BKC Eastern Front - 29 October 2018

There was quite a furore last year following the publication of BKC version 3.  Pendraken bought the rights from the author of version 1 and 2 but took ages to release their update and the changes, particularly to the army lists, were not well received.  After waiting months for the promised re-write, Andy and I finally got our money back at Salute this year.  Version 4 is reportedly in advanced preparation and release is planned for Christmas.  We'll see.

In the meantime, we went back to version 2 for an early WW2 game Andy arranged between Germany and Russia, utilising a dedicated approx 4x4ft board that Andy had painted along with recently purchased buildings and hedgerows.

Andy's Russians were defending the town and had to hold off James' German blitzkrieg.  James advanced tanks to line-of-sight of the town's defenders and starting the attack, supported by devastating mortars on the hill.

German infantry were transported on the other flank, before dismounting and making an assault on the town via a swamp.

The Germans were supported by a Stuka which did some damage to Russian troops in the town before being taken out by some sharp shooting by the Russian command unit.

It was James' third Command Blunder that actually did him some good - one of his commands had to advance full move towards the nearest enemy.  This resulted in a pretty effective Close Assault on the Russia defenders. 

At the end of the seventh turn, the town was being cleared of Russians but the Russian reinforcements were holding the ford behind the village, so a minor victory for the Germans.

We managed with the rules reasonably well - still a struggle to find the thing you're looking for but it didn't hold us up too much.  We won't rush to buy version 4 until we've seen how it goes down on the Pendraken forum.  Good to get the tanks out on the table again!

The fall of Singapore - 26 May 2015

Andy hosted a BKC game this week, having been up until 3am that morning painting the remainder of Kieron's Japanese army.  Adrian and James were the British in Singapore (in and around the buildings at the near edge of the table below), with Kieron (supported by Andy) as the invading Japanese.

James scheduled some well-timed attacks with his Hurricane which decimated one of Kieron's commands as it advanced across the table.  Andy had two lucky escapes on the other side of the board.

But Kieron's pair of planes retaliated by a relentless bombardment of James' troops in the buildings.

Whilst Andy and Adrian fought in and around the jungle on the far left of the battlefield.

Both the British and Japanese lost a division in the battle, but the Japanese had occupied buildings by the end of the evening, and a minor victory was assured.

BKC Reboot - 30 December & 20 January

Andy and I finally got round to trying to get back into Blitzkrieg Commander in the Christmas break.  We thought we'd ease ourselves into it gently using the BKC Lite ruleset.  This was a mistake.  We got quite confused about the rules we remembered, and what we could find in the Lite ruleset and in the main rules.  We compiled a set of questions as we played which I posted later on the BKC forum and they were promptly answered by the author of the rules.  The key thing we learned was that the Lite ruleset was based on version 1 of the rules not the revised 2nd version we had been using.  So ditch the Lite ruleset if you have one.

In the first game, Andy's Italians were defending a town from James' British.

James' schoolboy error was putting his fastest tanks ahead of his slowest tanks, so they didn't get held up.  But the slowest tanks were also the strongest, so they took a while to get into the action.

They eventually arrived and the engineers started very very slowly to clear a path through the minefield, given the suppressing fire laid down by the Italians.

We were trying the standard rules where hits are removed at the end of each round, so there was little destruction although lots of suppression.  As time wore on, the British tanks on the left flank made a mad rush through the minefield.  Only a couple made it... but then discovered Andy had secreted a flamethrowing tank inside one of the buildings.  But by that time, most of the Italian infantry had been destroyed or chased out of most of the town.  We decided on a draw in the end - the Italians would lose the town, but not within the number of turns to achieve even a minor victory.

The scenario for the second game was that the British had occupied the fortified area of the town but the Italians had been reinforced and were about to counter-attack.  James made full use of the 25% allowed for fortifications...

