I have been to... Uruguay

The final installment of our South American odessey was a brief visit to Uruguay. We called in at Montevideo and Punta Del Este.

Just outside the port area was a monument to the Graf Spee.

The Graf Spee is here (if you look very carefully you may spot the buoy). Until ten years ago, bits of it were still visible but sadly no longer.

This rather grand range finder is still around though. More on that later.

Montevideo was a real delight. Very low rise, stuffed with classical Spanish colonial buildings and very liberal and relaxed. The Amsterdam of Latin America.

Some beautiful 1930s buildings.

Jose Artigas, hero of Uruguayan independance. Garibaldi later helped a hand to keep Uruguay independant. He certainly got around.

We finally took the opportunity to try some Mate. Umm. An acquired taste I think.

The main square, with both the old and new presidential palaces.

Artigas tomb. This was built by the military dictatorship.

An old Spanish artillery bastion on the coast.

The Catedral Ingles. There was a large British community here in the nineteenth century.

And back to the Graf Spee.

This is one of the anchors. It looks just like the one on the Airfix kit!

The stereoscopic range finder with me alongside to give an idea of size. It was really huge huge. Laying hands upon it was also another addition to my coup counting of 'bits of old battleships'.   

There were other bits of dockyard equipment around, like this steam crane. 

And a rather larger crane.

A statue of a stevedore.

The Uruguayan navy was also much in evidence.

They seem to have rather more ships than the Royal Navy at the moment!

I've got no idea what types ships these are. I suspect some of them are quite old.

Over in Punta Del Este is this memorial to the Battle of the River Plate. The anchor is supposedly from HMS Ajax. The portaloo rather detracts from it. The battle was actually fought off the coast here.

This stone marks the boundary where the River Plate ends and the Atlantic begins.

We also went to the Ralli mjuseum, which was a  large private modern art collection, similar to the Guggenheim in Venice.

They had an extensive collection of Dali sculptures.

As well as various other modern artists.

Bizarrely there was a Beryl Cook special exhibition!

Other bits of Punta del Este were less salubrious.

I was rather taken with this vintage truck though.

Some of the coastline was pretty rugged, reminiscent of the west coast of the UK.

While other bits had a very tropical feel (there were lots of very, very expensive holiday homes over in this bit).

So, Uruguay was an unexpected delight. Highly recommended (apart from the horrific data roaming charges).

Operation Vengence

John put on another WW2 Air game in the Pacific, this time based on the assassination of Admiral Yamamoto, Operation Vengence.

Following intel from Ultra decrypts, specially adapted P-38 Lightnings made a 600 mile flight from Guadalcanal  to Bougainville. 18 of them provided top cover against the dozens of Zeros based nearby, while four aircraft intercepted Yamamotos flight.

Tim got to represent the Rising Sun, while I got the Americans.

The general area of operations. Bougainville is the great big island in front, and the P-38s are coming in at low altitude under the radar over the sea.

Yamamotos flight was two Bettys escorted by half a dozen Zeros. Tim brought the Japanese flags, so he got to play Japan.

I had two green P-38s and two silver ones.

I do like a Lightening In Pz8 air combat, these are pretty good planes, fast, heavily armed and with an excellent ceiling. It is just a shame they are outnumberd 2:1!

Most of my flight held back, gainig altitiude and looking to get on the tials of the Japanese planes. One spotted an opening and dashed for the nearest Betty at full throttle,  but sadly missed its deflection shot and in turn was shot up and demaged bv a swarm of Zeros.

Its wingmate made no such mistake and managed to trail the Betty and down it in a single pass. First blood to the US.

Things weren't going so well in other area as another P38 was damaged....

Then downed by more Zeros. Tim decided to mark the occasion in typically restrained fashion.

One of my other P-38s managed to push through the the fighter screen and make an attack in the second Betty, which it damaged. In turn the Lightning was damaged in a hail of air-air gunnery.

Two of my damaged planes set off in pursuit of the damaged bomber. Even thought they were damaged, they had a speed advantage and closed in steadily.

One even managed to get on the Bettys' tail.

But sadly missed, and was in turn shot down. This loss was marked in the traditional manner.

To add insult to injury, a third P-38 went down.

Yet another big flag.

So that last Betty escaped and limped over to the airfield on the Island, while my one (damaged) P-38 headed for home, 400 miles away. 

Ah well, in real life the US only lost one P-38, although all the others which returned were damaged, the worst with over 100 holes in it. They also shot down both bombers, although Yamamotos Chief of Staff in the second plane survived the crash. 

Happily for freedom and democracy, it turned out that we'd downed the unfortunate Admiral in the first bomber over the jungle, so historical verity was restored. I hope he had time to get his sword out, as he did in real life.

QMG Cold War - outing number two

After the last outing, we were all keen to have a go at QMG Cold War again having now got slightly more idea how to play it. One thing I'd completely missed the first time around was that you get VPs for each army you have, rather each supply base as in the WW1 and WW2 versions. That partly explained why the Non-aligned Powers wiped the floor as they spent their actions building armies, while NATO and Warpac spent them fighting WW3!

The game board once more, this time with a very high tech looking addition. I can't for the life of me remember what we used the iPad for in the game though.

Tim had recently obtained a very budget British Generals hat, so naturally had to play NATO.

While John had acquired this rather grand original PLA hat, so played Non-aligned.

That left me with the Warpac, so in the interests of international solidarity, I wore my Castro Cap (sourced in Havana!). I also rather unfairly read the notes at the back of the rules, which suggested the best plan for Warpac was to build armies, lots and lots of armies while building up a huge hand of Espionage cards to unleash a devasating attack (as you can play as many Espionage cards at a time as you like). Well, that sounds like a plan.

In the three player version, you get one deck each, with each of the two power decks shuffled together.  Jerry advised that this worked much better than the six player game.

Mid game, and India and China seem to have expanded quite a bit while Nationalists overrun the middle and far east. At least the USSR has some troops and planes in Central Asia to stem the tide. Eagle eyed readers will spot a big blue NATO counter on the far right. That is Israel (established as a NATO ally early on by Tim).

A distinct lack of WW3 going on in 1955. NATO have Italy and a strong presence in the Balkans though. Warpac have just built armies, and lag behind in the points.  Amusingly the US has just successfully completed a manned mission to Moon.

By 1960 I had a fair crop of Espionage cards and deployed WMDs. This was one  of my carefully planned Espionage coups. A revolution in Central America, supported by an extra army build and some tactical nuclear weapons manages to take the USA. I had planned to do this in the last game but didn't get to pull it off.

This was followed in 1965 with Soviet Fleets and Air based in the USA contesting the North Atlantic. Air power drove away the allied ships and this was followed up with a Soviet Army landing in Britain! Well, that went well. To rub salt into the wounds, we launched Sputnik too. 

At the end of 1965 the scores were much closer than before. NATO lagged behind but Warpac was only a couple of points behind China/India. We called it a day there. We still don't seem to have figured out how to stop China rampaging all over Asia, but at least NATO and Warpac didn't mutually destroy each other in futile combat this time.

So, I think we are getting there slowly. It does seem to take a while to play this one and I'm not convinced we'll ever get to finish a game in an evening, but the three player game did seem to rattle along a lot faster and we had a bit  more idea what we were doing. There are some NATO and Warpac events cards which stem the Nationalist tide in Asia, but we didn't get a chance to play them.