Room at the Inn

 Time for another trip to our on/off early 1980s WW3 series. This time we are joining the plucky socialist heroes of the Czech 15th Motor Rifle Division on their trip through Austria, previously seen here from our last game a couple of years ago: https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2024/04/phaffing-around.html

I really must dig out my central front stuff again, I've not put on a game for almost ten years now, but Tim was running this one with his 6mm toys and NATO Brigade Commander. And yes, he does have all right Czech kit, including wheeled artillery, wheeled 57mm AA guns etc. 

The field of battle, north is left. The River Inn runs down the centre of the screen and the outskirts of Brunau (sp? ) are visible at the top. The entire city is large, so the Czechs are going around it. The Inn also marks the border between Germany and Austria.

We had a pretty good turnout for this one. Pete did the overall plan for the Czechs, I was the division commisar to ensure everyone followed the plan in the correct spirit (and I also ran the divisional assets). Russell commanded a regiment of fearless Czech paratroops, Jim the 68th Motor Rifle Regiment and Terry the (Divisional) 20th Tank Regiment.

The Capitalist Running Dogs were Ian running the Bundeswehr, Micheal the Austrians and John A in overall command.

Our general scheme was to drop the paras at the far end of the bridge, and race to the rescue with the MR Regiment and Tank Regiment, clearing out any annoying pockets of resistance on the way.

As a couple of units I was assigned included traffic control units, I broke out my ancient copy of 'Armies of the Warsaw Pact'. Cheery Soviet traffic regulation troops can be seen on the left, while traffic regulation diagrams and unit march orders are on the right.

As we had no intel on the defences at all, and as we had been thoughtfully supplied with a bridging train, I thought it best to prepare a plan B just in case the paradrop wasn't fully successful....

Diagrams for assault river crossings, there were a couple of suitable sites west of the autobahn bridge with decent deployment areas for the bridging train. The manual did mention preparation of the opposing bank with tactical nuclear weapon fires. I'm sure that will be just fine and dandy.

Tim ran the game with his usual roving eye camera view, which certainly introduces an element of fog of war. Dimly visible in the distance is the head of  Jims MRR while in the foreground, the paras have had quite a decent drop without too much scatter and only discovered one company of German jaegers in the town beside the autobahn.

The explosions are from the Czech preparatory barrage, which was noisy and spectacular but ineffective.

Slightly alarming was what looked like an entire Austrian mechanised battalion in the outskirts of Brunau. An armoured combat team was on a rise overlooking the bridge and an infantry heavy combat team was in the city itself. You can just see Austrian M60s on the ridge above the bridge, accompanied by an AA platoon of Dusters.

Also noisy and spectacular was the unwelcome arrival of an Austrian Saab Draken. Fortunately it got distarcted chasing away the paras Antonovs.

The Czech barrage lands beside the bridge! (luckily not on it), and the Jaegers shoot up one of the para companies. It is hard to see but I've put a PT76 recce company into the village just above the bridge and a company of OT65s onto the river bank at the far end to scout out crossing sites.

More Germans rock up, another Jaeger company and a company of Jagdpanzer Kanone. The M60s and Duster shoot up the paras from across the river.

To everyone amazement, the para AT missile platoon manages to hit and knock out some of the M60s. Two more companies of paras assault the Jaegers in the town and destroy them, only to run into their own artillery barrage. The para commander clearly didn't read the fire plan. The paras took losses and hit the dirt.

The lead battalion of the MRR reached the southern end of the bridge as Austrian refugees fled in terror. The Regimental T55 battalion peeled off to engage the M60s, covered by an airstrike from venerable Mig 21s. Eagle eyed readers will spot the PT76s lurking around the pump control station on the dam. They have spotters for the divisional artillery attached and I want to get them in position to spot the Austrians. The dam is passable by foot troops, so another potential crossing site.

The leading APCs crunch across the bridge and link up with the paras, who have now taken losses from the German jaegers and are looking distinctly shaky. A Frogfoot strike misses the M60s, but they are finished off by the para AT missile platoon while the T55s knock out the Dusters.

Back at the river, the Czech OT65s start swimming across the river! Very carefully...

