Author: Buck

Saturday Morning

Title:  The BEF in France

Rules:  Combat Patrol™: WWII

Period: WWII

Description:  The Germans have swept through France and Belgium with dizzying speed.  Lieutenant Fotheringay and his stalwart platoon form the BEF have been assigned the unenviable task to holding a small rural crossroads to delay the German juggernaut.  Can they hold long enough for their battalion to take up defensive positions, or will they be overwhelmed?

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Saturday Afternoon

Title:  A Skirmish in France

Rules:  Combat Patrol™: WWII

Period: WWII

Description:  The Maginot Line has been outflanked and bypassed. The Germans are dashing through France to the coast.  Lieutenant Carnot and his small platoon have been tasked to hold a small rural crossroads to buy time for his battalion to form a new defensive line to the West.   Can the small band of Frenchmen hold back the German juggernaut long enough?

Notes:  Rules will be taught.  Younger gamers welcome with a participating adult.

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On Saturday, Greg and I ran two games on the same terrain.  The setting was a small French town in 1940.  The German forces were tasked to seize the town and eliminate resistance in preparation for the battalion following them.  The two scenarios were the same, but in the morning the defenders were British, and in the afternoon they were French.

The German forces were the same for both scenarios.  Two squads (dividing into two half squads) were forward ready to cross the stream.  Behind them were four Czech 38(t) tanks and two more squads in trucks.  It is subtle, but you can see that the table with the river bed is slightly shorter than the other tables to provide a look of flood plane.

The British (and French) deployment had one squad in the village (but outside the buildings), a machine-gun team in a corner of woods to cover the avenue of approach for German infantry, two Matilda II tanks, and two more half squads just to the left of this picture.  The Germans had twice as many tanks and twice as many infantrymen as the defenders.

The Germans got three unanswered shots from their 38(t)s on one of the Matilda’s, failing to penetrate with every shot.  Then the Matilda opened fire and quickly brewed up both of the 38(t)s it was facing.

After losing a tank on the German left, they advanced to the cover of a ruined building and established a support-by-fire position.  They traded fire with the British machine-gun and a half squad of infantry for several turns.

The Germans to to the town and began to close assault the defenders.  The Brits had an ATR in the second story of a building, but it bounced off the 38(t).  A Matilda finished off the last German tank.  The German infantry seized two of the four village buildings.  With the loss of their last tank, the Matilda’s could maneuver with impunity.  They backed off and began shelling the towns.  At this point, we determined that while the Germans held the town, with now support, they couldn’t hold it.  We called the game a British victory.

In the second running, with the French defenders, the Germans won.  The French lost one H-35, and the Germans lost two 38(t)s.  The Germans were able to seize all four buildings through close assault.

Both games were a lot of fun for the players, and we enjoyed running them.

Bill Acheson ran a Helm’s Deep game using the under-development feudal version of Combat Patrol.  This game uses 4″ tall figures.  he scratch-built the defenses.

Duncan Adams ran a Portuguese ambush on a French convoy in the Peninsula game using the Napoleonic supplement to Combat Patrol.

Title:  A Rieving We Will Go

Rules:  Feudal Patrol™

Period: WWII

Description:  Why work for a living when you can just take it from the farmers on the other side of the border?  Using the under-development mediaeval version of Combat Patrol™: WWII players command small bands of rievers as they clash along the English and Scottish borders to rustle cattle and sheep.

Notes:  Rules will be taught.  Younger gamers welcome with a participating adult.

Friday afternoon Greg and I ran a Border Riever game using the under-development feudal version of Combat Patrol(TM): WWII.

This game was incredibly bloody.  We started with 68 figures on the table.  The game was scheduled for four hours.  In two hours only 7 figures were left, and most of them were wounded.  The Scottish had succeeded in obtaining the relics and pushed them out of the church.

Though the game was short, I think all the players had fun, and the rules seem to be working okay.  I am still not 100% happy with the way I am representing armor.  Still, it was a fun game to play and GM.  We had a very good group of players for this game.

Title:  Sea Lion Begins

Rules:  Combat Patrol™: WWII

Period: WWII

Description:  France has fallen.  Though invasion is expected, the people of Little Basely by the Sea are nonetheless surprised when a barge full of Germans appears on the beach. The Home Guard and other auxiliaries take up arms and rush to repel them.  Will they be able to throw the Germans back into the sea, or will the Germans secure their first foothold in England?

In a continuation of our Thursday night scenario, Greg and I ran a Combat Patrol(TM): WWII game Friday morning in which the Germans landed on the coast.  We used the ending situation (with minor adjustments) as the starting point for this scenario.  The Home Guard had been badly mauled in the Thursday nigh game as had the Land Girls and the church ladies.  We reset some things a little and then had the Germans hit the beach.