Andy kicked off with some air sorties (the RAF gamely lending him a plane to replace the one left at home) but the close concentration of command bases shooting at the aeroplane meant it was often scared off and eventually shot down.

Andy's tactic was a delayed flank attack with a stronger force after softening up the British with a frontal attack.  This was met (and decimated) by mortar fire - although we realised afterwards the mortars should not have been so effective, causing hits only on rolls of a 6.

The Italians kept up the bombardment from a distance, striking at any British tank that dared to leave the safety of its pit.

Eventually, the flank march was brought on and, much to James' surprise, the Italians appeared to have been reinforced by a few German tanks.

There was a fierce firefight across the minefield.  With this game we were using the optional rule where hits remain on units, so there were many more losses across both forces.  Andy again caused devastation with his flamethrower units which James will try to recognise earlier next time.  But the Italians failed to evict the British from the town and their losses were such that this game resulted in a minor British victory.

With the clarifications from the forum and the accumulation of hits across rounds, the second game played more swiftly and it was a lot of fun.  Continuing the campaign approach, the next scenario planned is for the Italians to intercept a small British force coming to reinforce the town.

Operation Comet - 5 October 2013

Just over three years since Jonathan and James wargamed the Arnhem battle over two days (see blog entry for write-up, photos and video), Jonathan had put together another impressive table of figures, vehicles, buildings and scenery for us to play Operation Comet.

Prior to Operation Market Garden, Montgomery had suggested Operation Comet, a limited airborne coup de main operation that was to be launched on 2 September 1944.  Comet envisioned using the 1st Airborne Division, along with the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, to secure several bridges over the River Rhine to aid the Allied advance into the North German Plain.  The Divisional Headquarters for the 1st Airborne Division, with the 1st Airlanding Brigade and the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade were to land at Nijmegen, 1st Parachute Brigade was to land at Arnhem, and 4th Parachute Brigade was to land at Grave.  However several days of poor weather and Montgomery's concerns over increasing levels of German resistance caused him to postpone the operation and then cancel it on 10 September.

So to find out what would have happened, Jonathan and James attacked Nijmegen, which was being defended by Kieron and Orhan.

The Brits had to capture the bridge at Grave and the road bridge at Nijmegen (on right) and then attempt to control the road in between to enable ground troops to drive eastwards.  They had two main landing zones and a drop zone, but also dropped a glider each right next to the bridge objectives.

Jonathan's glider troops got shot up by the 88, which was then unsuccessfully close assaulted by those left.  The remaining soldier found refuge and kept his head down - but kept a British presence near the bridge.

James' first wave of parachutists landed but got decimated by Orhan's troops (only a training battalion but sadly still very capable of rolling sixes most of the time).

Fortunately, there were two more waves but Orhan's troops ensured that British progress was very slow.  But the glider landing near the Grave bridge was successful, and once the 88 and 20mm pieces were neutralized, the bridge was taken.

Soon, German reinforcements were arriving from the Fatherland, firstly half-tracks which made a bliztkreig attack by driving right up to British infantry and then engaging in close assaults.

This was followed by a Panzer IV, and the British defensive line south of Nijmegen started to get worn down.

Kieron's German reinforcements had less effect - they arrived into a farmhouse complex, and were rapidly hit by Jonathan's mortars and pressed into a defensive position.  Jonathan's troops had dug in around the village of Beek and along the hedgerows - although they themselves were thinned out by German off-table artillery.

The German reinforcements started to push the British defensive line apart.

We didn't play very quickly and got to turn 6 of the 8 turns in Day 1 (so Day 2's reinforcements didn't even get a look in...).

One of the British Jeeps made a last dash towards the Nijmegen road bridge, getting as far as the cross-roads in the centre of town.

The battle had swung back and forward all day.  There wasn't a clear victory.  The Brits had taken the Grave bridge and many of the buildings in the town, but the Germans still occupied the factory and killed many of the paras occupying buildings in the final turn.  There were still a lot of paras on the edge of Nijmegen but could they take the final bridge and town by nightfall?

