AAR: Sword Beach and Pegasus Bridge

Hi folks,

As mentioned in previous blogs, on Sunday 1st of August seven of us met up in sunny Billingham for our first large WW2 game since before lockdown. As Martin and Dave were keen to do something involving Paras/Airlanding troops and Commandos, we decided on doing Sword beach and the Commando's advance to Pegasus bridge. 

Some 'gamers discretion' was used with regards to the terrain layout. In the end we decided to represent WN20 ("Cod") on the coast, with the road via what is now Colleville-Montgomery and St-Aubin-D'Arquenay (and WN15 "Rover") leading to Pegasus bridge, and WN17 ("Hillman").

Pegasus bridge looking North to the coastline. Hillman on the left, WN15 and the villages on the right.

Colleville on the left, with St-Aubin on the right. We later replaced the ruined church with a normal one, which the players they blew the crap out of because it had a spire... They are learning!

Our representation of "Hillman" (WN17). This was on higher ground with two observation cupolas for calling in artillery fire. We replaced the cupolas with bunkers as we had no suitable replacements, although the number of A/T guns and MG positions was roughly correct. Minefields and barbed wire also surrounded it.  

WN20 "Cod". The observation bunker is a bit taller than is accurate, but we tried to keep the layout correct with the addition on an anti tank ditch (brown strip) at the rear. The gap between the lateral road and the fence line was also mined. In addition, the farm outbuilding in the centre was a hidden HMG bunker. 

We started with Ian's airlanding infantry securing one end of Pegasus bridge, and being repulsed from the other. I wasn't much involved in that side of the table, so I'm not sure all what went on. I think in the future I'd stick to the historic positions on D-Day for this, with both ends secure and the three platoons present - I think it turned into a bit of a waiting game to see who was going to be shot up trying to cross the bridge... I think there may have been some randomness about glider arrival, but a lot of hanging about for Ian. 

On the beach side, we had two breaching teams in LCT's running in, along with the DD's. the DD's were rolling a d8 to see if they could land, with the difficulty starting at 1 in 8 chance and improving every turn. This represented these tanks being delayed on the day, and the breaching teams landing alone first while the DD's still struggled ashore. 

Pendraken 15mm MDF LCT - currently not available in the shop, but it will be soon (I hope!), via their Redvector range. 

My scratch build LCT, looking a bit big next to the Pendragon model, but still cool. 

The breaching teams from 79th Assault Squadron (79th Armoured Division) make it ashore, supported initially by a single DD from 13th/18th Royal Hussars

Both breaching teams made swift progress in cutting through obstructions and moving up the beach. Here the player wisely decided to ignore the defences and push through to gapping the anti-tank ditch and minefield, losing a Sherman Crab in the process. 

The initial wave was the breaching teams, consisting of AVRE, Sherman Crabs and a Dozer. The AVRE included Fascine and SBG vehicles, as well as 'virgin' vehicles with their Petards. Sherman DD tanks slowly came ashore, and between the various armour units began to pick apart the German MG defences. 

I believe the plan on the day had been to have the DD's land at H-15, the breaching teams on H-10 and the infantry at H hour. Historically it seems the breaching teams hit the beach first. 

As such, in our game they were followed up a turn or two later by the assault infantry from 2nd East Yorkshire regiment. I gave them a company of infantry, which was enough for the initial advance. I did have the capacity to land another three companies... but the players would have gotten bored moving them!

My LCA's offload onto the beach, while the funnies and DDs take up the advance. 

The infantry moved quickly, with a couple of units being hit hard by artillery and mortar fire directed from Hillman. Artillery had already ranged in on some of the breaches. 

German beach side defences are already looking hurt, as AVRE tanks start to move into the position. 

The overwhelmed Germans did not expect armour on the beach to quickly... As mentioned below, this was a major difference from the Utah beach game we have run previously. 

Under fire from Petards and 75mm guns, the Germans were pinned while the infantry advanced and assaulted some of the harder to deal with bunkers, clearing beachfront houses as they went.  

In a few turns the situation on the beach was more or less under control. The antitank ditch was breached in several places by dropped fascines and an SBG bridge, and the Sherman Crabs began to clear lanes through the minefield beyond. Infantry also moved up to clear gaps in the thick mine belt, as did smaller units of engineers. German artillery continued to cause infantry casualties. The Commandos came ashore from their LCI(S) after being held up offshore, while isolated German positions began to surrender. 

A brave DD crew attempts to crush a German 50mm AT gun...

Unable to bring the gun to bear, the gun team and nearby mortar and command teams surrender. 

Follow up troops (M10C's and 6-pdrs) move inland, as lanes are cleared in the minefield.  

The Commando's arrive en mass from an LCI(S). Thankfully German artillery was busy elsewhere.  

Medics tend to the wounded as prisoners are herded to the beach...

