Defence of the Ypres-Comine Canals 1940

 

Played a 20mm Rapid Fire game at the club last week.

I used the excellent Blitzkrieg scenario and forces books and ran the defence of the Ypres-Comine canal scenario.  It has 3 battalions of germans with supports attacking 2.5 battalions of British who are heavily outnumbered.  Its a nice scenario to use as an intro as it has only infantry + support weapons and off table artillery, no tanks involved.

The British were eventually over-run, with the Seaforth highlanders falling back before routing, the Fusiliers also routed leaving a weak 2nd Northumberland to try and defend the canal.  Some good german artillery made short work of them and the game was over - pretty much an historical result.

The British artillery was quite poor (my die rolling as usual) and I didn't manage to make as much use of my MG teams as I hoped.

Great game and the other two players who hadn't used Rapid Fire reloaded were impressed by the ease of the rules.

Some swapping and some painting...

 

 

When I bought my Minifigs SYW collection it came with a load of unpainted figures included (or should have done - took 2 months to get them from the seller). They turned out to be mostly Old Glory FIW figures so they are going off to Colonel Bills for credit and in exchange I am getting 2 units of WOTR men at arms and 2 units of Scurrers to round out my WOTR forces.

This continues trying to keep my hobby cost neutral.

 

I have also been slowly working through some stuff on the workbench.

Finished texturing all the Dendermonde defences and managed to undercoat most of them - when it stops raining the rest will be done and then I'll start the dry-brushing...

I have arranged a Rapid Fire Reloaded game at the club tomorrow with my 20mm collection based on a scenario in the Blitzkreig book.  I am having to sub in some figures (mostly MG34s for MMGs and 2pdrs for 25pdrs) - I have got a ton of unpainted and part painted SHQ and some EWM figures so it has prompted me to dig out some stuff to paint:

2 x Quads and 25pdrs and crew

3 x Boyes AT teams

4 x Vickers MMG and crews

I will probably also order some proper MMGs for the early war germans (I am using paratrooper ones at the moment) and some early AT rifles to replace the Airfix panzerfauste figures!

I also need more CO figures for HQ sections - so need to look at Raventhope of someone, I think.

I was actually running the game to encourage me to think about getting my French WW2 army that I bought from Eric Knowles estate rebased and sorted (including the colonial elements)...

 

First SYW games

 Played two games with my new Minifigs 25mm SYW collection last week.

The first game was at the club on Monday night with one complete newbie and 3 of us who hadn't played Honours of War that much.  There was a fair amount of rules flcking but we didn't get anything wrong..

I took the Prussians alongside Ian and Norman and Justin took the Austrians.

The game went badly from the start with an independent Austrian Hussar unit making a double move to hit my Prussians in column who failed to change formation.  I rolled badly in the melee and the unit routed... How embarrassing...

I recovered but an hour or so later I managed to roll three 1s in a row in a series of cavalry melees, lost almost all my cavalry and we decided to call it a day and concede to the Austrians.


The second game was smaller, in my games room and against my regular opponent Anthony.
This time I took the Austrians and Anthony took the Prussians.

It was a close fought game and we both came to needing to break one unit to break the opposing army.  I managed some lucky shots with 2 artillery batteries on one of his cavalry units and victory went to the Austrians again...

The Guildford club have made some small modifications to Honours of War to use D6 throughout and reduce the effectiveness of artillery and some shooting.

I think they work very well as a set of SYW rules.

Tissues and glue....

 I have started the long process of texturing and painting the Dendermonde walls.  The techinique is to coat the structure with a thinned coat of PVA glue and then to apply a single ply of tissue paper to it.

 

 

Then you paint another layer of PVA over the top.  This produces a textured surface that can be sprayed grey and then dry brushed to highlight and bring out the texture.

I use cheap "Saxon" 2-ply tissues from Aldi which are large and easily separate.

The end result when dry is this:

City walls are done and most of the Ravelins.  Next up are 2 Demilunes and then the 3 Bastions.  I need to cut some window and door frames for the city gate before I can texture that and also need to tile the roof.

The effect once painted is shown on the sample ravelin here:

Seven Years War Armies ready

I have finished basing the Prussians and the Austrians and now have enough forces for a game.

 The Prussian Army

 

Their Austrian opposition.

They meet in their first battle on Monday.

More rebasing..

 More rebasing of the 25mm Seven Years War collection.

14 units of Austrian Infantry...

 
Up next will be the Prussian and Austrian artillery and some more Prussian cavalry.  I am looking at picking up some more Austrian Cavalry and I also need some Austrian commanders.

I will then have enough to play some games, so will leave the French forces until I have some games of Honours of War played.

Back Home

 I have been away for the whole of May touring Scotland in our (fairly new) small caravan.  We caught up with a few friends (a couple of whom we hadn'tseen for 17 years!) and drove most of the North Coast 500 coming back via Loch Lomond, Edinburgh and Newcastle.

Had a great time and didn't see any rain until May 27th.

Now the lawn has been cut and most stuff put away I am looking at my workbench now and trying to remember what I was working on and why!  I am planning on finishing the couple of items sitting on it and then trying to concentrate on the Marlburian project for a while.

We'll see how long that lasts!
 

It is interesting to see that a lot of people have been trying out the Dominion of... rules over the last month and my regular opponent Anthony has tried them out as well for Jacobite games.

I understand the theory and the fast play ability to run a campaign in and evening, but for me they simply look too abstract without terrain and a battlefield to fight over.  I have similar problems with the 3 x 3 version of Portable Wargame which has never appealed.

If I was going to play this sort of abstract game I would rather use a boardgame than figures on a blank grid.