Airborne Assault on Crete with NQM

 In a precursor to his Front Scale NQM game planned for Partisan, Chris had arranged to run a Corps Scale game of the invasion of Crete at Patriot Games in Sheffield. The event was organised by Tom, an occasional attendee at our evening remote games and Friday f2f sessions at Tapton.

I first went to Patriot Games when it opened in a small shop in the town centre, but now it has much grander premises nearer the ring road in Sheffield in an old factory building with a large shop, cafe and huge games area with dozens of tables. 

Chris getting ready to run the game and had just happened' to bring down a box full of NQM rules for sale! Patriot Games do a game mat printing service, and they'd printed three custom mats for this game, gridded out in 10cm hexes.

Initially we had three British players (I was cast as Freyberg and overall CO) and just two German. They were joined by two more Germans in the course of the morning.

Chris gave an initial briefing on how the rules work as I was the only one who had played them before. This is the view looking north from Crete, you can see the coastline on the custom game mat. The Aegean is in the mid ground and 'Greece' is way over there stacked with boxes of Germans. As this is a high level operational game, the hexes represent 6km of ground.

The game at Partisan will mainly focus on the German efforts to capture the airfield, so our job as the British was to provide an active defence. As historically, the defence was divided in two, West and East, a mixture of New Zealand, Australian and Greek troops in the main.

While the Germans looked in boxes we set out guys up. The various brigades had pre-designated starting areas with some flexibility - our guys were clustered around Heraklion (nearest the camera), Retimo (centre near the long river) and Maleme in the north. I put my Corps HQ in Suda (at the north end of the shorter river). The critical terrain features are obviously the towns and nearby airfields, and the single coast road crossing several bridges. There is also one road across the island to a small port on the southern coast. 

As CO I was responsible for the general scheme of defence, but also running the airforce and navy. With Admiral Cunninghams hat on, I had HMS Warspite and four cruisers to play with. There was also a notional destroyer flotilla near to Crete.

The RAF had three wings of fighters (Hurricanes) and two of Bombers (Wellingtons) which I distributed among the airfields.

Although we had lots and lots of ground units, many were very weak with only one or two strength points. We also had little artillery, all the available AA was concentrated in the east, we had two decent artillery units split between east and west and one coastal battery with 1SP(!). We had some logistic units but they had an enormous front to cover.

I had quite a lot to do in the game as I was acting as a player-umpire and helping the newer players with the rules, so I didn't take as many pictures as usual.

The Germans had this rather lovely Dorner flying boat to rescue people floating in the sea.

One of my first jobs as CO ws to decide what to do with the RAF, and based on my experience in Greece, I decided to pull them back to Egypt. Good job too as the opening attack had waves of German bombers blasting the airfields, a pasting from which little would have survived and left the runways cratered. The planes could operate from Egypt, but it was at the far end of the fighters endurance, so would be somewhat random.

In the west the German put down a couple of regiments quite far inland by parachute and glider as they were anxious about landing on top of troop concentrations or dropping in the sea. They got down quite well and began marching northwards. The big explosion is them coming into range of the 25pdrs east of Maleme. The defenders here had plenty of time to reorient themselves to the threat and get dug in facing inland.

In the east the next wave of Germans landed south of Heraklion. They didnt do so well and strayed a bit close to the British AA which duly shot an entire battalion out of the sky. The Germans put down about a Regiment here. The force ratios are more favourable to the Allies here.

The Germans attacked Heraklion quite aggressively, which looks like a doomed effort in this photo, but of course it doesn't show the fleets of German bombers and strafing fighters which hammered the defenders. Even so, the British (well, Greek and Australian) forces managed to put in a brigade sized counterattack which pushed the German back. Supported by the nearby Corps heavy artillery, it also saw an FJ battalion overrun.

The Germans obviously fancied their chances more at Maleme as that is where their third wave landed, including FJ artillery, assault engineers and logistic units. Covered by the Luftwaffe (who have flown home in this photo), the formed up and massed south of Maleme. 

They were soon to be joined by what was left of the seaborne invasion fleet! In a 'battleships' style mini game, 5th Gebirgsjager Division was mounted on ships and sailed across the eastern Med at night, while I (as Cunningham) tried to stop them. HMS Dido found one convoy and blew it out of the water, Warspite found another and it fled in terror back to Greece while a third slipped past the cruiser screen and made it to Maleme. The RAF bombed it as the sun rose, but the Luftwaffe returned the favour and Dido was heavily damaged.