The minefield is well and truly breached, as Sherman Crabs make repeated runs to widen the gaps. Two Crabs are lost during the game, one clearing mines and one to A/T fire. 

By this stage, troops and armour were moving inland towards both Hillman and Pegasus. We had a special rule for the Commados that allowed them to make a bonus move each turn if close to Piper Millin and Lord Lovat. We also had a rule that if a Commando platoon was pinned down, it could remove a stand and carry on. I'm not sure Martin's Commando's actually engaged in any shooting during the game, instead assaulting various German positions as they cleared their way through both villages. Materially aided by the Sherman DD's and AVREs who speculatively blew the crap out of several buildings containing German troops before friendly infantry even got close. As we use hidden deployment, we allow speculative shooting at buildings, church towers, etc. Those auto pass firepower checks on the Petards really hurt. 

Infantry, AVREs and 6-pdrs moved up to put Hillman under fire. We were not paying close attention to command ranges at this point - as Umpire my take was that the various sub units would put themselves under the nearby infantry platoon commander... Effectively they were independent teams and I wanted to represent better the accounts from D-Day. 

Cleared lanes in the minefield marked by blue tokens. Reinforcing armour moving inland, after a short sharp engagement between M10's and Marders. More Shermans had been landed, along with SP artillery.

Armour and infantry move to flank around Hillman and support the Commando advance. Roads had to be cleared of mines, and mines cleared from around Hillman. The A/T guns defending Hillman were all knocked out. the position itself was under artillery fire, small arms fire and tank fire. 

As the SP artillery move up to shell Hillman, Bulldozers make wider gaps in the anti tank ditch. Some of the British infantry platoons have been hammered by artillery by this point.  

With combined arms fire support and Sherman Crabs clearing minefields and barbed wire, British infantry from the 2nd East Yorkshires make it into Hillman... the writing is on the wall. 

Sherman DD's lending their weight of fire against Hillman while other armour moves inland, passing burning Marders. 

Meanwhile, the Airlanding were under some pressure! Throughout the game attempts had been made by both sides to cross the bridge. Dave had been rolling for German reinforcements from 21st Panzer Division, and rolled well enough to have mechanised units turn up. 

Panzer Grenadiers from 21st Panzer Division had arrived to support the local forces trying to wrestle control of the bridge. the Marders went on to try and slow down the allied advance from the beaches. 

During the course of the day casualties were taken by the glider troops, and some of the markers collected by the beach invasion had to be spent on reinforcements for them. If the beach troops collected enough counters, they could move their reinforcement arrival point forward form the beaches. 

As I understand it, a mounted assault over the bridge by the Germans was defeated by a plucky Piat or two. The Germans took heavy casualties (troops on the bridge had a 4+ rather than 3+ save).

However, in a few short turns the Brits were through the defences, and only a few dash moves away from the bridge... buildings containing Germans were rapidly overwhelmed by assaulting Commandos and 75mm tank fire from the DDs. 

Almost there! A few last assaults to clear buildings of Germans!

Lord Lovat reaches Pegasus bridge (after telling the DD tanks who had been van of the attack to 'F*ck off!', much to everyone's amusement)

Lord Lovat meets Major Howard on the bridge - the Paras had held until relieved!

A great day out, and really good to get some of my toys on the table... As usual, fantastic support was provided by Dave who umpired with me and helped set up terrain, providing the various mats and some of the scenery. 

From a wargaming perspective, what was really interesting was the difference between this game and the Utah beach one. There, US progress inland was limited although the defences were not hugely stronger. The AVRE tanks and the armour landing first and subduing much of the HMG positions really made a huge difference, and it was really great to see the guys using these tanks in their specialist roles. We limited support options to what was on the table as well, as the Utah game devolved into calling in naval artillery and Thunderbolts on everything... this time round we only used beach landed support. I could have kept landing troops on the beach, but there came a point it was not needed and the game became more about traffic management, which certainly was an issue on D-Day.   

More food for thought for future games - I like the idea of using the collected counters to allow tactical choices, while still driving forward movement. It provides a reward for taking objectives, and some interesting discussion about how to use this resource. There had been some resistance, for example, to re-enforcing the airlanding troops early in the game. As it turned out, the need to deploy a forward reserve arrival point wasn't needed - but I like the idea and might tinker with it in the future. 

That's it all packed away now, although hopefully it won't be too long before we try something else!

Finished: 15mm German defenses

Hi folks,

Some more finished bits done for the large D-Day game. Much of this was in concert with what Dave D had available - for example, the two scratch built 5cm KWK guns were for gun pits he constructed. 

Tobruks are a mix of Battlefront, scratch built and 3d printed, with BF models crewing them all. I ended up with two Mortar tobruks, two machine gun tobruks at ground level, the french gun turret and three MG tobruks with lids. The ones with lids I cut the legs off gunners for the BF halftracks and glued them in place, allowing these to be also used as ground based tobruks if the lid is placed on the table. 

