"The Last Fifty Yards, Game 1" Topic

All,

The plan for today was that the 1st Platoon was leading an attack on the German line as part of a larger, battalion attack. A preparatory barrage crashed down, followed by the infantry crossing the line of departure supported by tanks. German artillery and anti-tank weapons took their toll, but the battalion pressed ahead, with 1st Platoon leading the attack in Company A's sector of the attack. 1st Platoon's plan was to have 2nd Squad seize a defended knoll on its right flank, where it would consolidate and support by fire 1st Squad's attack on a small hamlet on the left flank The cracking of the this section of the line would be followed up by 3rd Squad moving through 1st Squad's position (on the knoll) to attack the immediate German rear area, thought to contain the enemy's supporting mortar unit. Once secured, 2nd and 3rd Platoons, supported by tanks, would then pass through to carry through the attack.

So, fight one is 1st Squad's attack on the knoll, with the platoon leader, Lt Dillon, personally leading the assault, headed by 1st Squad's Corporal Drakengunner and containing a Bren gunner, two men with Sten guns, and five riflemen (10 men total). The Germans on the objective have been whittled down to seven men: a Lieutenant, a two-man MG-42 team (on tripod), and an SMG gunner and three riflemen (manning a prepared position on the right and a stone well on the left, from the British point of view). The platoon's 2" mortar has taken the time from the platoon crossing the line of departure til now to lay a relatively substantial smokescreen.

The board: 2' x 2', using "Five Men in Normandy" rules (slightly modified) and 10mm Pendraken figures. The Brits are split into a Bren Group (bottom center, four men under LCpl "Dasher" Hawes) and a Maneuver Group (bottom left, six men under Lt Dillon and Cpl Drakengunner). The German Lt and MG are in the sandbagged position at top center right, while the SMG gunner and three riflemen are behind the wall at top center left).

While the Maneuver Group moves up, the Bren gun team opens up, delivering a withering fire on the German MG position (pictured). The MG gunner is suppressed and falls back to cover, whilst his assistant bolts the board and the Lt hits the deck (I forgot to put his green bead on before taking the picture).

On the left, Lt Dillon charges forward (silver base at bottom center), with Cpl Drakengunner and the two Sten gunners in tow. The Germans fire on the advancing Brits, to no effect, while the Brits manage to suppress two of the German riflemen (red beads behind wall).

The German Lt pops up and falls back to help his machine gunner rally.

Meanwhile, since the German MG position is empty (due to previous Bren Group fire), the Bren Group fires on the wall as well, forcing the German SMG gunner to fall back next to his two cowering riflemen. The sole German rifleman at the wall hits the deck, then is also driven back. The wall is open!

The Brits decide to rush the wall, and disaster strikes! Lt Dillon rushes up to join Cpl Drakengunner (far left) at the wall, and checks the knocked down Sten gunner; turns out he's out of the fight. With his blood up, Lt Dillon peers over the wall, flashing his pistol, only to be immediately DROPPED by the German rifleman (that's two 6's in a row)! Cpl Draekengunner trades fire with the German SMG gunner, and the German comes out of it suppressed.

To see how it turned out, please check the blog at:
link

V/R,
Jack

You're very quickly selling me on 10mm and "micro gaming" btw :)

Isn't skirmish gaming with small figures the exact cure for "don't have the space" though? :)

Hey …my iPhone finally gets enough reception at a camp ground to check out TMP and there I am sitting on the bog reading this delightful account when I find myself dead (or close to it)

I was wondering when your retaliation would come. You never did forgive me for Jack biting the dust in my first action of the campaign :)

This is a real travesty and I mean to bring it to the attention of the greater TMP community. It will make TangoGate look like …well something altogether unimportant!

Apart from that completely unrealistic and farcical situation with Lt Panda it was a fairly reasonable AAR ;)

Looking forward to Dillon receiving a miraculously speedy recovery

Nine days hmm…maybe for lesser men. I'll be fine after a cup of strong tea

Look like very interesting rules. Nice and fast. I know you've tinkered slightly with the morale system. How is it working out?

BTW Please express my gratitude to the cat.

Well, I hope you're happy with yourself. Just placed an order for a big pile of 10mm Pendraken stuff: German and Soviet infantry and a few tanks.

This is all your fault.

Yeah been really tempted by the "micro skirmish" approah

Most of the time, this guy is too (Scruffy). He's all or mainly Maine Coon Cat.