Back the bridgehead, the shattered paras fall back to regroup under German artillery fire and the Motor Rifle troops take up the fight. Czech Frogfoots target the Germans and inflict some losses.

A bit of a problem further back down the column! The Austrian mechanised infantry venture forth from the city and attack the MRRs (towed) artillery battalion. This of course blocks the autobahn and stops the bridging column moving on. Terrys Tank Regiment is marching on in column to cross the river, but someone is going to have to deal with the Austrian infantry.

Well, we will leave that conundrum until tomorrow night as we broke for the evening at that point.

The action resumed the following day. Given the 'flying camera' viewpoint, expect a certain degree of chaos as to what gets photographed for here on in, as things were happening all over the place.

Back down on the Autobahn, the Czech artillerymen tried to break off from the vicious Austrian infantry assault. They retreated in a disorganised fashion under the guns of the Tank Regiment. Unfortunately the Austrians were made of stern stuff and pursued them! 

Some Hinds turned up and set themselves up in range of the rampaging Austrians. The MRR HQ pulled off the road to allow the leading units of 20th Tank Regiment to approach the bridge, but unfortunately the trailing two tank battalions had become embroiled in the battle down on the Autobahn.

The Austrians meanwhile covered themselves with glory. They dispersed the Czech gunners, then routed one of the T72 battalions which tried to overrun them! Sadly they had taken heavy losses from close range tank guns by this point.

Hearing alarming radio chatter about incoming artillery strikes, they engaged the T55s more closely.

I had meanwhile called down the entire Divisional artillery (152mm guns and MLRS) on the impudent Austrians, and despite the proximity to the our own troops, just let fly. More Hinds appeared and both wings poured rockets into the melee too. 

A certain degree of friendly fire took place, but more importantly, the last of the Austrians had enough and disappeared, so we had (finally) cleared the southern bank of the river.

North of the river, the MRR finally managed to deploy two battalions and the Regimental mortar and AT companies while the paras dug in. With more force to bear, they soon saw off the Jaegers and consolidated the bridgehead as the Tank Regiment thundered past.

And what of the swimming OT65s? Well, they finally made it across the Inn despite some strong currents, and scouted out a bridge site. A German panzergrenadier battalion briefy made an appearance, took one look at the massed Soviet armour across the river and thought better of it and went away again. So, several hours later, a pontoon bridge went across the river upstream from the dam as an alternate crossing point. Bravo!

That was excellent fun and purely by chance we managed a strategic victory by seizing the Autobahn bridge intact. The paras had very fortunately managed to forestall the demolition team, and some of us had misunderstood the victory conditions and completely ignored the Austrians in Brunau, not realising we were supposed to clear them out until we'd already bypassed them. Ahem. It worked out OK in the end, even if it did cost us an artillery and tank battalion to do it

The game rattled along very well as ever, and reminded me that I really, really must dust off the central front again..

More Leaders pt3 - French

 As I noted in my post on substitute figures, I don't actually have any dedicated WW2 French figures although I have boxfuls of WW1 French. I tend to use Adrian helmeted SCW figures instead as they look much the same and many of them were originally French figures anyway. Well, after the now numerous appearances of my General de Gaulle figure, I realised I 'needed' some French officer figures in Kepis for an upcoming game as they are so distinctive.

Another bunch of Skytrex figures, this time from the French command pack, which contained no less than 11 figures, which I think must have been an error. Slightly disappointingly, only three of them were in kepis, although it did have the inevitable pigeon team, like the Airfix WW1 set. Most of them were NCOS in greatcoats with helmets and rifles. Never mind, a cunning plan presented itself.

I just based up six of the figures as an extra pair of infantry stands. Five of these are Skytrex NCOs and the tall guy in the middle of the second base is Essex I think. He came out of my bag of spare gunners in Adrian helmets.

These will be useful supplements for my other SCW figures in Adrians, although they are very obviously wearing French style greatcoats too. My regular group seem to enjoy 1940 games, so it will be nice to have a few more proper French troops.

The three actual figures in kepis are these. Two of them with pistols and one with binoculars, they are all wearing greatcoats. I did the guy with binos in a kepi with a khaki cover (the most common configuration), a second in an uncovered kepi, so dark blue with a red top and finally one in an FFL kepi blanc. Yes I know only ORs were supposed to wear white kepi covers, but it is such an iconic piece of headgear.