I forgot to take a picture of the completed 5cm KWK bunker:

Finished: 15mm Sherman DD's

Hi folks,

Another bit of a delay from my last blog post, but work has been continuing on a series of beach landing based projects. This has kept me busy, but working on multiple things at once has meant that I've not actually finished anything yet. 

First to the finish line, after my AVRE's were delayed due to some last minute stowage additions, are the five Sherman DD tanks. 

I've six of these painted already, so these chaps take me to eleven total for the squadron. I've used some birthday money to buy another four, but two are on back order currently. When they all arrive, I should have a full squadron of these. 

They are 15mm Battlefront models, and are M4A1 based Duplex Drive Shermans. Unfortunately, this is the wrong version of Sherman DD's for the Brits/Canadians, who used the M4A4 hull for theirs. However, I'm not keen on the Peter Pig or Skytrex representations of these tanks, so I stuck with the incorrect but nicer sculpted Battlefront model. 

Sticking with the same these as the previous batch, I've gone with a sandy 'beach' base rather than my usual basing technique. I have been tempted to add some grass tufts, but tried this previously and was unhappy with the look. As these are, they match in with Dave's DD tanks. 

Highlighting was done to my current method, which made me go back and update the previously painted tanks to have the same garish style. These look odd close up, but much better at tabletop distances. Decal wise, I've only gone with a star on the turret top. The floatation skirts hide where the markings would normally be on the hulls, and while I have read mention of the Canadian units having unit markings on the gun mantlet, I've not found any pictures supporting this. Plus, leaving those markings off lets the unit represent tanks from different units. 

I do have a couple of tank commanders to paint to fully finish two of the tanks, but the models can be used without for now. 

With the models on order, the current painting plan for this project is looking like this:

And on completion, this will be my fourth painted allied tank squadron... (the others being 24th Polish Lancers, 144RAC and 10th Mounted Rifles). 

 

WiP - 15mm scale 5cm KwK guns

Hi folks,

An unfortunately quiet June for me posting wise. With the warmer weather, weeks holiday and a bit of a loss of motivation, my hobby time was spent organising and building kits. I started assembling the first few Churchills for my future 7RTR squadron, assembling some Sherman V's for my 4th Canadian Armoured Division squadron (from the British Columbia Regiment) and built some Stuart VI's to finish off my Polish 24th Lancer squadron. The only painting I did was to make a start on my Polish Sherman Armoured Recovery Vehicle. 

Churchill building sent me down a rabbit hole of different marks of tank, OoB's and indecision. In the end I bought a box of the Battlefront 'Soviet' Churchills in order to make a few Churchill III*'s. Thankfully, the spare hulls then allowed me to build two more AVRE Churchills, which I will need...

In August, we have a large game planned, C-19 allowing. This means we also need some more beach defences. I have a singe Battlefield in a Box 5cm KwK bunker from Battlefront, but we needed more of those guns for various defensive sites (we are planning a large game covering the landings on Sword Beach, capture of 'Hillman' and relief of Pegasus Bridge). 

The gun looks like this:

Using some spares from my bits box and some extruded styrene, I managed to initially start like this:

This used: spare plastic PSC 6-pdr barrels, a BF metal German tank hatch, some rectangular styrene and some styrene rod. 

With the addition of some plasticard as a gun shield, I got them to this stage:

The actual BF metal model is on the left. 

These bits are now in the painting queue, along with some Battlefront Tobruks, a home made Tobruk and a French tank turret position. Hopefully this should give us 2 more MG positions and 2 mortar pits. 

This time working with the plasticard now has me eyeing up different AVRE options... we will see if I have time. I've also this month bought a box of Battlefront M7 Priests, as arty support for my landing forces. Planned purchases depending on birthday money this month will be another four DD Shermans, to give me a full squadron of those. 

Painting queue currently consists of: 2 x AVRE, 5 x Sherman DD, 3 x Stuarts, 3 x Sherman Fireflies, 1 x Sherman ARV, various beach defences, 1 x LSI(S) and 1 x LCT!

Finished: 15mm Recce 6-pdr Platoon (PSC)

Hi folks,

As usual, a bit more of a delay between my last post and this one. The sunny weather, my dabbling with other bits and generally my lack of enthusiasm for these models all led to me taking a little longer than expected on these guys. 

On the plus side, another unit marked off the painting chart!

These guys are 15mm Plastic Soldier Company 15mm Loyd Carriers and 6-pdr anti-tank guns marked up as a platoon from 2nd Debyshire Yeomanry, 51st Highland Division. 

I've used a mix of different stowage options on the Loyd carriers just to individualise them a little. The carriers themselves I had little issue with. They are decent models and I've added them to FoW medium plastic bases which will be magnetised for storage. 