At Heraklion the surviving FJ were forced back well into the interior by the counterattack. They were reduced to their regimental and divisional HQ, but found this very convenient demolished monastery on the top of a hill to hide in. Must write that idea down for future reference...

At Maleme the Gebirgsjager stormed ashore, and with heavy Luftwaffe support just managed to take the airfield! The players were now discovering the value of fresh units when attacking battered ones (every hit  knocks 1 off the advance/retreat roll).

In the east the Germans had noticed that Retimo and Heraklion were only held by AA units, so their transports were ordered to crash land on the cratered runways. At Retimo this worked well and the a couple of battalions landed successfully under the guns of the nearby Bofors regiment.

At Heraklion it ended in disaster however as a combination of AA and RAF fighters operating from Egypt saw one battalion shot down and sent the other transports packing.

At Maleme however, the well organised FJ now pushed northwards to the coast. Despite being heavily outnumbered, their superior quality and massive (Luftwaffe) fire support swept all before them and Allied units now began to surrender as they were overrun. A battalion of brave New Zealanders managed to hold the road south, but the Germans cut the road west to Maleme. Once their engineers had cleared the runway, the Germans would be able to fly reinforcements in directly, and the battered Allied units weren't in a position to counterattack against the fresh FJ and Gebirgsjager units.

Freyburg ordered a general retreat and evacuation at that point, to save as many men and as much equipment as possible. That was pretty much where the retreat was ordered in the real campaign too, but the unfortunate Australians never got the order and were left to fight it out on the east end of the island.

That was an excellent game, very enjoyable, and hugely ambitious with the combined air, land and naval aspects. After a while the players got the hang of the movement and combat mechanisms although we were very much playing a somewhat cut down version of the rules as written. The big 'cockpit' around Maleme did slow down a bit at one point, but we were resolving four or five separate combats at a time, and in the main it all rattled along well.

The game at Partisan was planned  to use brigade stands instead of battalion ones, but even so aimed to cover the whole campaign over the course of the day, rather like the Longstop Hill game. I covered it briefly in my recent Partisan report. 

Teeny tiny decals for the Austers.

 Regular readers may recall that I painted up a couple of Austers AOPs recently (see  https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2025/07/bpm-1144th-scale-auster-aop.html). At the time I bemoaned the fact that they are so tiny that none of my stock of decals would fit the fuselages.

In fact it isn't hugely obvious that they are 'improperly dressed' as the wings are so disproportionately large, the markings on those stand out and distract from the lack of fuselage markings. 

However, apparently along with being a control freak, I am something of a completionist (who knew?!) so the lack of fuselage markings has niggled. Strangely this compulsion doesn't extend to the underside of the wings but hey ho.

Anyway, riding to the rescue came John A who came up with the brilliant suggestion of using 1/300th scale decals instead of 1/144 scale ones. He duly pitched up with a pair of yellow edged roundels and a pair of stars n' bars, both Doms Decals. 

My goodness, they are tiny! 

I realised at this point that I've never applied a 1/300th decal in my life. I've always hand painted markings on 6mm vehicles and aircraft. The main thing with these ones is that they are on a continuous strip, so you need to trim them as closely as possible. 

I started with the roundels and left a bit of a gap around edge so I could grip them with my fine tweezers. 

The US markings were easier as they are a bit bigger. You can see how small they are compared to my big fat fingers, which is why I use tweezers for this sort of thing. 

In the end they went on without any fuss at all. Unlike my I-94 decals they didn't need soaking for three minutes each (!), 30 seconds did the trick. The only minor disaster was that I put one of the US ones on upside down, so it had to come off and go on again. 

If you squint very, very hard you can just see the markings on the fuselage. Even though they are largely invisible, I'm pleased to have sorted that out. While it was OK doing a few of these micro decals, I really can't imagine marking up a whole squadron of 6mm planes, so I think I'll stick to painting them where possible. Less feasible for US planes I guess. 

Tigers at Minsk - The Poupeville Exit

 More US Paras in Normany with Tigers at Minsk. This scenario was originally in the US Para expansion for Squad Leader published in the AHGC General, but it was reproduced in Fireball Forward. I largely based the  game on the FF version.

Battlefield from the south. Poupeville lies across the exit of causeway 14 from Utah Beach (the flooded area behind the beaches is off to the north) and was one of the D-Day objectives of PIR 501, 101st Airborne Div.