The German bomber crew and few remaining Fallschirmjaegers occupied the town.  A platoon of British regulars arrived to throw them back into the sea.  The remaining Home Guard and ladies of town with improvised weapons pitched in.  The Land Girls had been wiped out Thursday night and so didn’t participate in Friday morning’s action.

The game was a lot of fun and came down to the last couple of card flips.  Unfortunately when Greg and I were resetting the scenario we forgot to remove a machine-gun from the German side, and we were part way through the scenario before we realized we had done so.  The German player took full advantage of the extra gun and really tore up the advancing British.  This skewed our play balance a bit, but the game still went well.

This game won an award from the Historicon convention staff.

Title:  HE-111 at Little Basely by the Sea

Rules:  Combat Patrol™: WWII

Period: WWII

Description:  France has fallen.  The Germans are blitzing London.  Invasion is expected any day.  Rumors of parachutists and fifth columnists are rampant.  An HE-111 has crashed at the outskirts of Little Basely by the Sea.  The Home Guard and townspeople rush to capture the crew.  The crewmen gather up their weapons and prepare to fight their way to safety.  But are the crewmen alone?

Notes:  Rules will be taught.  No booze, please.

Greg and I ran our first game of Historicon 2018, and it was a success.  The HE-111 crew crashes into a field outside Little Basely by the Sea after dropping Fallschirmjaegers nearby in preparation for the upcoming invasion.  A squad of Home Guardsmen were out on maneuvers with a squad of Regulars.  The Land Girls were out working in the fields.  The ladies of the town grab improvised weapons and have at the Germans.

At first the Fallschirmjaegers took some casualties at the hands of the ladies from the town.  First blood was spilled by a woman with a pitchfork testing to see if her “Hun roast” was done.  The Fallschirmjaegers and the bomber crew headed for the line of buildings that constitute Little Basely by the Sea’s High Street.

At this point the vanguard of the upcoming amphibious invasion hits the beaches.  An alert lady coast watcher in a bunker (blurry at the top of the image) sounds the alarm, and the squad of Regulars turns from the Fallschirmjaegers and heads for the beaches where they incapacitated about half of the squad.

The Home Guard performed valiantly.  One team headed for town and engaged in hand-to-hand combat in the Frog and Firkin pub with the Germans.  The Germans got the better end of the engagement.  The only casualty to the bomber crew was from friendly fire from one of the Fallschrimjaegers.  Captain Mainwaring lead his small headquarters forward to stop a group of Fallschirmjaegers from getting to their equipment pod, but he and his men were cut down in a tomato patch.  The final Home Guard unit boarded the small truck and maneuvered around the Germans at the beach.

It was a splendid afternoon and welcome break from drill, drill, drill for the the people of Little Basely by the Sea.  In the end, the game was determined to be a German victory as the bomber crew (and their sensitive information) remained at large.  Their only casualty came at the hands of friendly fire.

Today’s game starts where this left off.  A German landing barge will hit the beach with two Pz 38(t)’s and the rest of the infantry platoon.  More British regulars will arrive with some support weapons and a re-commissioned Rolls Royce armored car.

Then players all grasped the rules very quickly, relegating Greg and me to calling cards and answering occasional questions.  All the players seemed to grasp the “feel” of the scenario and have fun with it.  We had one player who thought “no booze please” in the event description didn’t apply to him and got wet rings on my ground cloth with his cup, but otherwise all went well, and we are looking forward to the second game this morning (Friday).  (I am no prude, but gamers who are drinking during convention games are not nearly as funny as they think they are, and they tend to disrupt the games.)  It was a good first game of the convention.

Here is a listing of the games that will be run at Historicon 2018 with Combat Patrol(TM): WWII and some of its variants.  Get into one of these games to learn more about this terrific set of rules and see how intuitive it is to play.

As with yesterday’s post, I took hundreds of pictures and videos, but only a few are presented here.

This whole trip was built around Tankfest 2018.  We had tickets for the director’s enclosure so we had an assigned area to sit and didn’t have to worry about staking out a hunk of ground early.  Nonetheless, we got up early and drove to Bovington, arriving over an hour before the gates were scheduled to open, because we didn’t know what traffic was going to be like.  The re-enactors were set up near the gate, so we got to see some of their morning activities as we waited.  Interestingly, the organizers had brought in a bucket loader to dig a trench for these Russians.

As soon as the gates opened we beelined to the tank park.  Here is where all the vehicles that were going to be driving during the day were parked and ready for the show.  This was only open for about 90 minutes, so we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss the opportunity.    What follows are a series of pictures I took in the tank park.  There were no “do not touch signs.”  In general you couldn’t climb on any of the vehicles, but you could walk up to them and fondle them.

