World in Flames via FB - 22

 The bad weather continues.

AUSGAME 2020 1941 – N/D 41 EOT and a New Year 1942

Another abbreviated summary of last week’s session:

Notable events N/D 41:

• The weather worsened 7 +2 (9) rolled.

• 1 impulse played – Axis rolled EOT – initiative shifts down +1 Axis.

• The GERM a Naval and subs sail cutting the CW conv link.

• Japan Combined and took Honk Kong.

• Manchurian Front Russia rails ARM and MECH Corps back to the West to the GERM Border.

• GERM SCS Bismarck fleet engages Royal Navy both find, CW CA and Graf Spee sunk 1 for 1.

• EOT rebase CW strips Conv back and has to spend saved oil in UK.

• Part Roll = 1 - No Partisans – a reprieve for Japan.

• Morocco Liberated and handed back to the Free French – FF CBV is placed on the Production Spiral to arrive next turn – Free France is back in the game.

Notable events J/F 42:

• Allies win the first initiative roll of the year, hoping for a trend, but with the bad weather they hand it to the Axis – Axis go first.

• Weather worsens 9 + 2 (11) Blizzard just about everywhere.

• Axis take naval Moves, Italy no cost combined.

• Japan aligns Siam – no interest from the US Senate.

• Conv war hots up – GERM U boats sink 3 Conv, dam 3 and abort 3 – Faroes’s gap now empty, 1 UBoat X’d in the Norwegian sea hunting for the Norwegian supply Conv.

• This last impulse saw lots of 2’s and 7’s rolled for searches by both sides – with both sides finding with 2’s or completely missing both on 7’s.

• The GERM Raider Atlantis missed its search and remained out at sea – now the hunter becomes the hunted. The 'Big Sisters' Tirpitz and Bismarck sail into the North Sea to challenge the Royal Navy.

• A large Jap Fleet (Strike) w 2 x CVs fail to find a lone CW CA in the Bay of Bengal (rain).

• The Italians continue to leave Italy in droves by train to garrison the French/W European coast and Norway!

• GERM build O Points in prep for the Russian offensive, Japan builds its excellent L/Range Zeros.

• Vichy France has built Roads in Tunisia to link up the north African railways to help with supply – nice use of Vichy BPs – helps keep N African Axis forces in supply.

• Allies are building Marines, para’s and Tpt Acft.

• Italy Nav air and Cons as they are critically low at only 4 left.

• Russian build doubles with the .25 increment for 42 and annual increase – Stalin well pleased.

• All other nations gain a .25 increment as the War industry winds up.

Summary.

Another marginal session for the Axis, EOT roll with Axis starting and ending shifts the initiative towards the allies by one – Russia is happy with that. Bonus for the Axis is that the CW has to use its UK ‘saved’ oil to max its production – still has plenty in Canada though. The Conv war of attrition is hotting up as both Conv and Subs are lost. The J/F bad weather reduces options for either side. The Allies gave up the first turn, one bad weather just in case the Axis roll EOT then the initiative will shift another +1 towards the Allies – this may be important for 42 Barbarossa.

In the Pacific both the US and Japan face off against each other as neither have significant advantage over each other, Japan is waiting for its L/Range Ftrs and the US its ‘Red’ CVs. Japan is on the back foot as Rabaul, Batavia, Singapore and Kwajalein are all in Allied hands. The good news for the Japs is that Russia has stopped its land ops in Russia as it focusses on the Russian front and its garrison.

In Europe the defence of N Africa has begun, the Axis await the impending DOW by Russia (US?) and Russia awaits the impending DOW by Germany – seems fair. Russia’s main effort at the moment is the destruction of the 2 factor (4 in the Mtn) Partisan in the oil city of Bandar Shahpur.

Next, Allied first impulse bad weather – will the US DOW GERM, has taken no entry actions since war with Japan – must be getting close. With bad weather everywhere – the action will focus on naval Ops. With a +3 on the weather and impulse marker it will be a very short turn.

Bismark

Tirpitz - the Big sisters sail to challenge Royal Navy supremacy

JF 1942 All the way USA

N/D 1941 Losses - mixed bag

S Arabia still in CW control

Note red counter south of Aden is a Norwegian Tpt

Central pacific - a green sea

The Chinese line stabilised now that Hong Kong and the Partisans have been 'cleaned up'.

