride now.
The French continued to press and the Austrians started to fall back.
Breitenlee was stormed and the right and left anchors of the Austrian position were gone.
The field belongs to the French who despite a stuttering start did better than Massena on the day and completely destroyed Klenau’s command.
Next up was a weekend away in Stone for a cold war game with the Cold War Commanders group, my 3rd, Gerard’s 2nd, organised and loosely umpired by Richard Phillips. This years scenario was Denmark; a couple of divisions worth of Warsaw Pact elements were pushing north up the Jutland peninsula while a naval/VDV force assaulted the island of Fyn to secure the eastern flank of the advance. NATO was represented by the Danes occupying the island and the mainland shore over a bridge and West German, British and US forces defending the vital E20 highway. All told we had 13 players, a significant band of gamers in one space!
In such a large game it’s difficult to capture what is going on over the whole table so this will be what I managed to pick up from conversations and the occasional trawl up the table. What I do know is that as Warsaw Pact we had to seize the island and eliminate the HAWK batteries stationed there and size the town of Odense, then working our way down there were the towns of Middlefart, Kolding and the airport.
The first day was largely taken up with manoeuvring and initial contacts. The more serious fighting was on Fyn where the Danes were giving a good account of themselves and at Kolding where Soviet armour surged forward. Further down the table there was a lot of command fumbling as the East German brigade (me) stuttered forward and the Guards tank brigade (Gerard) hunkered down in woods opposite the the airfield not wanting to risk the open ground.
Second day was more intense as serious fighting erupted all along the front. First to go were the HAWK batteries, falling to VDV forces as the Danes were pushed back into Odense, the fighting for Kolding was brutal but it finally fell to the Soviets.
Down the E20 the East Germans had a bit of a scare when the the US airborne defending the road line launched a do or die assault on the hills overlooking their position where the FAO’s were sited but for once the artillery responded with little drift and the infantry battalion and supporting tank company were vaporised leaving the way clear for a push to the E20. Apologies for the tanks sitting on top of the trees, with so many players it just becomes impossible to have the time to make it look pretty.
At the airfield the USMC held on despite some serious shelling from the Guards armour – for some strange reason I don’t have a photo of this.
Time called, the East Germans had breached the E20 and were circling behind what was left of the US airborne brigade, further up the highway the Soviets had breached it in two more places. A clear Warsaw Pact victory.
This was quite exhausting and fair play to Richard for keeping us on track especially when players had several different interpretations of the same rules 🤣😂. Like all these big game events the actual playing area you are involved in is not much bigger than a large table at home and without a proper briefing session on something like the Friday night – something the WHC used to do very well, there will always be the tendency to fragment and become isolated in your approach to the game, this in turn can result in some players having nothing very much to do – the USMC player literally could do nothing unless Gerard attacked and there was nothing to force him to do so. I find it difficult enough to co-ordinate 4-6 players so 13 is way out there!
Back home and old reliable, Successors! Late period Seleucid and Ptolemaics took to the field in a curious battle.
The Seleucids went full on ‘super weapons’, 4 squadrons of chariots, 4 of elephants and 2 regiments of cataphracts, leaving a couple of pike battalions protected by Thureophoroi and Thracians. The Ptolemaics were far more sensible, deploying settler pike and cavalry, plus Galatian warbands and assorted other heavy cavalry. Because of their limited numbers the Seleucids opted for a compact deployment, elephants out on the flanks to dissuade any cavalry attacks and the chariots in the centre backed by either the cataphracts or the pikes with soft sand splitting the centre. The Ptolemaics spread out, settler cavalry on the left others on the right, pikes spread across the centre interspersed with their own elephants Galatians on the left of the pike and nothing on the right as there was a village to anchor on.
The battle opened with the chariots surging forward and making a mess.
Followed closely by the elephants who really did make a mess of the settler cavalry.
The spreading out of the Ptolemaics rather favoured the compact Seleucid deployment which if it got outflanked would have been in trouble but the elephants on the left put paid to the settler cavalry and the Ptolemaic left cavalry (above)were so far out that it took a lot of time to swing in and by then the centre was resolving itself.
The Galatians tried to turn it for the Ptolemaics (well the pikes were doing nothing 🙄) and clearing their way through bits of destroyed chariots (they only stand for the first contact and then are destroyed) but missile fire whittled them down.
In went the cataphracts and didn’t really do much.
Thureophoroi did no better and were seen off by the already badly mauled Galatians.
However as we called time the Ptolemaics were done. Both cavalry wings neutralised and their fighting Galatians about to be seriously duffed up. Seleucid victory.
A really odd but fun game. The pikes didn’t get a look in which from a Ptolemaic perspective was a real problem. The exotics on both sides were all over the show, we had chariots hitting elephants, elephants rampaging, dead elephants and destroyed chariots creating obstacles and the allies doing all the fighting!
Our final game was an away day fighting ACW using Rebels and Patriots, not my favourite set of rules but a pleasant enough game.
Four commands, four points of entry; Union from the north west & north east, Confederate from the south east & south west. Objectives? I don’t think there was one 🤔
None the less we all ended up near a creek and began blasting away.
The Union got over the creek and onto the high ground making heavy weather of some enemy skirmishers.
Confederates seize a different hill.
All fought out. Union on one side of the creek, Confederates on the other.
Well that was the games but in other news I did manage to get some Pendraken emplacements done to use as tank berms for our Iran Iraq set up.
And some Iranian bridge layers.
And an Iranian armoured cavalry battalion.
Plus some engineers.
And rebasing my myriad collection of Mongols, Russians, Mamluks, etc to become Timurids and friends/enemies. This is going to be a bit of a journey, the Timurids and Golden Horde are essentially done, Russians, Jalayarids, Mamluks next. Rules done enough for a first draft run through. Looking forward to it.
And I thought I’d start sharing what I’d read during the month, can’t share Audible listens very easily though.
Anyway, thanks for reading, comments always welcome. In the meantime, enjoy your gaming, respect your opponents.
Westbury Wargamers 