Happy NQM Year

First game of the year saw us over to Chris' for a game of NQM. This is our first for nearly 3 months, since the epic Crete games in September. Chris has a new obsession - the Salerno landings and the invasion of Sicily.

We had a full house, so Tim got the Brits, I got the Americans, Phil was the SS (a very rare appearance) and Steve got the Whermacht. This is a Front level game, so each infantry base is a brigade, and each hex is 5 miles. Steve and I are facing off on the right hand side of the table, Tim and Phil on the left.

Chris has obviously put in a lot of work to get to this point, and the white labels are orbat notes, which is unusual for him, but helpful. Not completely helpful - some were incomplete in the orbats and on the table. Chris explained this was because the Germans were responding in an ad hoc fashion and also hadn't done any proper recce.

This was Chris' main source for the game, which he said was a good read, but frustrating as it didn't have the orbats neatly laid out but interspersed in the narrative.

My Americans were well advanced, but I had no armour ashore, just a couple of artillery batteries to support my two infantry Divisions. My furthest outpost is a brigade in the building top centre, guarding the river crossing. Soon German armour and Panzer Grenadiers were swarming all round them and down to my positions.

At Tim's end of the table he faced Phil with the SS. He had some bad luck and was driven out of his initial position by the coast.

I got evicted from the building fairly quickly, and retreated across the river. Turns out the bridge was only an infantry pontoon, so it was taken off as it was unsuitable for vehicles. On the other side of the river Steve's armour pushed me back. My artillery was proving to be ineffective.

However I was able to surround the armour with my infantry and drive it back to its starting lines. Steve's troops on the right of the picture discovered that the local guides had misled them about the other "bridge".

Tim was being hard pressed, and had lost control of the heights. You can't see it, but he brought the Royal Navy close in shore and was using HMS Warspite to shell the advancing Germans. Phil and Steve were unable to co-ordinate in the centre, with Phil wanting the engineers to be used in assaults, and Steve wanting them to build him a river crossing.

Steve masses his forces to try and blast me out of the town, hoping them to force an infantry crossing. I held on.

End state. We've blunted the German attack, and inflicted quite a lot of damage. Warspite got bombed in the last turn and had to withdraw. I think we've bought the time we needed to land some armour and build airstrips, so I guess we'd claim a win.

We were a bit rusty, not having played the system for a few months, and moving up a level with quite a bit of kit on the table. I expect we will revisit this over the next month or two as Chris refines the scenario. Chris also reminded us that we have played this scenario before, using Blitzkrieg Commander, and I then remembered that I'd also played in a game run a COW, about the exploits of a British Army Intelligence team that landed as part of the assault. 

Anyway. Happy New Year to all of you. Here's to a 2026 full of wargaming.