Little World Wars

I'm not actually sure what Tim has decided to call his latest 54mm outing, but the brought down his experimental WW2 54mm rules to the club, and as they are a mixture of familiar(ish) mechanisms, I've given them the temporary name of 'Little World Wars'.

John, Jerry and Tim C took the British, and Graham and I the Germans. The rules are pitched at a somewhat lower level than Little Cold Wars, with each element representing a section or single weapon/vehicle (or possibly platoons or 3-4 vehicles). The Germans had 12 infantry figures in two sections, a Pak 40, a Marder, a mortar team and a small HQ. The Germans were quite heavily armed with three MG42s, and assortment of rifles, SMGs and the odd MP44 as well as a panzerfaust.

The ground, 7' x 5' the Germans were defending up to the building beyond the crossroads.

The British had quite a few 1/48th scale tanks. This troop had a a 76mm Sherman of indeterminate manufacture and a pair of beautiful Corgi diecasts. 

The German mortar team, all hard plastic 1/35th (mainly Tamiya I think).

Our Pak 40 (1/35th) plus Kettenkrad tow.

Along with half a dozen tanks, the British had a horde of infantry. Four sections, a mortar team and an HQ. Some of the infantry even had a halftrack to ride in.

I put the Marder hull down on this hill, it has a good view of the central valley packed with Shermans. From here it could also manouvre to cover the left flank.

Three Solido Shermans in the centre. After the Marder opened fire, only two Shermans... The halftrack infantry can be see in the rear.

The German Hauptkampflinie. Pak 40 and Marder deployed for AT defence, two infantry half sections covering the front,an outpost in the far building, mortars to the rear and a small reserve. The HQ was located centrally.

While the central Shermans engaged in a firefight with the AT, these sneaky chaps dashed down the flank. Our combat outpost in the building crept out into the woods and engaged them with the panzerfaust but sadly missed.

The Marder redeployed to face the threat, urged on by the CO.

Who could miss a flank shot like that? Well, I'll let you know....

At this point our mortar team managed to drop a shell (the big matchstick) right on the COs Kubelwagen. Oh well, at least they didn't hit the Marder.

Hordes of British infantry came over the hill. They took some losses from MG fire but kept on coming.

Oops. The Shermans rolled into position and the Marder promptly lost the initiative.

With predictable results. BOOM! The units activate in card sequence, you can see the Marders cards here. It got two cards because of the nearby HQ, but the British drew a three of hearts for the Shermans and low goes first.

The British infantry formed a firing line and proceeded to degrade their opponents. Despite their cover, the Germans were heavily outnumbered and took serious losses.

The MG position in the centre was still holding out, and CO made a mad dash over to boost their morale. At that point we called it a day and both sides claimed they had won!

That was good fun and a good tryout of the mechanisms. They were sufficiently different to LCW that we had to feel our way through them, and we had a long post-game discussion about the card activation system and alternate mechanisms for tactical unit activation. I suspect next time we'll rattle through them a bit faster as we are more familiar with them.