Each of the buildings is worth 1VP, apart from the tall building at the top (2VP) and the church which is the German HQ and worth 5VP. The side with most VPs wins the game which lasts 55 minutes. Historically the Germans collapsed when their HQ was captured.

The German defenders from GR 919, 709th Infantry division. Two rifle platoons with three sections each and a sniper. In the FF scenario they also have the potential for an MG team as a variable attachment, but in the original Squad Leader scenario, they have an MG mounted on a kubelwagen!

Well, I thought that would be much more fun. I don't have an armed Kubelwagen, but I do have  a Horch with an MG, so I used that.

The Germans are all poor quality so their sections rally on 5+ (unmodified) and their force morale is 3.

I had to make up some rules for the sniper - treat it like an FOO for target purposes and it rolls 1D6 and can only ever score a pin.

And the mighty 501st! Lt Colonel Julien Ewell managed to assemble about 40 men to attack Poupeville, including various odds and sods from his HQ section.

Here they have four 'heavy' squads in two platoons with 3D6 and high morale, plus a squad of typists etc with 2D6 and normal morale. They did have a bazooka section attached which I modelled as an AT availability of 3, I thought it might be useful against the Horch. There is also a .30 cal MG team with the HQ. 

Overall the force is high quality and has a force morale of 4.

There is a lot of blocking terrain and covered routes to the German HQ, so the defenders were necessarily forced to spread out. I tried to make sure all the open ground was covered by fire and that there was a reserve. The Horch was hard to position - it can't enter building hexes unless on a road and there is a good chance it will bog if trying to cross a hedge. In TaM softskins are also destroyed by a single pin result! In the end I put it on a road behind a hedge covering the left hand side of the village centre. On the roads it can easily move around.

Otherwise the Germans spread out to minimise bunching penalties although the sniper was in the southern house on the N-S road with a rifle section.

The centre didn't look very inviting for the US, but there was cover on both left and right flanks. I went right flanking as I could take advantage of the covered route to get a two hex move for the Paras behind the small orchard. Three squads stacked up there and one occupied the buildings next to the orchard.

The HQ team and .30 cals set up a base of fire just east of the crossroads. They had a pretty good field of fire from there, despite all the hedges and buildings.

The Germans are obviously loaded for bear and gun down the US Paras in the buildings with boxcars. US morale drops to 3. Not a very good start.

The US response is fairly subdued. The .30 cal pins the German section behind the hedgerow while the HQ squad misses. The other Paras deploy in the woods and buildings, one squad to a hex to minimise bunching. 

This time it is a different German squad which rolls boxcars and another Para section is destroyed in the 'house of death'. One of the US squads in the orchard is also pinned. Perhaps there are 88s in the town? US force morale 2...

The Germans also shuffle up their reserve section and move the Horch along the road to cover the front of the hedge line.

A shame I didn't take a photo of the Horch moving, as the first thing the US do is shoot it to pieces with small arms fire! You can see a big puff of smoke at the edge of the village. The Paras have clearly got their eye in as they also finish off the pinned German section behind the hedge. German force morale drops to one! The other pinned Para section rallies (anything but a 1).

The German response is a bit pathetic and largely misses. Now the US paras manage to take out another German section AND score a whopping two hits on the combined rifle/sniper group and the sniper is removed. German force morale is reduced to zero and they have to take two fallback tests.

Although some of the Germans manage to pass one test, they all fail at least once and one fails twice. Once all the retreats are done there are two sections clustered around the church and the section from the western hamlet has retreated right behind the hedge! It is a good job LOS from the .30 cal is blocked or it may have been gunned down in the open.

The Germans are fortunate that the remaining sections all end up in command and they hastily occupy buildings in the interior of the village. They have given up the outskirts now the US are deploying their full firepower. 

The US take advantage of the German retreat to double move all their units up to the edge of the village as they are out of LOS of the defenders. 

The US move into the buildings and both sides settle down to shoot at each other. As everyone is in cover and the buildings break up line of sight, this is singularly ineffective and a couple of turns pass with loads of bullets in the air but very few units actually hit. 

The Germans still hold the majority of VP buildings, so are currently winning despite their morale being zero. All they have to do is hold out a bit longer. 

Colonel Ewell looks at his watch, 44 minutes on the clock! He decides to break the stalemate with bold action. The HQ squad rushes the church, this locks the defenders into close combat so that the two Para Squads can push forward too without being opp fired. One takes the northern exit building and the other reinforces the church assault. 

