Three Games on a Friday

Richard of Shed West came for a visit on Friday. Chris K wanted to trial the 1st Alamein NQM scenario he is working on, so he came over Thursday afternoon to set most of it up.

Chris contemplates his maps and hex cloth.

Transferring real world maps to hexes can take some time. I tend to upload the map on the PC and use a graphics package to overlay a hex grid on it. Chris is a bit more of an "on the fly" sort of bloke, and some terrain had to be moved once he tried to get the figures on. BTW you can see my trench sections getting their first run out in anger marking out the various brigade and divisional boxes.

I partnered with Phil, who got the northern coastal command for the Allies, which includes El Alamein. I had all the southern desert deployed stuff. Richard got to be Rommel. Those are my buildings, barbed wire, railway tracks and palm trees. I'm a full service host.

Richard throws up his hands in horror at the size of the task

Chris hadn't got all of the German kit out by the time Richard arrived. To Phil & me it looked like box after box of armour. It was going to be a tough one.

Phil was soon being thrown out of his defences, as the hordes of the Afrika Korps swarmed towards us. There were lots of Italians too.

With El Alamein on the point of falling, Phil tried to counter attack centre right, ignoring my advice to consolidate in a brigade box. We were ordered to rush forward our armour. It ended up being committed piecemeal and was rapidly enveloped.

There were Panzers everywhere.

By a miracle the Germans were driven back (see centre of table) as I got into the game. You can see my artillery just edging into range bottom left. Phil was clinging on to a foothold in El Alamein.

My main command, XXX Corps, were driving across the desert as fast as possible. The battle in the centre of the table was heating up as Phil rushed up his armoured reserve.

The Germans and the Italian allies were pressing hard. Both the brigade boxes to the south of El Alamein had been lost, and the coastal path round it was open. Luckily attention was concentrated even further south.

I was getting into the game in full force now. XXX Corps main force was pushing up strongly from the bottom of the picture, and the Indian and New Zealand brigade (?) had emerged stage left from the desert to halt the Germans in their tracks.

In truth the results were mixed, to say the least. I was driven back out of the depression (the brown felt template) in a welter of poor dice rolling. However I had distracted Richard sufficiently whilst Phil's counter attack went in top right.

With the German assault contained the Western Desert all looks a bit like a car park. We fought the five days from 1st- 5th July 1941 as 1 base = 1 brigade (more or less) in about 3 1/2 hours, including a lunch break, which is pretty good going. Chris was pleased with the outcome and is in a good place to run it again, which he intends to do a couple of times in the next few months for other groups.

The unseen game was the RAF attacks on German supply columns. Well, I say game. Phil rolled an attack die each turn, and Chris put trucks from one box to another to keep track of what Richard wasn't going to get to use.

Next up I finally got to run out my recently finished Sikhs. For this game I had done a hasty re-write of Neil Thomas' 19th century rules, and set up a rough scenario based upon the first stages of battle of Aliwal.

Phil & I took the Sikhs, with Richard and Chris as the British. I had the half of the army made up of irregular infantry, and realised I need more of these so an order to Irregular Miniatures needs to go in over the next week or so. The terrain was a bit basic as I obviously hadn't been able to set it out before hand

The British chose to attack in columns, which I thought was the right thing to do. Actually I got that wrong from the way the turn sequence works for firing if turned out to be fatal for most of the attacking units.

Phil made the most of Sikh firepower, and blunted the assault.

On my flank we had a big cavalry melee. I had camel guns supporting my chaps. It was nip and tuck
.

Richard's columns got shredded. Yes. Very poor idea. That needs work on it.

My camel guns got overrun, but weight of numbers seemed to be telling in my favour.

With everything going so well I attacked with my irregular infantry.

Phil closed up with his Regular Sikh infantry. The British players had one last go with the attack columns.

I won the cavalry combat on my flank (Phil lost on his, but I have no pictures).

Phil was again winning with his units in line.

My irregulars closed up, hungry to get in on the act.

Whoops. A couple of rounds of shooting from British regulars and my chaps evaporated like morning mist, giving the British a marginal hard fought victory.

Those rules need a lot of work on them. Like I need to start from scratch. That really didn't look much what a battle from the Anglo Sikh Wars looked like. Glad I didn't give the Sikh's field fortifications like in the actual battle.

We had time to squeeze in another game before we headed down the pub for dinner. I've been rebasing and sorting some of my other 15mm ancients to get DBA armies out of my Romans, Parthians and Germans. I suggested we give Chris and Phil another practice game ahead of their Saturday outing.

Phil had Early Imperial Romans, Chris Parthians. I faced Chris with Sarmatians, and we bodged together a Dacian army for Richard from the Germans and other leftovers.

My Sarmatian 3Kn smashed the Parthian 4kn in the end. I think I got a 6:2 victory, killing a general. In the same turn Richard did the same, overrunning the Roman "blades" with Warbands, getting a whole pile of quick kills. I think he won 5:2. I was a bit cheeky. I was at 2:2 against Chris, and Richard was 3:2 up with loads of chances to get to four, but I insisted we did my combats first which let me claim that I won the battle and he just helped out.

Anyhow, a good day all round and a nice pub meal afterwards.

The only downside is that it is evident, with all the atrocious weather, that the roof felt of SHQ is in need of repair/replacement as it looks like the rain has got through the roof and into some of the insulation board. It has even soaked into some of the window frames. I've always had a bit of leakage, but nothing serious. This winter's rain has been a whole new level. Mind you, SHQ has just celebrated its 13th birthday, so some maintenance of this type was probably due anyway. Consequently I spent this morning trying to find a contractor to do the work. I think I've found one, but I may need to cut back on figure purchases for a little while and also go and plunder my cash reserves.

Still, it'll be worth it. SHQ gives good service, and I've never regretted a single penny I spent on having it installed.