More Chocolate Box War (CBW) Action

 I have played two more games in the Northern Conspiracy CBW Tournament.  I lost to Earl and his Romanian army pretty badly. Earl maneuvered like a pro and the dice really deserted me at key points of the game. As a result, Earl destroyed 9 of my stands and I only destroyed four of his. A real trouncing in CBW. 

In a game last night the Intervention Division took on AJ’s Austrian army at AJ’s game room.  Here is a selection of pictures from the game.

AJ and his beautifully painted Austrian forces the Grenadiers supporting line regiments and artillery.

Here I am making initial moves forward to seize a hill that would play a key roll in the remainder of the battle. 

The 41st Regiment of foot moved well forward to bring fire on Austrian infantry and artillery. They are ably supported by the 24th Foot. 

The 55th foot and 38th Foot support the light RA battery.

The 38th Foot (1st Staffordshire) move up in column to engage Austrian Line regiments. 

The 55th Foot (Westmoreland) Foot support a RA field and light batteries. AJ would soon destroy the field battery, but the light battery would play a key role in the battle. 

British Foot moving into the firing line.

British position on “Artillery Hill”.

Austrian Volunteer Jagers and Line Battalion defend a small Town. The paint jobs on AJ’s units is simply awesome.

The 41st Regiment of Foot at the forward most point of the British advance. Outflanked by Austrian cavalry and facing superior numbers of Austrian infantry supported by guns, the battalion managed to maintain their position and stop the Austrian advance. 

A great shot down the of battle line from the British right flank.

The battle was a tale of streaking dice rolls. AJ really had me on the ropes early in the game then my dice heated up and his went very cold. I think maneuvering was well done on both sides. General dice just had his say. 

Overall another great game experience with Chocolate Box Wars rules system. 

Lots of Gaming Lately

 I have been playing games lately - just haven’t been able to do battle reports. Over the past three weeks I have played  two WWII era games of One Hour Skirmish Wargames. I also played one game of Brother Against Brother  and one game of Chocolate Box Wars.

Here are some random pictures of the games (Note: As I uploaded these, I realized I don’t have any of the OHSW games.  I’ll see if any of the other players took any and share later.)

Setting up the Brother Against Brother (BAB) game. Setting is the Indian Mutiny with the British moving to relieve the siege of Lucknow. TONS of TROOPS!!!

Nobody said the British were going to have an easy go of it! The objective is to cross the table and get over the bridge. Lots of Mutineers in the way. 

About half way through.  2d10’s worth of movement is excruciatingly slow!

When we called it a night. We made it about halfway across the board. It was bloody with lots of losses on both sides. Ralph did an excellent job of getting as far as he did while blasting away at the rouges trying to stop us. 

My Chocolate Box Wars game with Charlie.  It was the first game for both of us in our club round robin tournament campaign. I am using a British Interventionist division circa 1866 and Charlie has a Franco-Prussian era division. Here is my initial deployment. 

Early game.  Both of us moved on our left flanks in strength. 

My light cavalry squadrons did excellent flank guard work on both sides of the army. They destroyed or helped destroy three stands of Charlie’s forces. 

Late game. I tried so many times to get one more hit on Charlie’s badly shot up stand!  At the beginning of the next turn I finally put the last hit on him and ended the game. 

Here is the final location of the survivors. It was a, “short sharp action,” to be sure. Good thing we can re-constitute the division for the next game or we would be in a world of hurt!

All in all both of these games, and the One Hour Skirmish games were loads of fun.

A Game of Blitzkrieg Commander

 This past Friday night I had an opportunity to play in a Blitzkrieg Commander game at our club game night.  One of our club mates, John, has made some great simplifications of the rules and has really brought out the foundations that make it a great game. I like playing in John’s BKC games because it gives me great inspirations for my Cold War Commander games. 

We played a medium large game set during Operation Bagration in mid-1944 Germans defending against a small section of the huge Russian Offensive. There were four Russian commands against three German commands. 

The Germans had an infantry battalion with a couple of Panzer MkIV’s and an artillery FOO. They also had a Panzergrenadier battalion with Sdkfz 251 PG infantry and three Panthers. The final unit was three Tigers and command stand.  These troops were veterans and combined with the heavy armor of the Tigers, they were a real challenge for the Russians. 

The Russians had two units of T-34’s with Tank desant riders, a foot infantry battalion and two special units - an ISU-152 unit of four vehicles and a JS-2  unit of three tanks. These heavy armor vehicles are really intimidating when they show up on the table. 

The Russians entered from the left attacking to secure tactical points on the hill and in the town upper center of the photo.  My Tigers held the German left flank at the bottom of the photo.

My opponent, Dick, had never played these rules before but by turn three he was driving his infantry forward and used the small hamlet to screen his T-34’s from the long range fire of my Tigers. Dick played a great game and if we had played a few more turns, those Russian infantry units would have been a big problem for me. 

Gamemaster, John (r), contemplates the PzGr unit and Panthers with the other three Russian players (l-r) Kevin, Greg and Rob.  No one could solve the puzzle and the Panthers stopped the Russian left flank cold. 

AJ, the Panther and PzGr commander, sits innocently as his dice wipe out the Russian left flank.

My Tigers have taken some hits, but they don’t have to worry about flank shots so they maneuver to get fire lanes on the T-34’s. 

This sort of sums up the game. A Tiger sitting on one of the tactical objectives without a Russian in sight!

The Russians suffered losses from the long-range fire from the Tigers and Panthers and the center German player, John, called in some devastating artillery fire. Ultimately, the Russians did secure one of the tactical goals and killed several German stands.  We agreed at the end of the night that it was a German victory although probably only a marginal one. 

All-in-all it was a great game and I learned a lot of lessons that I am sure will help me improve my CWC games in the future. Many thanks to John for a great evening.