The live portion of the show began with a demonstration of the three German Leopard tanks.

They then showed some modern British tanks and vehicles.  The next “show” was of a number of light reconnaissance vehicles.

A million years ago, when I worked briefly with the 15th/6th Queens Royal Lancers I was able to get inside one of these.

The British have a lot of light reconnaissance vehicles, while the US has never really embraced this concept in the same way.  The announcer partially explained this as a need for lighter, cheaper vehicles to police the empire, but this doesn’t really explain why the US concept doesn’t generally include these kinds of vehicles.  These would seem to be useful in the cavalry regiments in the light units.

The recon vehicles were followed by armored personnel carriers.

Then they brought out a couple of British engineering vehicles.

The engineering vehicles actually did work laying the bridge, picking up debris, and laying a fascine.

Then came my favorite part of the show, in which the WWI and early WWII tanks drove around the arena.

Click to see a video of the German A7V.

Click to see a video of the French Char B

Click to see the French FT-17 and British Mark IV

Click to see video of the Stuart and Sherman driving around the arena.

It seems to be agains the anti-sedition act of 16 something for a British historian to ever say anything good about Americans, but the announcer did a great job debunking all the myths about the Sherman and actually talked about both the Sherman and Stuart in positive ways.

And more German WWII vehicles:

The day culminated with three mock battle scenarios from WWI, WWII, and Iraq.

The presentation was unabashedly pro-British.  Some of the history presented clearly presents a British bias.  I have no problem with this.  This is the British Tank Museum on British Armed Forces Day.  Americans are pathologically self-loathing and self-destructive, so it was refreshing to see people touting their military history and accomplishments.  Actually, it was refreshing to see people who even knew anything about their history.  As the US Armor Museum is reconstituted in Columbus, GA, I hope the curators were here today seeing this for themselves.  THIS is what the new Patton Museum should be like.  The fact that the vehicles were moving I think really made this accessible for younger people in the audience without resorting to special effects or cuteness.  This was tank history in action.

This was a GREAT day, and I am very glad that we came to Bovington for Tankfest.

After breakfast in the hotel we headed for Bovington.  Friday was “preview day.”  Tankfest is officially Saturday, but getting there on Friday allowed us to see the museum and all the additional vendors brought in for the day.  Since most of the people were out watching the tanks drive around the track, the museum was pretty empty most of the day, which was great.

I took over 500 pictures on Friday, but I’ve only included 25 or so in this blog post.  That isn’t really enough time to even hit the highlights.  Suffice to say, it was a great day.  We took our time, read all the signs, had a chance to talk to some of the reenactors, and just immerse ourselves in the development of tanks.  It is really cool to see in person tanks you have only seen in pictures.  It really gives you a sense of scale.  The small tanks are really small, and the large tanks are really large.  The magnitude of the differences really hits home when you get to see them in person, stand next to them, and touch them.

The initial exhibit traces the development of tanks in WWI.  I think we spent more than 90 minutes in just this section of the museum.

In many cases, there were glass windows cut into the WWI tanks so you could look inside them.  In other cases you could walk through them.

After the WWI exhibit, you enter the Hall of Tigers, dedicated to Tiger Tanks.

After the Hall of Tigers, we entered the WWII floor.  Again, I took over 500 photos, but I am only including a few.  It is very difficult to imagine the size of the museum and all the really investing vehicles on display.

Then we entered my favorite part of the museum, the Hall of Tanks.  This traces the early development of the tank (on the left) through the Cold War (on the right).  There are a number of displays that allow you to view archival footage of many of the vehicles.  Note that despite this being Tankfest weekend, the crowds were low inside the museum.

One of the interesting displays what was not here last year is a display of tank concepts throughout history.  There were probably 30 on display, but I only provide pictures of two here.

There are a number of visiting, refurbished or reproduction tanks on the display, including those pictured.  Most of these are supposed to be driving around the track on Saturday.

There were a number of re-enactment groups set up around the periphery.  Some of the groups were very happy to interact with you.  Others seemed somewhat standoffish.

An thus ended our first day at Tankfest.  After an uneventful ride back to Poole, we had dinner in a local gastropub, watched a couple episodes of Hogan’s Heroes, and went to bed relatively early.

The next morning we checked out of our hotel, left our bags at the front desk, and got on the train.  Our intent was to hit the Churchill Cabinet War Rooms, the Imperial War Museum, and (if time permitted) the National Army Museum.  After an uneventful tube right to Westminster, we headed for the War Rooms only to find out that the wait was over two hours and that we should have booked our tour ahead.  I have been here before, and there has never been a wait, but apparently the recent Churchill movie has made the War Rooms immensely popular.  So we walked to the Imperial War Museum.

