Counterattack at Deir el Tarfa

I suddenly realised that I hadn't posted my first game of Rommel at the club.

We tried the sample scenario from the rules (which is also available for download from the Honor website).  The scenario is set in North Africa in the summer of 1942 and represents the attack of 21st Panzer and elements of the Littorio division on elements of the 22nd and 23rd armoured brigades.

Given the overall scale of the engagements Rommel is designed to cover I decided to do this in 3mm using the Oddzial Osmy miniatures available via Magister Militum.

Here are a couple of photos from the game:

With its use of a grid and the "Command Posts" I suspect Rommel isn't going to work for everyone; however, I think they give an interesting and challenging game.  So I will be expanding my collection to do more North Africa scenarios and am looking at the Eastern Front too.

Lebanon 1982

I managed to get along to the club yesterday and was lucky enough to get to play a 3mm moderns game set in the Lebanon in 1982.  The scenario consisted of the Israeli forces advancing across their border in order to eliminate insurgents operating from settlements in Lebanon and running into Syrian forces.

I initially took command of three platoons of Israeli special forces and eventually ended up commanding both the armour and mechanised forces on our right flank facing off against the advancing Syrians.

With two armoured units and one mechanised unit our plan was to advance the armour up the left and right flanks either side of the settlements as it was much better territory for armour.  Our advance forces including the special forces platoons were initially deployed to secure the closest settlements with the mechanised unit available to support in the case of serious resistance.

Whilst we did meet some opposition we managed to overcome it with our advanced units (eventually) and so that allowed the mechanised unit to be deployed on my flank in order to advance up to the most distance settlement on the table.  However, by this stage a pretty substantial Syrian force was rushing towards us!  The Syrians outnumbered us in armour by about 3 to 1 but their force was a mix of T72s and T62 whilst ours was wholly Centurions.  Unfortunately for Colin who was commanding our left wing he ended up facing the entire compliment of Syrian T72 plus their artillery and so had to withdraw after taking (and giving I should add!) some serious casualties.  On my flank the river held up the Syrian forces and we eventually engaged in the final settlement after some Christian Militia had given their first armoured platoon a but of a pasting (they advanced into the urban area without infantry support and learnt rather rapidly why that's not advisable!).  We got quite a few turns completed but didn't have quite enough time to fight the game to a conclusion though.

Here are a few more photos from the game:

Wargames Weekend: West Germany 1979

Our last tabletop game was a playtest of the Cold War Commander rules using Lenin's new 1/600 Oddzial Osmy kit.

I took the US forces facing Lenin's Soviet onslaught.









Fortunately for me the Soviet advance didn't start too well with their right flank immediately rolling a Command Blunder and began to withdraw. On the following turn they rolled another Blunder and opened fire on their own command.






Unfortunately these problems for the Russians didn't last long and their advance soon began to gain momentum. As soon as they came into view of my tanks on my right they opened fire and we began to properly test the rules.









With their superior numbers and artillery support the Soviet forces, whilst taking some significant losses especially for the infantry, overwhelmed my US troops and the game ended with what was left of my forces reaching their breakpoint and withdrawing.

The rules were not all that clearly laid out or comprehensive as some obvious issues which came up in our game were difficult to resolve. The mechanics were a little too clunky for my taste (I've never been much of a fan of saving throws) but they produced a reasonable game. My overall impression of the rules were that were OK but didn't contain any particularly special ideas or mechanics and so whilst we may well use them again (probably in their 2nd edition Blitzkreig guise) I doubt they will make it into our preferred category.

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