Like the British and Russians, these were basecoated in Vallejo English Uniform, and then various details and highlights picked out with a pinwash around the equipment, inkwash on the flesh and a light drybrush.

Painting these finally finished my pot of Vallejo English Uniform! I've had this for years and it has painted hundreds of figures and provided mud on scores of vehicles. It was one of the first Vallejo paints I bought once my last pot of Humbrol Khaki ran out. I still absolutely hate dropper bottles as I prefer to dip my brush in the paint and not waste it on a palette, but this was great paint with lovely coverage and consistent colour right to the end. I could probably unscrew the top with a pair of pliers to get the last out, but I already had a replacement in stock as it is such a useful colour.

As a postscript, I've subsequently discovered that if I store the bottle upside down, there is still tons of usable paint in it. So a few more months life in it. Maybe you are supposed to store them upside down? Search me. 

 
  

More ACW experimentation - Bakers Creek 1863

After my rather unsatisfactory experiment with various changes at Stones Creek, I toned the modifications to my ACW rules down a bit and reverted to units facing a hexside, not a hex vertex. What works really well for Napoleonics just seemed to break everything in the ACW, possibly because units are more mobile? Who knows, but I know a bad game when I see one. I kept the additional activation modifiers, tidied up the turn sequence and retained the more generous road movement and rallying near the  enemy distances as they work better with a hex grid. I also upped the Army break point to 66% of infantry bases as the rules are so bloody armies were breaking tooo quickly.

It turned out one of my regular blogging acquaintances was having an ACW month over at https://angrydackel.com/ and he made the brilliant suggestion to adopt the same fire/move sequence as I use in the Napoleonic set. So, with the latest set of revisions in place, off we go for another play test. Grant vs Pemberton.

This time we are at Bakers Creek in 1863 where US Grant faced off against JC Pemberton. There is a proper scenario for this in the V&B ACW scenario book, but I wanted a quick and decisive engagement, so instead modelled the scenario on OHW Scenario 7 'Flank Attack'. Grant had managed to outflank Pemberton, although in the real battle, it was more like a 50:50 split between the pinning force and the flanking force.

To win the Union needs exclusive control of the hill while the Confederates just need one unit left on it to win, but have the huge disadvantage of being surprised from their right flank.

I used Neil Thomas's ACW army generator for this. The CSA have seven infantry units and two guns, two of the infantry are Green and two are Veteran. I used Zouaves for the Veteran units and put the Green ones in a three base wide line with one base in support (you can see them both on the front edge of the ridge with the guns). The seasoned and veteran units I just put in double ranked supported line, the best formation in Fire and Fury.

The CSA units all have to set up on the hill and all facing south. Limits of real estate force them to set up in at least two lines. I stacked their left flank in expectation of the Union attack. Fortunately they make a very unattractive melee target, being uphill, despite being flanked. 

Grants pinning force is two green infantry units, deployed the same as the CSA green units, plus a gun. The US guns are rifled, so more effective at range than the CSA. The two ridges are at long cannon shot but out of rifle range.

The flanking force has four seasoned and one veteran unit plus another gun, so the CSA have the edge in quality and position and equal numbers too. Grants strike force has superiority at the decisive point however. Both sides have a leader (Grant and Pemberton), needed for activation and can help with rallying.

There is little point charging the CSA units as being uphill the attackers can only hit them on 5+, so I'm going to move into close range and get a free point blank shot while the enemy pivot to face. Five units against three should give the US significant fire superiority.

The Union guns roar out and completely miss, the rest of the Union troops move forward. I've reverted to the old move system, so infantry can move two hexes straight ahead, but if they pivot they can only move one, but can pivot multiple times.

The green units shuffle slowly forward, keeping out of rifle range. On the right, the unit in the woods fires at long range while the other four close up - one of the benefits of the fire then move sequence. Both the guns and the supporting unit are now masked as they have a friendly unit halfway to the hill. Hills are assumed to be twice as high as units or woods for LOF purposes. Grant has accompanied one of the assaulting units, and Pemberton is the middle of the units defending the east side of the ridge.

