Vasco Da Gama - 9th June 2010

The depleted rivals settled down to another evening of one of the Christmas games which has proved quite popular. The clever mechanism of pre-selecting your actions ala Agricola/Caylus but with the added complexity of each action having an order of execution, makes for an interesting, if occasionally headache inducing, game! As usual, Deej was able to spot the weaknesses in everyone else's game plan and Kieron made another fatal error in the final round by not placing a token on the expedition slots in time before they were filled up. Final scores Deej 100, Kieron 85, Orhan 74

D-Day: Sword Beach - 6 June 2010

Another trip to Jonathan's games room for a big World War II scenario. Sword Beach was the code name of one of the five main landing beaches in Operation Neptune, which was the initial assault phase of Operation Overlord (the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944). Stretching 8 km from Ouistreham to Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer it was the farthest east of the landing points and around 15 km from Caen. The initial landings were achieved with low casualties, but the British forces ran into heavily defended areas behind the beachhead. The British landings were the only Allied sectors that faced attack by German Panzer Divisions on 6 June 1944.

The defending Germans were played by Jonathan and another Jonathan. The invading Brits were Adrian and James. The ruleset was Rapid Fire, which made for a smooth and fluid game, getting through 22 turns over the course of the day.

Jonathan had set up his excellent home-made D-Day tiles covering about 8 by 10 feet, chock-full of scenery.

The British landed between Ouistreham...

 and La Brèche d'Hermanville, both heavily fortified with bunkers and barbed wire.

The British invaded in ten waves, arriving in odd numbered turns and landing in the following turn.

The first turns were spent clearing the beaches of mines whilst trying to avoid German artillery strikes.

There were a few initial losses to mines on the beach and artillery, including destroying one of the British flails.

Adrian successfully repaired one of his tanks...

...and then made great progress against La Brèche...

The beach was soon full of landing craft and advancing infantry and armour...

James took the indirect approach to Ouistreham leading the charge with his fearless bulldozer, which trampled the barbed wire whilst dud panzerfaust shots pinged off its shovel.

The British airborne who dropped in on the Germans holding the Orne bridge put up a valiant effort but were eventually overrun by reinforcing Germans.

British tanks were soon making headway inland...

...but German Panzers were arriving down the Caen road...

Repairing tanks as he went, Adrian pushed on and engaged the Panzers, scoring some good strikes.  On the left, James used his engineers to take out the bunkers in Ouistreham and started taking the bunkers further inland.

At the end of turn 22, the British had taken the two towns and several bunker positions, and were fighting hard for the ridge.  Although there were a further 10 turns remaining in the scenario, the British had achieved a minor victory.

The liberation of  Europe from Nazi occupation had begun.  The forcefield protection provided to the British by Toby's Bionicles may have helped...

Lastly, the now-obligatory video footage...just 1m30s but with a classic comment from Jonathan at the end (although unfortunately MovieMaker insists on saving my widescreen footage as 4:3).

(Embedded YouTube script won't work if you're reading this in e-mail, so click the link at the end to read this in your browser).

Field of Glory, Babylon v Assyria, 2 June 2010

Half-term games saw Adrian and David's Neo-Babylonians take on Orhan and Kieron's Neo-Assyrians in a re-match following an extra Bank Holiday Monday FoG session. In that game Adrian and Deej demonstrated an uncanny ability to throw a '1' for every death roll leading to a pasting at Orhan's hands. So this time the Babylonians sacked their pathetic Median allies and instead hired an Inspirational Commander and more bowmen. They were also bolstered in that, aside from one general (Rameses on loan) and the baggage, the rest of the army was newly painted and ready to go.

Babylon got to invade and opted for hilly territory to try to negate some of the advantage that the Assyrians had with their greater and more powerful mounted wing. Pretty much all the terrain (lots of Brush) fell on the Babylonian side. The middle picture shows the Assyrians after their first move - their medium foot and psiloi advancing against the Archers in the Babylonian centre and their mounted manoeuvring to their right to mass against the Babylonian Guard cavalry and chariots (the third picture shows the Babylonian start position).

The centres clashed first, Orhan seeking to screen his chariots from Babylonian massed bowfire. Whether it was slightly poorer dice rolls, or the effect of the Babylonian IC, or the greater number of bowmen that Adrian could bring to bear, the Assyrian light and medium foot died in droves. A couple of units of Assyrian psiloi were beaten off, another Assyrian archer regiment went fragged and decided to turn 180 degrees to march out of trouble. Alas for them, Adrian passed the CMT to allow his Disrupted medium foot to charge them in the rear, routing them and setting off panic attacks elsewhere in the Assyrian centre. To the left Orhan and Kieron's massed Elite Cavalry and chariots clashed with the Babylonian guards and chariots. Under the massive weight of top quality mounted and three generals one guard unit and the Babylonian chariots broke, but not before the other Guard unit broke an Assyrian chariot unit in return. Accelerating through to the final cohesion tests, other Assyrian units broke to give the Babylonians victory through an army break - 7 out of 14 units Broken and another Fragged v 2 units broken for Babylon. (Final photo is at the top, Nabopolasser the Inspirational leading his archer and hoplite regiments through the broken Assyrian centre, a unit of their heavy chariots fleeing at top left...).

In post-mortem we concluded that the Assyrians probably should have held back a little with their medium foot allowing their well-manoeuvred cavalry to try to gain a victory. That would have forced the Babylonians to get their heavy foot into combat instead of being served up Assyrian archers on a plate. We'll probably stick with the IC and perhaps try to afford another unit of Medium Foot bowmen with front rank spear - since they have performed consistently well in practice games.