The Germans were hanging on in Nijmegen and their reinforcements from Germany had changed the position south of the town significantly.  But tomorrow morning would bring British armour and reinforcements from the West.  Would they save the day or would the Germans ensure this was a bridge too far?

Here's a short video showing the table at the end of the game.

Blitzkrieg Commander: Counter-Attack - 30 April 2011

A counter-attack desert scenario with 3000 points (plus 10% thanks to the die roll) of British (commanded by James and Kieron) vs 2000 points (less 10%) of Germans (commanded by Andy).

Despite the scenario, Andy engineered himself a strong defensive position by placing a town on his right flank, some great scratch-built salt marshes on the left, and an oasis to stick his troops in.

Even more surprising was that the German attacking force I was counter-attacking turned out to be all infantry and guns!  The British tanks pushed through the small dry paths in the marshes, and the infantry in their trucks pressed on forwards in the centre, but were no match for the range and effectiveness of the German guns.

However, the British had significant off-table artillery assets and rained down successive barrages on the German positions around the oasis...

...and the scrub around the commands and guns...

British reserve tanks slowly entered the table but again got beaten up by German guns.  But after three turns, the Germans had taken so much damage from the artillery barrages that the battlegroup broke.  The British had achieved their major objective (earning them 3 Victory Points) but the Germans had achieved their minor objective of inflicting >25% casualties (earning them 2 VPs).  But the large difference in size of the armies meant that British casualties were still more than that of the Germans, earning the Germans a further Victory Point.  With the same number of Victory Points, the scenario was a draw - the British had broken the Germans but at too great a loss to their own troops and armour.

We had some extreme command rolls in this game.  In turn 2, the British CO rolled a double-6, a command blunder, and in turn 3, this feat was repeated by another British HQ commander.  The Germans had much better luck, with Andy managing to roll two double-1s on the trot during turn 2, giving him an extra two rounds of shelling that turn.

Main lesson: we need more terrain to break up the lines of sight or else every game is going to be German guns take out the Brits before they get close enough to fire back!  I helped myself to some roof insulation out of a skip last week so I'll shape that up to give us some dunes.

Show and Tell: More 8th Army aircraft

I found a cheap 1/144 plastic model of a P40N Warhawk on eBay that came pre-painted as the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force.

The Warhawk was also used by the British and known as a Kittyhawk, so I repainted it in North Africa camo and used some of the left over transfers from my Hurricane set.

Attack Tabrooken (the German perspective) - 2 April 2011

Somewhere in the desert December 1942 again my fox cubs have tracked down those English Tommies. They have decided to hideaway in a small hillside town of Tabrukan.They think they are safe in their little hideaway but we have ways to make them runaway.

We quickly make a recce of their positions, this should be quite easy, I will attack their strongest position, then when they weaken their other flank I will strike there.

As you can see the centre is very strong, with Mine fields to the centre and this backed up by tank pits. So the strongest position is the left hand side. Here I will attack first.

At the start of the game I call in my 150mm guns and target the biggest gun position, this has no effect so I now decide to bring my troops on, I have 4 commands. 51units in all.

• My first move was to see me attempt to bring all 4 commands on but one failed, this was because their briefing took a little longer as they were stock piling shells. Anyway Command 1 just came on and held their ground apart from the IG shelling one of the pommies gun emplacements. The second command came on but were very slow as they didn’t have trucks for the infantry. The 3^rd command cam on and immediately started to charge down the left flank, moving twice until their dice role failed. The Tiger moved just once then started blasting the 2Ider. Just the one hit, remember you need a 6 to hit in an emplacement & 6 to stagger. 4^th command failed to come on. FAO decided to bring the air strike in with both Stukas with 5 commands & air defence firing, both Stukas were shot down, how lucky can James be!!!!!!

