Rommel at Doulcon Woods, 1914. Rommel on the rocks?

 

I ran this game over two evening Zoom sessions last week.  Here is the man himself waving around his Mauser.

The field of battle - seen from the East.  The clear bit closest to the camera is er, clear. The piles of rocks are just that, the dark area strewn with packaging from a champagne bottle is impenetrable waist-high scrub.  Everything else is lightly wooded, with visibility reduced to 12 inches.  The table is approximately 72 by 39 inches.

Young Lt. Rommel was as ever played by Pete, with John A and Michael as his section leaders.  Russell was the French Sgt, assisted by Simon, with Diego in charge of the MG detachment.

The French taking potshots at Rommel's lads.

An early casualty was Sgt Schultz - which gave me an opportunity to use one of my dead dude figures.

The second German section takes position in the rocks...

...they were all wearing Jager shakos for easy identification.

The initial French advance wasn't an unqualified success - as they impatiently waited for the MG to relocate and set up.

Speaking of French machine guns, I rather liked this photo.  Some cracking facial hair in evidence.

The Germans skulked in the rocks and climbed atop the pile to snipe at the enemy - but not before another man fell.

The MG set up at last!  It did some damage to the Boche on the rocks.

The German fire continued to discourage the French riflemen - and was taking it's toll on the machine gunners.

Rommel then gave the order to fix bayonets and men rushed to follow his lead.  Sgt Russell is the Frenchman carrying the flag.

A trail of dead (the five-pointed red star markers) and wounded French marked the German advance.  Even the MG crew perished on the end of bendy plastic bayonets.  So another victory for young Rommel.  Even though he wasn't able to get his chaps off to the west, the 'dead differential' was very much in his favour.  I wonder how his career will develop.

Tora Tora Tora! or Jap bomber trio

 

Yes I know these are all Army 'planes but who could resist the title?  Here are the completed bombers.  From the front - Ki-30 and two Ki-32.  I think they look rather smart.

Cold War Blitzspiel

 Following on from the Cold War Brigade Commander game was...lunch.  After that we reconvened for John A's game.  This has been in development for a couple of years now and John has had the questionable benefit of my input throughout.  John provided all the toys for this game, in which one toy AFV represented a real one.

I promised John I'd use this photo of his MTU-55 bridgelayer conversion.  The Sovs had a reinforced tank battalion.

The British force was built around a tank squadron, with an attached infantry platoon and Swingfire section.

Despite making a lot of smoke during their advance....

...the Sovs were soon making a lot of rather blacker smoke as the weight of British long range gunnery told.

A very jolly game which did much towards 'proving' the concept of the rules.

Cold War Brigade Commander

This was a game run by Pete a couple of weeks ago.  It featured his own collection of 6mm toys and terrain on one of my terrain sheets.  Pete officiated while six of us demonstrated our varying levels of command ability.  The photos are a bit of a mix and were taken by various of the players.  Speaking of whom, here we all are!  Front row L to R: Bish, Andrew, Russell.  Rear row: Martin, John, me, Pete.  As always, silly hat wearing was encouraged.

The battle under way.  Each stand represented a company.  Us Yanks had a couple of weak brigades while the Sovs seemed to have a full division.

Mi-24 Hinds attacking one of Russell's units.

I of course seized the opportunity to wear my Cavalry hat!

A nasty Sov trick was the Spetsnaz unit which appeared perilously close to my HQ.  Happily may chaps held it together and the wicked Commies expired in a hail of MG fire.

Pete doing pointing.

Sov tanks and AT engage US Mech infantry.  Russell's brigade had whizzy new M-1 and M-2, while mine made do with older M-60 and M-113.  Not for nothing was my command known as 'The Antiques Roadshow.'
 

I particularly liked Pete's woods.

Su-25s unsportingly bombing one of my battalions.

And who won?  We agreed that Russel's bde having been very roughly handled it would wthdraw, while mine would too - to the next set of prepared positions - having seen off the Sov tank regiment which came my way.