The CSA mostly pass their activation checks (all within LOS of the CinC so anything but a 1) and variously pivot to face the threats. Annoyingly one of the reserve veteran units fails to activate so can only pivot in place, but  turns to set up a two hex move next turn.

The CSA guns concentrate on the green US units and chip off a couple of hits (lucky!).

Both sides have identical breakpoints, 19 bases lost. No bases lost yet though.

Things hot up. Despite being out of LOS of Grant the two green units move up the ridge from the south, while almost everyone else opens up at point blank range. Ouch! I've removed the restriction that fire has to spread evenly. It may be more realisiic but it makes the game dull. The US inflict enough losses to remove some bases and two CSA units are forced to retreat.

They are now horribly stacked up and if unable to retreat any more lose extra bases instead. I do allow units to interpenetrate if they start the turn facing in the same direction, so some of them still have a retreat route, but others don't. 

The CSA suddenly realise that the units which just retreated are out of sight on the reverse slope! They rally in place and each recover a base. The US are now in a tricky position as if they advance onto the ridge it is they who will be on the wrong end of a 2:1 firepower ratio. Umm, perhaps the CSA should have defended one hex back to start with....

The Union shoot away at the CSA units they can still see. That CSA unit in the top right is a veteran and quite resilient.

The CSA have committed all their reserves now as a US unit braves the ridge. The CSA Zouaves in the top right are apparently bullet proof and hang on! Surprisingly the US green units are doing quite well and force one of their opposite numbers to retreat. The CSA leave the gun behind as it still requires a morale check to assault frontally.

Hard pounding gentlemen! Both sides bang away and now it is a union green unit which retreats. The retired CSA green unit is busy trying to rally (it lost two bases to concentrated fire) but it is hard to rally green units (5+). The CSA gun withdrew to join another unit as it was a bit exposed on its own.

A bad hour for the Confederacy. Not one but two units go down demoralised by close range fire and then unable to retreat due to friends blocking the way. The other CSA battery is now exposed on its own, and the breakpoint (BP) count is well in the Union favour.

Now the Union starts to crack and the division on the ridge falls back, as do the Zouaves in the northeast. The CSA still control the ridge but are now compressed into an arc facing southeast. Grant can dimly be seen in the northeast. 

The union now has a choice to make. Spend a couple of turns rallying or push on? Grant opts to be aggressive and three US units crest the ridge from the southeast.

Both green US units would have joined them but they are both dithering (the green counters) as is the unit in the wood. Grant has moved to the very southeast now to better control the army from a central position as his other wing was out of sight before. 

The Union managed to drive one CSA unit back and the unit in the woods manages to rally. Everyone else blazes away.

The CSA also blaze away and one Union unit breaks and runs with two bases lost.

The Union keeps plugging away however and pushes the CSA back into the northwest corner. While trying to steady his troops, Pemberton is hit and carried from the field.  

Despite one last big effort by the CSA which pushes back another union unit, US fire tips the Confederates over their break point. 

The CSA only hope is to do the same to the US. Most of their units dither (losing the CinC makes failing their activation far more likely) but although they chip some hits off the US, at the end of the turn the US are still in the field while the Confederates are pulling back exhausted. A US victory.

That went much better than Stones River, and while there were periods of intense slugging, (as in so many ACW battles), the revised mechanisms all worked fine. I'm particularly pleased with the fire/move sequence which worked really well, and the new Army breakpoints prevent the game becoming endless as units rally, which was always a problem with the older system. The players will have to get used to managing the pace of combat though, as if they just chuck everything in, they are going to get burned out very quickly. I've got a couple of scenarios (Chickamauge and Chancellorsville) which I've only ever soloed, so I'd like to try them real players. They will be appearing in due course.

Operation Battleaxe with Megablitz

 Many years ago when Megablitz was still relatively new, I wrote up Operation Battleaxe as a training scenario with a detailed description of how to design an operational game, point up the units, sort out the terrain, logistics etc. I think it ended up on the old Megablitz yahoo group, and who knows if it survived the transition to groups.io.