The Far East - Japan's 'sphere of influence'

The Russian Front - Russia is about to step back from the frontier I suspect

1942 Losses - and so it begins the war of attrition a Sub for 3 Conv Points

Russia has set its line in Manchuria as it now focuses on the Russian Front

Yep I think we can call this a US Theatre.

The W Med - Morocco handed over to the Free French and the march East along the E - w rail line

The western Front and the German 'Big Sisters' come out to play in the bad weather.

The western Front and the German 'Big Sisters' come out to play in the bad weather.

Nations At War

Simon put on this game using his 1/300th kit to demonstrate how what was originally a boardgame, has been adapted to give a decent miniatures game.  It reminded me a bit of Blitzkrieg commander.  It certainly was intuitive.  We got about half  the scenario done which was a German attack on some British paras holding a town somewhere in Holland.  I was the Germans.  Simon did warn me that in previous playthroughs of this scenario the Germans had a hard time of it.

British Paras are holding the town with a relief force on its way.

There is a German panzer company, recon company and reduced infantry battalion 

determined to stop them.

The German infantry engage to town's defenders,

hoping to pin them down.

The Germans are not keen to leave the cover of the woods.

The German recon company redeploys to tackle the town,

avoiding a charge across the open.

The panzers go hull down and try to hold off the British relief force.

The panzers have the edge, but not the numbers.

Top down view. 

Recon force is battling the town,

but British reinforcements have arrived.

A promising system.  Would work well with hexes (and that actually is a hex mat we are playing on, but very subtle).  Something I can try out with one of my hex mats and my 15mm gear.

Red Star White Eagle - Campaign Part 7 and Peace

Richard and I brought (and have also both bought) this great game to a successful conclusion.

The West Front launches another offensive, 

aiming to cut off Polish supply and drive them into internment in Germany

It got off to a good start.

But Polish supply was not really at risk and they had reserves to deal with the penetration.

The Soviets pull back, while sending reinforcements to the Mozyr front (eastern end of the marshes)

The Soviets holding the central marshes impedes Polish ability to join their armies for a decisive blow.

Konarmiya withdraws, sent off somewhere to fight the White Russians.

But regardless the Soviets aren't letting the Poles get close.

However the Poles attack West Front.

But the Soviet South West Front strikes back.

What will the Poles do now?

Clear the marshes.

The Soviet West Front counterattacks.

The Polish offensive is blunted.

A defense of Kiev is developed using the gamey device of knowing how long the game has to go

and making sure the equivalent number of hexes are between the enemy and the victory location.

The Poles try outflanking Kiev's defenses.

The last bit of Soviet aggression.

This seems to be very close to the starting position...

The Poles pullback.

The war now moves to the peace table.

The Soviets ended with 10 Vps, the Poles with 28.  That just put the Poles into "Major Victory"level, but with the optional rule requiring the Soviets to have made an attack on Warsaw (which I came no where close to) the Victory Level becomes "Crowning". 

So Lenin again fails to conquer Europe.

Fascinating game, I'm looking forward to playing it again.

Ten Years After

While the name of a band (with reference to Elvis Presley having been dead or flipping burgers for ten years), which I was erroneously calling Ten Years Gone (which is a song by Led Zeppelin) who had a song I particularly like One of These Days (which I used to think was called Coming Down the Road or Red Dress), not to be confused with These Days by Joy Division or a similarly named song by Powder Finger, the title of this post is actually celebrating that I've been a blogger for ten years.  A decade (now there is a great Joy Division song Decades).

My first post was a naif intro in December 2010.  Serious blogging started in January 2011.

It's nice to see that my first post referenced Perth's great wargamming shop Tactics.

Most of the posts are about figures that were broken in my move to Perth.

With one exception they are all 1/72nd (or thereabouts) scale.

The only post that has a unit that is still employed is the one on IR 43 Graf Thum which was created using 15mm Essex figures and is part of my Napoleonic Austrian army that I am still actively building.

The Airfix Ancient Britons are still live I guess (recalling that I planned to use them against some 25mm figures Mark B has recently become reacquainted with).  But this would be Basic Impetus not DBA.

More general observations:

I averaged one post a week until I retired when I hit an average of two posts per week.