The defenders fight bravely (pinning the HQ squad) but outnumbered 2:1 in combat dice, they are wiped out. This triggers another German fallback test. They guys in the house southwest of the church hold firm and shoot at the Paras to no effect, while the Germans in the hamlet retreat (again). Perhaps they are Ostruppen? The Germans have to use their turn to put them back into cover. The game clock now stands at 50 minutes. 

On what is almost certainly the last turn, the US rally their HQ squad and one of the Para squads occupies the buildings SE of the church to prevent sneaky German counterattacks. The. 30 cal pins the last German section in the village under under covering fire from the MG, the other Para squad changes the cowering Germans who are duly wiped out. 

Amazingly the Ostruppen stand and fight, but they can't mount an effective counterattack over the open ground and just shoot at the Paras over the fields, pinning them. 

Time runs out and having captured the church, the US have 12VP to the Germans 3, a convincing win and very historical. Without the church they would have lost, and amazingly I didn't roll a single random event the entire game, which is a shame. 

That was really good fun and very much captured the spirit of the original Squad Leader scenario. The really great addition was the force morale concept, as once the Germans reached their break point, their defence became badly disrupted and the US could pick it apart. I did think the US might be doomed after their catastrophic opening moves, but in the end quality told and they swept all before them. 

I think I'm getting my head around how infantry combat works now, my biggest error in the game was misplaying the armed Horch and it ended up being destroyed without firing a shot. The US also spent too long locked in a firefight in the town, and it was marginal as to whether they would run out of time. 

Queen Laodika 's War

On the Sunday morning at the  Society of Ancients Conference back in September, I signed up for John Bs 'Laodikas War'. This was one of Johns big Ancient operational games and covered the Seleucid succession crisis of 246 BC, something about which I know absolutely nothing, although various characters involved do pop up in Shakespeare plays.

This was a pretty big game, able to accommodate anything up to 20 players although in this case there were maybe a dozen of us. I was cast as Prince Seleukos, the rightful heir to the Seleucid throne and the God King, Alexander the Great.

Apparently my father had quite complex personal life, and although me and my younger brother Prince Herax 'The Hawk' (played by Richard) are the rightful heirs by his first wife Laodike, he went and married King Ptolemy's sister, Eurydike (boo!) who went and produced another son, Prince Antiochos (boo!).

Although it is obvious that the first born is the rightful heir, Queen Eurydike has the odd idea that Prince Antiochus is heir. Something her brother, King Ptolemy, is keen on too for some reason.

The playing area was a couple of modern maps of the eastern Mediterranean, marked out into historic towns and joined by road or sea transport routes. The little plastic pieces indicate faction ownership. The Seleucids are green, Antigonids red and the Ptolomies (boo!) are blue. There are also various smaller states such as Sparta, Pergamon, Pontus etc.

The Antigonids control most of Greece and have regular dust ups with the Ptolemys in the Cyclades. The Ptolemys control Egypt and the coast through Israel and Syria and the southern coast of Turkey. The Seleucids have Iran/Iraq and much of Anatolia and we have regular scraps with Ptolemys in the vicinity of Syria. 

View from the east. Babylon, Antioch and and Ephesus are our major power bases with elements of the standing army in each (those big piles of green cards). There were four of us on the Seleucid team, myself, Herax, the Governer of Persia and and General Adromachos whose daughter is my wife. Eurydike and Antiochus (boo) were in Antioch, while myself and Herax were in Ephesus. Ptolemy had a suspiciously large stack of stuff near Issus (the blue cards).

My aim was to assert my authority over the Seleucid Empire, remove Eurydike and Antiochus from the picture and boost the Treasury reserve to 100 Talents.

You get income in the winter phase based on towns and ports controlled and peasants tilling the fields instead of fighting. Plenty of mercenaries are available to hire, but cost lots of money although they fight much better than peasant levies. Otherwise there are three campaign turns a year outside winter. 

There was a certain amount of horse trading with other powers, in particular we came to a mutually beneficial understanding with the Antigonids. Pontus was very helpful indeed but Pergamon just went around being a pita. With so many players, there was plenty of scope for skullduggery and I did notice that Herax disappeared from the room for a suspiciously long period of time along with one of the Ptolemys. 

Mercenaries were raised by a bidding process which was very entertaining and also a good way of depleting your rivals treasuries through cunning bidding. We determined fairly early  on to march on Antioch to deal with any potential insurrection and raised a moderate force of mercenaries (ten contingents) to accompany the standing army. I had an eye on our treasury reserves.