I had no idea what I was starting with my cat reference :)
Of course I was referring to Jacks puking cat…but if this reference allowed this thread to be hi-jacked (or cat-jacked) then that's good also

LoL I'm more of a dog guy myself and they've never given my troops any trouble. My three year old now that's a different story

Kyote – Quit your complaining, John! ;) (just kidding, hope all is well). Do like Shaun does, set up a 'fighting' board in a drawer, play on it, close the drawer when you're done. Check out his blog, it's really pretty cool!

Ivan – Welcome to the club, you won't regret it! I'm finding out that the battle space for a 5 vs. 3 to 7 vs. 5 can actually be played on a board smaller than 2' x 2'. The Pendraken figures are great; I've ordered direct from them and from The Warstore many times, great experiences both ways. I look forward to some batreps from you (you'll see the 10mm figs paint up really quick, a couple hours to prime, paint, and base on pennies).

My Dear Panda – This was not retaliation (I'm saving that for later), this is you foolishly charging ahead for the sake of glory. The morale system was good to go, and your cat comment is just another notch for things I will someday repay you for.

"I'm more of a dog guy myself…"
I thought it was goats?

V/R,
Jack

Yeah, I got something like 60 Germans and Soviets each, plus casualty figures, plus a pair of tanks and an armoured car each and I dont think I spent more than 50 bucks total.

Blue please don't encourage him. Remember long it took us to get him off talking goats all the time

Ivan – Sounds like a good time will soon be had! For me, 10mm has been a perfect mix for pretty much everything I want to do (although I will admit I've dabbled in other scales, but that's just the wargaming megalomaniac in me).

I also wanted to let you know that you can put special orders directly with Pendraken, which is handy for skirmish games. I don't know about you, but I like as many different poses for skirmishing as possible, and you'll notice a lot of Pendraken packs will contain only one or two poses. Pendraken will let you order only what you want: as opposed to buying a pack of ten of one or two poses, they'll actually let you buy one or two figures from a pack.

And Panda's right, don't encourage me Kyote, it's wrong: I shouldn't be picking on his… preferences, to each his own I always say!

V/R,
Jack

Oh, very cool. I may end up basing a bunch of these in teams for Crossfire as well, but that's good to know.

Ivan,

you did not need to to do the 10mm – I will be trying out your rules soon in 20mm on the same sized board as Jack's (2'x2'). While it does look a little close, it does it for me! Of course, if I had more time, I would actually go to single 6mm on a 2'x2' – angel barracks seems to do just fine with single 6mm.

Kyote, I second Jack's comment – find a drawer and stick a flocked board in it and..voila – long term set up.

And cats and gaming definitely do not mix as shown from a game I set up about 2 years ago:

The plastic used for the trees must have been doused in catnip.

Well, the idea of a smaller scale has been tempting me for a while and those 10mm guys just were too tempting :)

I am going to do some individually based 6mm too though for scifi and maybe even napoleonics :) We'll see how that goes.

Do let me know how you fare with the rules. Lots more stuff coming down the pipe.

I think Charlie (the cat) weighs in at about 6 kilos (I could do the conversion to imperial for you but I leave that as an exercise for the reader :-) ). I do not realise how big a cat he is until I visit other people with cats and they are SO tiny!

To balance it up, we have just acquired a small (22kg) greyhound). Long story. The shortened side is she is an absolutely fantastic dog and great with the kids as well. Not sure what she is like with tress though :-)

My eyes are getting poorer to make out individual 6mm as I normally play at night. I did have a slap the forehead moment when someone on WD3 said why don't you use daylight bulbs then and get more light on the table? Doh! Especially as my table is 2'x2'.

Weasel, if I get time in the next week you should see a batrep a week or two after. To balance this sentence though i did play a game about 3 weeks ago and have the picture and some narrative but have not formed it into a blog post.

Jack may want to live vicariously though us, but I am living via him at the moment!

Jeez Shaun, what is that thing, a Cougar!!?? What a great shot of him doing his Godzilla impression, chewing on a tree.

Yes, I'm trying to game vicariously through you guys, so get off your butts and do some gaming/post some batreps, gentlemen!

I was unable to get any games in this weekend :( I did get a little bit of painting in, between turns holding the baby, I'll try to post some pics this week.

V/R,
Jack

I don't think of the cat as large. That is, until I go to other people's houses and think what tiny cats they have.

As of last week, we own a greyhound (ex-racer rescue) so I will now likely be thinking how slow other peoples dogs are!

You will note I mention nothing about gaming. I am not sure it is allowed anymore on Jack's threads, and haven't done any anyway.

Shaun,

It's not that we're not allowed to talk about wargaming, it's just that Panda would rather do anything then actually game or even talk about it. For him, goats have been much more attractive an option (in more ways than one!). ;)

V/R,
Jack

Maybe if there was a game involving goats?