• Move 2 Next I decided to use the FOA from command 2 to rain shells down on the Tommies, after 3 salvoes the dice failed, this left the 2Ider and the 6Ilder with both having 2 hits each, The 2nd command moved forward very slowly as they hadn’t the trucks. Command 1 raced forward with trucks and half tracks while the IG 150mm started firing on the infantry on the left. Command 3 again succeeded in moving 3 times and is now racing down the left flank and the Tiger has started taking a liking to the Grant in its pit, Twice the Tiger has 2 hits, which takes care of the Grant. But James decides to Bring his FAO into the action but with very little success, the first go misses all the vehicles but the second salvo manes to destroy 1 half track and the engineers and also inflicts 2 casualties on the FOA & the command unit.

This was the high point in the game for the FAO as after this he failed time after time to achieve anything, actually he was bloody useless on that motorcycle. By now the 4^th Command had arrived, moved once and then started opening up on the 2 pdr pit, creating 2 more casualties.

• Move 3 James uses his FAO to no effect but opens up on my infantry in command 4, which leaves 2 casualties, gaining good shooting practice from this he then bounced a shell off one of the half tracks in Command one before destroying a truck full of infantry. Mindful of the need to keep my infantry fresh I decided to reek revenge after firstly calling back the trucks and infantry. Command 1 the IG 150mm carried shelling the infantry, the FAO from command 4 moved forward to get a better sighting of the Tommies position and then brought the rain, salvo after salvo now came their way, actually 4 salvos from this FAO, Command 3 FAO brought another 2 salvos and the Brits lost both the 2dr & the 6pdr. The trucks and halftracks of this command were getting ever closer to the Brits flank.

• Move 4 Corporal James again request his FAO do something and again this failed, the only option was to get the HQ to order the barrage and for the last time my Foxes took some damage 2 hits to a half track, 1 of which was saved, 2 hits to both the command and the FAO and 1 hit to Captain Henchels Panzer III. This action has stalled the attack on the left flank. So again the FAO now only 80yards from the Tommy infantry, brings more rain, being so close you can select with some impunity.
• and this he does and the infantry of Pom land start to take casualties including killing one Tank commander. Command 4 has now moved up onto a small plato, then succeeds in firing as the next move, they open fire with 3 mortars which means they roll 9 dice and again the Tommys take more casualties.

• Move 5 Corporal James requests more artillery barrages but again the FAO fails he is now being chased down by Captain Henchel in the Panzer III, The Tommys take the decision to move the infantry on their left flank but they seem to scared to move and refuse the order. To further support their right flank the Tommys move some of the tanks out of their pits and bring then round to the right. One Grant actually fires on more trucks and this fails .Command 4 Fao brings more rain twice, this takes out the Bofors, 1 Valentine tank & also kills and infantry commander. Command 1 now decides to race forward and succeeds in moving 4 moves which takes it to 400 meters before the barbed wire. Command 3 keeps shelling the Tommys with Mortars and now the infantry are all on 3 kills. The 88 now opens up on the other Valentine which has just shown too much metal and this receives 2 damage. Command 4 dismounts their trucks and are moving into contact with the Brits who open up with opportunity fire, this brings 2 casualties but doesn’t stop them. The Tiger now opens up on the Valentine and blasts it to kingdom come.

• Move 6 The Brits FAO has now been caught by Captain Henchel, a new commander has just arrived but his CV is down to 6. The have very little left and are just hanging on. My brave boys now use their FAO again and he has never failed, and again brings the rain on the brits, who incidentally their CO positioned them selves in the town, a cowards way of fighting. Now the brits were down to just one infantry unit fighting in hand to hand with Obenstropendfurers troops.