Meanwhile it all kicked off in Greece as the Antigonds began clearing the rest of the peninsular. There is a battle in progress on the left of the map, each card is a unit with a to hit number (from 7+ to 10 on a D10) and  strength points (from 1 for levies etc to 4 for elite phalanx). They fight one or two rounds and the loser retreats or can opt to fall back into a town or city and be besieged. 

The Ptolemys curried the favour of the gods with oratory and stole a march on us. Xanthippus took our fleet in port (!) while Ptolemy himself led the main army to Antioch. Queen Eurudike tried to raise a local revolt with very mixed success, only one unit defecting to her, the rest melted away into the countryside. The Ptolemys also landed an expeditionary force near Ephesus, which presented a threat.

Prince Herax demonstrated his youthful, aggressive nature by leading a small detachment (three units) against the Ptolemys, and beat them, despite being outnumbered 2:!! The enemy fell back into the town and Herax laid on a siege.

You can see the Ptolemys have left a large force to guard Alexandria, even though we don't have navy. This would cause them problems in the future.  

Meanwhile I led the main army to Antioch, where I was joined by loyal King Pontus. 

A good job too as the Ptolemaic army was quite strong. Our guys at the bottom, theirs top right. We fought an indecisive action as winter was setting in and fell back from Antioch as a winter siege would be horribly costly in terms of attrition. The Ptolemys meanwhile established Prince Antiochus as a puppet king, although to no great popular acclaim. I did notice the Governer of Persia in a long conversation with Ptolemy though. I need to watch that one.

Still heavy fighting in Greece. The Antigonids taking on Sparta, the Spartans are on the left, heavily outnumbered but very tough fighters.

In the final turn of the year, we adopted an indirect approach. Herax went on an 'end run' along the Anatolian coast mopping up the Ptolemaic towns while leaving the small enemy expeditionary force besieged. I led the main army against Xanthippus who was guarding our captured fleet.

In the ensuing battle (above) it turned out he was heavily outnumbered. We destroyed his army, although not before he'd burned our ships, and we captured Xanthippus himself.

This manouvre also left Antioch isolated and completely surrounded by Seleuicid areas. By now the somewhat shifty Governor of Persia had finally joined up with my army.

Over the winter the extra territory we'd captured, coupled with Xanthippus' ransom (Ptolemy seemed very keen to have him back) boosted the treasury very nicely. We kept on the best mercenaries and purchased some more, and I still had over 100 Talents in the treasury.

Prince Herax marched to join us in spring and we launched a massive attack on the Ptolemaic forces at Antioch. It turned out we had quite a bit more stuff than them, possibly because half their army was sitting in Alexandria.

The Gods favoured us big time. Those two D10s are my Silver Shield phalanx rolling 10,10 for its combat roll. Prince Herax led from the front which gave his entire wing a combat bonus at considerable personal risk and even Pontus gave a good account of himself. The combination of numbers and good fortune absolutely hammered the Ptolemaic army, and they retreated from Antioch back into Syria.

We called it at that point. The Antigonids had captured much of Greece and the Cyclades although Sparta still held out. King Pergamon had launched a mini offensive in western Anatolia and was threatening Ephesus, but tbh we could just have turned around and crushed him like a bug now the Ptolemys were finished.

John B doing the washup. 

As you have probably gathered, my faction of the Seleucids had done rather well. It transpired that the Governer of Persia had struck a tentative deal with Ptolemy but could see very well which way the wind was blowing and stuck with me instead. Historically he led a revolt which split the Iranian part of the empire off. Herax had proved to be loyal if rather impetuous, historically he tried to establish his own power base around Ephesus but was eventually killed fighting with some Gallic mercenaries. Ever the thrill seeker.

In real life Eurydice and Antiochus tried to raise a revolt in Antioch but were siezed by the crowd and torn to pieces, which didn't stop the Seleucids and Ptolemys having a good old scrap. This period marked the high point of Ptolemaic power, and the Successors in general. After this, Rome became a serious player.

John observed that it was one of the more battle heavy outings of this game, but we only had three hours and it seemed to be a quick way to a resolution. The game worked extremely well, and as with Johns other large multi player games, there are so many moving parts you just have to try and focus on what is most important.  

The general situation in Anatolia at the end. Apologies if I've missed out anything important, as the Duke of Wellington observed "One might as well try and describe a ball as a battle" and this big multi player game certainly captured a lot of that confusion and fog of war.