"XXX CORPS REACH LAST PARAS NORTH OF THE RHINE - & VICTORY!" Topic

NEW FLASH TO ALL ALLIED FORCES AND HOME-FRONTS:

After spending the night of Sept. 18 and early morning of Sept. 19 racing up the last stretch of the just-cleared Hell's Highway, XXX Corps crosses Nijmegen Bridge in preparation for…

…Traversing the swampy ground known as "The Island" located between the Waal and Rhine rivers, along the last stretch of road between Nijmegen and their final objective of Arnhem…

…Where they reached the last remnants of Col. John Frost's 2nd Battalion, 1st Parachute Regt., First Parachute Division -- now reduced to Company strength and holding on by the skin-of-their-teeth inside one building adjacent to the North end of the bridge…

…achieving VICTORY against the odds for the Allied Forces!

To read a bit more and see a bunch more pics, come visit my blog by clicking this LINK, and thanks in advance should you choose to do so:

link

The game was played all day and night this past Saturday September 28th and for about 3 hrs. on the morning of Sunday September 29th, at the annual HMGS-Pacific South West MINI-WARS convention, held this year at the Howard Johnson by Wyndham in Fullerton/Anaheim, California.

During the entire course of the game we had 10 players cycle through, with many staying the whole time and a couple other unable to keep from returning after leaving to do other no doubt cool stuff for a while.

I will return to my blog and the WWII boards with a more detailed AAR of the entire game, but for now I wanted to provide at least a cursory AAR for various people who've been kinda clamoring to know how it went.

We had EIGHTEEN 6 ft. x 2.5 ft. tables arranged into 2 XXL tables each 18 ft. x 7.5 ft., for a total of 270 square feet of tabletop space. I've been playing miniature wargames since I was about 10 years old and I'm 59, and this was the largest wargaming surface I've GM'ed or played on in those 49 years.

One last pic showing the Polish Parachute Brigade advancing onto Arnhem Bridge after successfully dropping into "The Island" and advancing North…

Superb figures and vehicles!

Spectacular! A lot of hard work must have gone into that to make it look so good. Very interested in hearing in the AAR how the Allies managed it.

That is absolutely amazing. Thanks for sharing!

That is a very nice looking game, Mad Guru!

Outstanding setup and execution! Well done lads.

Thanks for all the positive waves, fellow TMPers!!!

As a small token of my appreciation, please accept this LINK to the just completed PART I of the full-blown AAR for this game, covering:

(1) Opening Allied glider & parachute landings;
(2) XXX Corps preparatory artillery barrage;
(3) XXX Corps lead element initial movement North on the highway;

…and last but not least -- yes, you knew it was coming…

(4) German ambushes thereof.

There will be at least one more AAR to come -- hopefully in the near future -- until we reach the last turn of the game and its Allied victory against the odds! For now here's a handy link to PART I, and once again, I thank you in advance should you choose to invest your time clicking on it to go check all of this out in far greater detail:

link

BUT… it wouldn't be a "Mad Guru" post without at least a handful of pics to potentially whet your appetite for more:

Stunning looking game, hats off to you sir!