• Move 7 The Brits have very little left on their right, one infantry unit and 2 command units are still alive, their left is still untouched and they haven’t moved to support their own, they are such cowards. Obenstropendfurers men are now in hand to hand fighting with the remaining Tommy infantry and 3^rd commands tanks are now going through the wire, command 1 has again triple moved and are now over the barbed wire and right at the end of the round the last Brit infantry is finally destroyed, this breaks the British shambles of a force.

Foxes lost just

• 2 trucks
• 2 infantry
• 1 engineer group
• 1 half track
• 2 Stukas

Tommy scum.

• 5 Tanks
• 5 Infantry
• 2 commanders
• 1 AA Artillery
• 2 Anti tank guns

• First command is made up of 4 Regular infantry and their trucks. 1 PanzerII ig 150mm 2 engineers and their half tracks.
• 2^nd Command 1 FAO 4 Regular Infantry no trucks 1 Panzer ig 150mm 1 engineer & truck.
• 3^rd Command, This I made as my strike force. 1 FAO 4 veteran infantry 2 PanzerIIIs 1 Tiger 1 engineer + half track.
• 4^th Command 1 FAO 1 88 Flak 3 81mm Mortars 1 Panzer IG 150mm + 1 truck.

This was a great game, we both found that having an objective worked very well and there are really good tactics to take away from this.

Blitzkrieg Commander: third rules test - 2 April 2011

Having now played a few Encounter scenarios, Andy and I thought we should try an Assault scenario.  Here the attacker has 50% more points than the defender, but the defender can spend up to 10% of his points on hasty defences.  Given my recent spate of model-making, I was keen to be in defence.  This was a fictitious scenario: the attacking Germans had 3300 points (having got +10% on the modifier roll) against my British with 2000 points.  So here's what 200 points of hasty defences look like wrapped around 1800 worth of army on a hilltop:

You can just about make out that I've rebased all my Command stands on to discs - 60mm diameter for CO, 40mm for HQ - which I think helps them to stand out better against the other rectangular based units.

Andy's deployment was mobile and all but one command arrived on the first turn.

Andy had a good mixture of infantry (in trucks), infantry guns, tanks, engineers, artillery and aircraft, and put the artillery to immediate use.  One of my Grants destroyed a truck which led to the German infantry advance going into reverse gear.  Andy's fourth command came on the table but immediately blundered, resulting in a half move backwards.  Andy then sent his Stukas to bomb the British.

We then discovered that Command units have anti-aircraft capability as well as the formal anti-aircraft units, and Andy's Stuka was coming into bomb near one Bofors, the CO and 4 HQs - so they all rolled to shoot it down.  And they did... right into the minefield:

Very quickly joined by the second, and final, Stuka...

As Andy closed in, firing regularly with his Tiger 1, 88 and Infantry Guns, we also exchanged artillery fire - with limited damage on the German troops but with increasing pounding of the British trenches.  The British FAO failed his command roll again and again but the Germans were ruthless, enhanced by Andy's cunning tactic of having two FAOs.  The COs view was looking pretty grim...

Andy's troops eventually reached the wire and the tracked vehicles breached it.  German Elite troops sneaked through the gap at the edge of the table I'd left, and attacked the Brits in the trenches.  At this point, the breakpoint of the British battlegroup was reached but one turn later than that required for a Major Victory, but still a Minor Victory for Andy and the Huns, who only lost a lorry and two half-tracks (and two Stukas!).

Learning points:

• multiple FAOs are a great idea
• FAOs and FACs are Command units, so they are not part of a formation, they can move virtually e.g. across barbed wire, and (apparently) cannot be directly targeted so can't be chased away if (for example!) you happen to have all your units behind minefields and barbed wire
• the minefield would have been better deployed to one side rather than the middle, and then I could have deployed to the front and the other side, and got much of my units into the conflict
• be careful with airstrikes where lots of commands are close together

We had a few queries which I'll post on the BKC forum to try and get some clarification.

Show and Tell: Field Defences Part 3

More scratchbuilt items from the block of styrofoam - a command bunker and couple of pillboxes.