On a beautiful October Saturday, when I should have been doing some gardening, I instead drove with Weirdy-Beardy to deepest, darkest, downtown Hamilton for a Lardy themed game day. A change in route thanks to recommendations from a Hot Lead friend made the drive there and home much less fraught with peril, unlike my last three trips to play in Hamilton. Victory for old fashioned map reading! Take that Google Maps and GPS!
I got a spot in friend Brian's 6mm I Ain't Been Shot, Mum game refighting the 1/Suffolk Regiment's 2nd assault on Strongpoint Hillman during the afternoon of D-Day. See also a Youtube video here.
Brian is a fantastic game master who always brings his depth of knowledge about the battle being played to the game to help the players understand what is going on and facilitate any rules interpretation required. His terrain is also very well made and thought through.
This scenario was one of the players fighting the GM/table since the Germans were pretty static and didn't have much to do except react. Looking at the situation I quipped to my team mates: "Two up, one back, bags of smoke?" One of them replied, "Yeah, sounds good."
Fortunately our supporting 25 pdr batteries got on the job quickly and the first missions were on target so we had the most dangerous German MG emplacements blinded for the critical break in phase while the Engineers widened the gap in the minefield to let the tanks in.
Our Briefing
Starting the assault
16 platoon storms the kitchen bunker!
Bags of smoke. Engineers are busy widening the gap in the mine field.
Clearing the trench
7 platoon has cleared the AT gun and assaulted the MG next over the garage. Lucky 13 Platoon is getting ready to leapfrog forward. Lucky because despite being caught moving in the open in a crossfire, they took no casualties.
The tanks are in the perimeter (two troops still under blinds!) and helping the infantry with short range fire. German Force Morale collapsed just after this.
Brian introduced me to using Force Morale for IABSM, which is a great idea that I'll use from now on instead of troops fighting to the bitter, ragged end.
After lunch I ran my Bag the Hun game. I decided to tart up my cards for the public and considering I haven't played the system for a long while I thought it went pretty well.
Used as my template the cards Richard Clark put out on the internet for an IABSM scenario for the 1st edition
The scenario involved two chotai of Zeros (6 aircraft) escorting 3 Vals and 3 Bettys to sink an American destroyer. 8 Wildcats in 4 flights have been sent to provide cover. Any game with a ship is automatically 100% cooler in my opinion (so why am I not a bigger naval gamer?!), and it was good to have an objective for the players instead of just groups of fighters swirling about.
Oh dear! Fortunately for the USN the American player rolled very well and the IJN player not so much.
Dive bombers! Vals get 2 solid hits on the destroyer. 1 is splashed by flak and the other 2 are shot down by hungry Wildcats
Fish in the water! Bettys finally make their attack. 1 crosses in front of the bow. Other 2 hit! But both fail to detonate.
The destroyer was heavily damaged but at the cost of 3 Vals and 3 Zeros, including their Top Ace. The USN lost 1 Wildcat with a 2nd damaged. If even one of the torpedoes had detonated, the destroyer would have sunk, giving the Japanese players a clear victory.
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