The Imperial War Museum is free.  The lowest floor is mostly WWI, and it is quite well done.  It hadn’t changed — that I could tell — since I was here with my family last Summer, but it is nonetheless very nice.  I took a WWI class at West Point, and it is hard for Americans to grasp the impact of WWI on the British and the Commonwealth, where almost an entire generation was killed in France.

We had planned to spend 90 minutes here and then head to the National Army Museum.  After two hours we had just completed the WWI section.  We decided to take the short, guided tour.  This tour highlighted displays on the first three levels of the museum.

The tour was short but informative.

After a short break for lunch in the cafe, we had about 45 minutes to take in some of the other exhibits before heading back to Paddington and our hotel to pick up our bags.

This was one of the more interesting displays for me, since I just bought one for gaming hypothetical Sea Lion scenarios.  It fired a 6-lb armor piercing shell that was useful out to 50 meters and an HE (anti personnel) shell out to a couple hundred meters.  When tipped on its side, the lower wheel became the traverse mechanism and the upper wheel provided some overhead protection.

So, we had intended to stay 90 minutes.  After four hours we hadn’t seen everything, but we had to get on the road.  We took the Great Western Railway train to Burnham where after another short walk (to Don’s dismay) we arrived at Enterprise to hire a car.  Most of us packed lightly, but Eric brought a steamer trunk, so I was a bit worried about whether we were going to fit.  While I filled out the paperwork, Duncan, Eric, and Don Tetrised our stuff into the boot.  I have to say that driving on the left side of the road is much easier the second time around.  In two hours we arrived in Poole and checked into our hotel.

In London at the Mitre House, we could barely fit into the room, but the room here at the Holiday Inn Express in Poole was quite spacious.  We then took a mile walk to the seaside where we had our choice of several pubs and restaurants for dinner — along with some football hooligans.  We got to bed quite later (nearly 2300 GMT).

On the way back to the hotel, we passed this statue of Lord Baden Power, the greater of Boy Scouts.

 

Last year, I came to England with my family, and we had a great time.  A highlight for me was a visit to the Tank Museum in Bovington.  As with many museum visits, my family patiently put up with Bovington for a couple of hours and then kept hinting that it was time to leave.  So, I suggested that some of my wargaming buddies and I should head to England for Tankfest at Bovington and while there visits to some other military history museums.  Candy did the lion’s share of the work to pull this together.

Our first, very, very long day involved the flight to London, train to Paddington Station, and check in at our hotel.  The we took a somewhat eventful tube ride to Greenwich.  I didn’t realize how far apart the North Greenwich and Greenwich tub stops were or that we had to transfer to the DLR.  Then none of the locals could tell us how to get a bus ticket to complete the trip. So after a little floundering, we arrived at the Maritime Museum.

The Maritime Museum is free.  We spent about two hours here, and we were able to see most of what was on display.

I found this model of a WWI-era motor torpedo boat very interesting.  A few years ago I wrote a set of wargaming rules for motor torpedo boat games in WWII.  I knew there were motor torpedo boats in WWI, but I had never seen one.  I am not sure how the torpedo was launched since it is facing into the boat, but I suspect the propellors were wound up, the torpedo was dropped, and the boat veered quickly to the side.

After the Maritime Museum, we decided to visit the Cutty Sark, which was once the fastest ship in the world.

We entered the Cutty Sark in the cargo hold, visited the tween deck, walked the main deck, and visited some of the cabins.

The ship was interesting, and there were some nice informational signs.  There were no docents to help explain things or answer questions.  Unlike the Constellation in Baltimore, there was not audio self-guided tour.  At 13 GBP, I thought there would be more explanation, but it was nonetheless a worthwhile experience.

After the Cutty Sark, we stopped in a pub for dinner.  We were all beginning to run out of steam.

In an effort to get our bodies on Greenwich Mean Time, we decided to attend a play in the Globe theater in London before returning to our hotel.  We saw the Shakespearean play A Winter’s Tale.  We were all fading, so  keeping up with the rapid, Elizabethan dialog and the proper accents was something of a challenge, particularly since I didn’t know the play. Last time in the Globe I saw The Taming of the Shrew, which is one of my favorite Shakespearean plays, and I liked that better, but it is always interesting to attend a play in the Globe.

This concluded day one.  We went back to our hotel after a longish walk along the Embankment to Waterloo Station and a short train ride to Paddington.  All the old timers said they had had enough walking.  Duncan’s fit bit measured us at nearly 18k steps.