2017 was my busiest year which I attribute to playing War Between the States (both face to face and solo on Vassal).

Most used labels are Boardgames (400), Ancients (285), WW2 (414) and Napoleonic (324).

The only other labels to break the ton are Napoleon's Battles (158) and GMT (141), not surprising given the popularity of the Boardgames and Napoleonic labels.

I have made 1439 posts.

There have been 393577 views, but I attribute them to mainly Russian bots, although Google is telling me now that the bulk of my traffic is from Sweden. Zero traffic from China.

No idea of most popular post as Google doesn't seem to provide that info any more :-(

Just in time for Lock Down

Picked these up on Friday just ahead of the notification of a three day lock down here in Perth (I know we are having it easy compared to most places - and we want to keep it that way!).  They were part of a joint order I did with Richard who had discovered this manufacturer of relatively obscure WW2 kit, printed in 3D.  From the displayed photos things looked okay, but you never can be too sure...

Very happy to say these models from Battlefield3d are just magnificent, certainly exceeding expectations and proving to be very nice indeed.  My first real foray into acquiring 3D printed models.  I've been impressed by what people have done locally, but hadn't really found the excuse to get some of my own.

203mm Howitzer, Komintern Artillery Tractor, BT-7 and T26-4 76mm

Lancia 3Ro 6x4 Command Truck and three Autoblinda Fiat-Ansaldo AB40s

Krupp Protze kfz-19 radio command car and Panzer 38(t)

It was this little guy that really got my attention.

Little assembly is required and clean up is minimal, although I now see with the photographic enlargement I can do some extra work removing a few nubs.  The resin is easy to work with.

Warsaw 1920 by Adam Zamoyski

Almost a source book for the boardgame Red Star White Eagle, this book is a highly engaging, well written description of the campaign.  It came to me highly recommend and it did not disappoint.

The supplied maps help to keep track of the various actions and their locations, although I think having the map for Red Star White Eagle in front of you, along with the counter mix, would be a better aid.  

The multitude of armies and their generals was a bit challenging to manage, but provided I paid attention I found it generally easy to work out who was who.

This is a fascinating period of history, particularly military history, coming on the tail of the fixed position WW1 fronts (at least from the Western perspective) to what was a very fluid war in 1920 with the Soviet invasion of newly reformed Poland. The 1920 war is perhaps just as dynamic as the opening of Barbarossa some twenty years later in terms of kilometres covered.

Red Star White Eagle - Campaign Part 6

 The game has entered a new phase.

West Front attacks and retakes Grodno on the Nieman River

South West Front keeps its distance.

Konarmiya, which makes up the bulk of South West Front, has to be withdrawn soon.

Any losses would have to be made up out of Soviet reserves,

so much better to keep it intact.

The Poles attack the northern flank of West Front.

In the south they also keep their distance.

West Front pulls back, abandoning Grodno.

The Polish attack had been costly to them,

but they have plenty of attacking power and mobility.

The Polish forces start to advance.

Supply is not so critical in this game.

The forces are not mechanized and much fighting is with the bayonet and sabre.

The Soviet pull back, eh um retreat, continues.

This is reported as a great victory in Moscow.

Unlike the Soviets, whose two Fronts can not cross the centre line.

the Polish forces can freely cooperate.

So the Poles have moved on Mozyr (eastern end of the marshes) and also into Lithuania.

(we have found out the Lithuanians were giving the Soviets a bit too much support) 

Early Khalifs versus Sassanids

I can now field another Islamic Expansion army with which to fight Mark B's Sassanids.

Eleven units versus eight.

Doesn't seem fair...

Immediately the Sassanid fire power finds its mark.

And it only gets worse as we close to contact on Turn Two.

You'd think with a nice big target like an elephant my archers wouldn't miss,

they never hit a thing!

Turn Four and the fanatics have wiped out one unit of enemy cavalry.

However the Khalif's cavalry is having a hard time, 

but at least the archers were able to pull back ready for another shot at the elephants.

Now it's getting interesting.

The Arab general has been lost.

The elephants have taken out the hopeless archers,

but at least the Arabs are now attacking both flanks.

Turn Six and things are a bit messy.

Units on both sides are trying to redeploy.

Both sides are approaching their breakpoints.

And it all ends in a draw.

Another excellent game of Basic Impetus 2.0