Battleaxe is a great operational game as the forces and area involved are quite limited, and the real engagement only lasted a few days, but it contains scope for both broad manouvre and formal assault and obstacle clearance, reinforcements, supply, air power etc etc. It is the training scenario in Sam Mustafas 'Rommel' and regular readers will recall I also ran it using NQM when that was published last year.

 I first ran this scenario with Megablitz decades ago at the Sheffield club with my 6mm stuff and we got through the entire thing in a couple of hours, I'd planned to resurrect it for COW in 2025, partly for historical interest and partly as an introduction for people who'd never had a chance to play it. Sadly I couldn't go to COW last year, so I put it on at CALF 2026 instead.

At 1" = 1km my planned layout was something like this (one foot squares). I didn't bother to include Tobruk and Bardia as the battle was mainly fought around and west of Halfaya and Sollum. The battle starts on 15th June 1941 with Axis frontier defences at Halfaya, Sollum, Capuzzo, Point 206 and Hafid Ridge and 8th Panzer Regiment and a mixed battlegroup from 15th Panzer Division in reserve around Sidi Aziz in the north west. One of 15th Panzers rifle regiments (the 104th) had been distributed around the defences, along with various Italian units, and the divisional recce battalion was in a screen from Halfaya down to Bir el Khireigat along the frontier with Egypt.

Western Desert force had committed 4th Indian Division and 7th Armoured Division to write down the frontier defences and armour in the immediate vicinity although both divisions were still understrength after Operation Brevity. 4th Indian could only commit one brigade (!) and was reinforced with both 22nd Guards Brigade and 4th Armoured Brigade, somewhat improbably equipped with Matildas. 7th Armoured Division only fielded a single Armoured Brigade (4th) with just two Regiments of cruisers, although one had brand new Crusaders. between them they outnumbered 8th Panzer Regiment though.

This is how it ended up on the table. 7th Armoured division is down in the desert on the left. Half of 4th Indian is up on and behind the escarpment (Escarpment Force) while the rest are wending their way along the coats road in a huge traffic jam (Coast Force).

On the day I had four players for the game, Chris and Ian took the British, while Alex and Rob took the Axis. Only Chris had any experience of the game before, so I treated it very much as a tutorial session showing how the various mechanisms interacted.

View from the northwest. 8th panzer Regiment is around Sidi Azis with bits of 15th Motorcycle battalion and 33rd AT battalion. I left most of the Axis units offtable so the Allies could try and find them using their recce units.

The players soon got the hang of manouvering and 7th Armoured Div set off across the desert, being bombed occasionally by the Italian airforce while the various armoured car units probed and clashed with each other.

At Halfaya, the Indians discovered the Axis defences and bombed them while the various portions of 4th Indian ponderously deployed for a formal assault. 4th Armoured Brigade resisted the temptation to press on to Fort Capuzzo.

While the Indians deployed, 7th Armoured motored across the desert, uncovering the defences at Point 206. 15th Panzer had been unable to resist intervening though, and had already set off across the desert so the British armour headed in their direction (which of course was exactly what Wavell had originally wanted - to tempt the German armour into battle on unequal terms).

Halfaya descended into bloody chaos as the Indians attacked. Ian got a chance to find out how minefields worked, and despite the best efforts of his engineers, losses were heavy. The Axis held off the first two assaults but as night fell they were looking very battered. I don't think I've ever played Battleaxe without Halfaya falling eventually, although the Allied losses are usually grievous they assault before isolating the garrison.

And in the desert a great armoured clash took place, which given the force ratios (7th Support Group was well up supporting 4th Armoured Brigade), wasn't really going the Axis way.

It was fairly obvious after some time that we weren't going to make it to the 16th June, so we just ran through the overnight sequence (resupply, redeployment etc) as night fell, but didn't bother deploying 5th Light Division, which arrived from Tobruk overnight. Instead we finished early and had a washup about things worked, areas which might be improved or applied elsewhere etc. It probably wasn't the greatest game session I've ever run, but I think it achieved the aim of introducing the game mechanisms, even if we didn't finish the scenario. 

I suspect that is the last Megablitz game I'll ever run, as the world has moved on to a certain extent, but it has rekindled my interest in my own operational rules which borrow heavily from MB, and I've got plans for a couple of large scale games I'd like to run over the next year.