Now Weasel you're falling into the trap Jack has been setting for quite some time (his only virtue seems to be patience.)

He's just been waiting for someone to mention a game with goats and the next bat rep he'll post will be a horrific goat fest of unspeakable horrors (shiver)

"Five Goats on the Farm" ?

If it's a hit I want a share of the royalties :D
And to be fair I think Jack should probably be rewarded in some way…maybe a couple of she-goats

For the record, only one of us has miniature goats <cough>Panda!<cough>

Turns out it's the same guy that has inflatable, life-sized goats and takes two weeks each summer to go 'camping' with.

Less talking, more gaming! It's late Saturday night and I've yet to do anything myself. Damned kids! ;)

V/R,
Jack

Inflatable Goats hmmm…is there no limits to the depths of your goat depravity…

Even poor Blue sounds like he's beginning to show an unhealthy interest in goats. For shame Jack…. For shame

Side note: i might know someone interested in those inflatable goats you mentioned … Where did you buy them? What colour? And size? The person I know would be interested to know those kind of details

Kyote – You're in Oklahoma, it goes without saying you've got miniature goats! ;)

Panda – I've got more depravity then I know what to do with. I'm sure you're asking for inflatable goat details for a 'friend.' No really.

Well, I'm wiling away Sunday on the couch with the baby, haven't touched nary a figure this weekend. Anyone having any better luck then I?

V/R,
Jack

I've been painting all week. Pendraken communists and 6mm scifi troopers.
Hoping to get some actual gaming in tomorrow afternoon but we'll see if the kiddo lets me :)

On the upside, he's been badgering me about playing a ww2 game, so once I have some painted germans..

Spent on hour blow dying my iphone 5 in a sealed locked bag of rice after I ran into the lake with my phone in my pocket to help a kid struggling in the water…and no it wasnt a kid goat in distress…crap I have to watch what I say now….by the camp fire now recovering from a day by the beach (not too relaxing when youre watching 4 kids…)

God is good

Well, good on you doing the right thing. Well done.

Besides, excellent opportunity to upgrade to Android :)

Well, I wasn't going to say anything but Ivan started it. iPhone: War Panda – I have pigeon-holed you. Sorry :-)

And much as I hate to agree with Jack, i think it was you War Panda that started the whole interested in goats thing by putting them on the table. Just saying it may represent broader interests – we are very tolerant over here. Mostly.

Not sure how you camp for so long with 3 children. I think I would last two days, which is as long as I have gone camping with our kids.

p.s. no gaming, but I did re-read Full Thrust, 5MiN and caught up on some movies with my wife and went out with the children during the day. so not much gaming wise, but busy and fun.

Its actually a realy enjoyable trip but the beach is driving me crazy…I love to read by the beach but watching 4 under 7 kids all trying desperately to drown each other is not my idea of relaxing….

Hey lets get this goat problem sorted once and for all…

I very innocently used a solitary goat mini to embellish the farm setting in a game and Jack was feverously all over it ….hardly mentioned the AAR but was constantly redirecting the conversation towards the one photo of the goat with comments such as

"Thats a fascinating animal you have in that picture what do you call her again"

"…and just going back to that splendid she-goat you captured so wonderfully in the 5th photo…does she have a name"

"How many she-goats do you have"

"…any chance of your next After Action Report just having some she-goat on she-goat action"

It just got worse and worse after this

Thank you, Shaun, for pointing out Mr. Panda's issues with projection. It's gotten so bad, every time he looks in a mirror he asks, "what's Jack doing here?"

Don't worry, it's no problem on my end, Marines are used to the sorts of fawning adoration Panda has sunken too. ;)

V/R,
Jack

Oh dear Mr Jack unfortunately for you I've known a couple of Marines very closely for years (lived in community with them for years…) and well what is something nice I could say about them hmmm they were colourful larger than life type characters….had certain aspects of their personality that seemed almost human :) didn't quite have your imagination though ;)

When I look in the mirror all im thinking of is how incredibly fortunate my wife is.
I have to confess though I did think of Jack when I noticed a mountain goat when we were at the hotsprings the other day….people we're actually quite horrified when I started shouting at him to jump :I

Okay Panda, I'll bite: which community of Marines are you speaking of? I'm guessing you were either an inmate at some point (yes, some Marines can be a bit gruff, not displaying my lovingly charming persona), or you were hanging out at some of the seedier bars during your younger, more eccentric days, trying to be a big rough-tough Marine's girlfriend.

Now I seen you've grown up a bit, stopped wearing ladies clothes, and made goats your new target ;)

And shouting at the goat to jump, eh? I thought your type was wearing hip waders and trying to push the goat off a cliff.

V/R,
Jack