My main issue with these models were the guns and gun crew figures. The guns are light and fiddly, and the joint between the gun and trailer is a definite weak point. It was tricky to get the guns to sit with a more flat trajectory without them appearing to break off every time I looked at them. Similarly, the crew figures - while they look decent painted - have no bases. As such, painting them was an issue as they have barely any surface area connecting them to a surface. I fully expect that I am going to lose crew figures from the bases as there is just no decent way of securing them. 

The details on the crew were also fairly soft, placement of water bottles on the webbing is wrong on half the models and generally they are nowhere near as nice as metal figures (but we all knew that already). For the price, I suppose they are a good buy. They certainly look like they will fit in with the rest of my collection. 

Crew figures for the carriers are very slight, especially compared to the gun crew. 

I've used my standard basing technique, but the lack of bases mean the crew figures have just had to be glued directly onto the basing material. 

All in all, a useful little 4 gun platoon, which takes my total of (deployed) 6-pdrs up to 10! I'll try to get some pic's of these next to my Battlefront and Forged in Battle Loyds now they are all painted and based. 

The painting chart is starting to fill with more green. Part of the delay on these guys has been the work of the crew figures for the armoured cars - which should be done shortly. 

As for other diversions, I was sent some MDF kits to test build. I've been chasing Pendraken for these since before lockdown! Pretty sure Leon was sick of me bugging him about them every few weeks. These are 15mm Redvector kits that Pendraken will hopefully be stocking some time soon. 

British LCI(S) in early configuration (I've converted mine to be a later variety)

A busy table with my conversion to the LCI(S) and a test of how many 60x40mm bases the 15mm LCT can fit (some sanding was required for the bases, unbased tanks will have no issue). 

AAR: Utah Beach Revisited

Hi folks,

Work on the last 5 British Armoured Cars continues. In the mean time I thought I'd share a few pictures of a Zoom game I participated in on 6 June. 

Dave was kind enough to take some action shots with my LCA's which had been loaned for the occasion. 

This zoom game was hosted by Dave, as a small replacement for the much larger game we had planned to do last weekend. Myself and Martin were controlling the landing troops, with orders to clear the beach. 

Dave had beefed up the defences slightly, and we applied a few modifications to the standard FoW rules. For a start, troops on the beach only had 4+ saves (instead of 3+), and weapons could fire onto the whole beach (suffering a -1 to hit if they were outside max range). We also had Engineers, Bulldozers and Dozer Shermans. 

Dave had set up his table (a 4' by 8') with a high bluff at the rear, sea wall and beach obstacles. Me and Martin rolled dice for preliminary air and naval bombardment. 

I decided to take the right hand landings, while Martin handled the left. 

Some of the things that need to be done is a roll to see if your landing craft make it to the beach or are delayed. Only one of my two assault platoons hit the beach - landing in front of untouched defences. The first wave took a hammering (as can be seen by the black skull tokens, used to record casualties). 

Two out of five Sherman DD's made it ashore, the rest being sunk in the surf. One of those that made the beach didn't last long as an 88mm round gutted it. My infantry actually fell back into the surf seeking cover. Pinned and unable to advance, things looked a bit grim. 

Thankfully reserves were on the way!

One of the things about this type of game is that generally speaking, the assault troops are going to win through. Cost and time become the main factors. Another assault platoon, Engineers and armour make it ashore. The obstacles prevent vehicles moving further up the beach till they are gapped. 

Martin at this point was doing much better than me, having had some of the defences to his front knocked out or pinned by the preliminary bombardment. 

As with our larger D-Day games, you quickly realise that the allies were at the forefront of a conveyor belt of troops that would just keep coming. Slowly my assault got moving, as tank fire started to smoke or blast German defences. The amount of incoming fire started to thin. 

Engineers and Dozer get to the obstacles and start clearing them (skill check if starting the turn in contact). More troops arrive while my initial (very sparse) platoon makes it to the sea wall. this platoon did have a medic stand with it (a house rule) that allowed it to create a rifle team on a skill check when 2 teams had been lost from the platoon... as the medics patch up the walking wounded and get them back into the fight. 

Dozer tanks get bogged down in the sand and picked off by the defenders...

Too little, too late - as the LCT's start arriving. 

With my infantry at the sea wall, and Martin's over it and amongst the defenders, the newly landed tanks move up awaiting gaps being cleared and pouring fire into the defenders. Some of the bunkers are in flamethrower range of the infantry, and are soon dealt with. The game ends as most of the defenders are killed or driven off. 

But the assault was costly - we lost roughly a company on this one section, attacking with a battalion of regular US troops. 

We do have some idea's as to what else we could do to better represent the landings and the fighting. Hopefully we'll be able to put these into effect soon!

Cheers to Dave for hosting and for letting me use some of his pics!