Operation Squad - Fallschirmjägers and Screaming Eagles

Hi,

yesterday Franz and I visited our friend Christopher (aka Axebreaker - please have a look at his great blog: http://www.christopher-bunkerhill.blogspot.com) at his home to play another brilliant game of Operation Squad in 28mm.

The setting of the table was again excellent and real eye candy as you can see on the first photos.

Christopher is preparing the terrain while Franz is fascinated by Chris´ artwork.

He just produced the telephone masts the same morning.

It really looks like the Normandy.

Just like the photo out of a holiday catalog. :)

In the middle of the photo you can see a little hill that has been one of the two objects there a fierce fight took place.
During the game and its bloody running in the woods on the hilltop we started to call it "Hamburger Hill".
The other objective was the house in the background.

 After the terrain had been placed Christopher set up his Fallschirmjägers alternately to my Screaming Eagles.

Just a funny thing for Christopher is an US-American and I am German.

Franz was our game guide and had to look up the rules for it was our first game with vehicles and so the rules had been different to our earlier games.

As I don´t have any miniatures painted for WWII yet (I will do some Japanese for the PacificWar) I had the honour to play with the fantastic figures of Christopher.

The vehicles had been chosen from Franz´ collection and looked also very good.

A look at the opposing squads - here the Fallschirmjägers supported by a SdKfz 231.

And here the Screaming Eagles with a M20.

Photos of the figures after setting.

I think you can imagine that we had a really great game though my Screaming Eagles performed bad.

It was a decisive victory for Christopher (Congratulations :) ).

We formerly often gamed with different markers that had been green, blue or red glass stones.

Christopher always got eye pains as he had a look at the table with those markers on it.

He loves gaming tables that look as realistic as possible.

After he showed us the markers he produced for OperationSquad I have to agree.

Never use glass stones if you could create such wonderful markers as shown in the next pictures.

The different markers in total view.

The helmets are markers for running figures.

The red ones mark a figure as wounded.

The stones are telling that a mini is pinned.

The MP´s stand for jammed guns and the ammo crates for "out of ammo".

Bushes mark the figures as "hidden".

And these markers mean that a figure´s action is completed within the currently round.

After I had seen those fabulous markers I decided to create some similar ones for my SYW-project as I do not only need disruption markers but also markers for disordered units and so on.

Maybe you got inspired by this post for your own tables, too.

I wish you all the best and enjoy our hobby as much and as often as you can.

Cheers

Mike

OperationSquad & BlackPowder - two very good games

Hi,

Yesterday we (these are my comrades Franz and Valerio and me) had a great time at our friend´s (Christopher´s) home. 

It was again a full day of pleasure playing great games and enjoying superb hospitality.

The first impression we got was this wonderful prepared battlefield.

We expressed a big "Wow" as we entered the holy halls of Christopher.

This was the table there our two planned games would have been set in scene.

The tower in the middle was the object for both games.

Please have a closer look at this wonderful tower on the blog of Christopher

www.christopher-bunkerhill.blogspot.de

The first game was OperationSquad. 

Except Christopher we never played this ruleset before.

We used to play DisposableHeroes a several times and had been very excited to get to know the difference between both systems.

We had a squad of American paratroopers and a squad of German Wehrmacht.

One of the aims was to place figures within the tower.

So both sides placed their figures to get really fast into the object and also to be able to fire at the enemies trying to do this.

Here are some pictures of this game.

The American forces take place.

Using the hedge for cover and hiding.

The Germans hiding within the woods.

German soldiers preparing to run for taking the tower.

A German MG42-team and a sniper taking position.

Maybe you can see the German soldier?

Meanwhile an American paratrooper tried to get over another hedge to run to the tower.

We ran out of time to finish this very fascinating game of OperationSquad.

We all enjoyed the system.

But as we also wanted to test another BlackPowder game, we changed the period.

We chose a small battle during the FIW.

Taking a closer look at the units you will recognize that the French had Austrian allies and the British and their militia troops are from the time of the AWI. 

As we didn´t have enough historical correct units we had to mix up a little bit.

But we just wanted to try the game´s mechanism.

So if you should worry about that just imagine this was a battle between two imagi-nations.

Again, the object was the tower. 

Also the two crossroads would count as victory-points.

Again some impressions.

Again the day has gone too fast.

But as always it has been a great pleasure and we all had a wonderful time.

Many thanks once again to Christopher.

May the next date for gaming won´t last too long.

Cheers 

Mike