Game - WW2 Germans vs. Americans - Big Chain of Command

 Last weekend my regular gaming buddy, Steffen, and I got together for a full days gaming. Originally we were going to introduce a third friend to Chain of Command, but unfortunately he was unable to attend. The plan was to do a Big Chain of Command with 3 American platoons vs. 2 German. Now Steffen and I do enjoy big games so we decided to just play the game anyway just the two of us.

The Americans had an armoured rifle platoon, a D-Day parachute platoon and an armoured platoon with various AFVs. The Germans had a panzer grenadier platoon and an armoured platoon with various AFVs. All the platoons were made from army lists in the rulebook.

We decided to play scenario 6 from the rulebook, as we believed that felt appropriate for the selected forces and the table we had made. The terrain were from both our collections and we were very happy with the table.

The main objective would be the village and the Americans started in opposite end. The patrol phase ended with Germans deploying jump-off points rather far up their left flank, and conversely the Americans also got far up their own left flank.

The 3 German jump-off points. Not the best deployment but I'm still struggling with doing the patrol phase well.

The Germans fortunately also had a jump-off point in the village as this was the main objective.

The Americans had 2 jump-off points far up their left flank. These 2 belonged to the parachute platoon.

And 2 more in the hedgeline along the dirt road. These 2 belonged to the aroured rifle platoon. Because we where playing Big CoC the Americans had an extra jump-off point. A minefield placed by the Germans is also visible on the photo.

The Germans started deploying an infantry squad and a Pz IVH in the village to prepare their defenses. In response the Americans lined the hedgeline with 2 infantry squads, a MMG squad and a mortar squad. A 57mm AT gun and a sniper was placed further forward.

This was a shooting fight, that the German squad was losing quickly. The Germans decided to put more armour on the field to even the odds. Even so the German squad quickly started to take casualties and became pinned.

The American infantry forces were unable to deal effectively with the German tanks, but wanted to clear the minefield before they deployed their AFVs. Unfortunately the engineers were struggling with their task, so eventually the Americans started with deploying some M8 scout cars.

The Americans tried to to push the attack on the village and deployed some paras far forward. The German infantry squad was unable to extract themselves from their position and eventually broke. The Germans responded with more tanks to halt the Americans. Even though one of the M8s managed to destroy the main gun on the Pz IVH, they couldn't stop the German armour.

As the American left flank was halted by the German armour, they tried to advance on the right flank instead. An armoured rifle platoon was sent over the hill, but was eventually decimated as the Germans deployed an infantry platoon in the woods, out of sight from the rest of the American forces.

Then the Germans really went all in and deployed their last tank. The Americans looked on in horror as a Tiger II rolled into the village. As soon as it could the paras in the field outside of the village, it started shelling the poor troopers.

At the minefield the engineers still struggled to clear it. One of the M8s was destroyed by a Tiger I and the Americans were struggling to get anywhere.

The Germans had destroyed the 57mm AT gun so the German tanks fired away on the poor paras in the field.

If the Americans were going to have chance of victory in this game, they had to deploy the rest of their armoured assets, despite the minefield still wasn't cleared. 2 M10 tank destroyers and Sherman platoon leader rolled onto the field.

The hero of the battle was in fact the Pz IVH, which had taken a lot of fire from the Americans. It had lost its main gun from a shot from one of the M8s, but survived shots from both the 57mm gun and a bazooka team. It then drove straight into one of the para squads, killing 3 men. It was ready to drive into the next squad when a shot from one the M10 immobilised it. But it was still alive.

The final shot of the battle came from an infantry gun which deployed in the woods and managed to kill a bazooka team and wound a senior leader. The Americans then finally gave up and retreated.

While this was a great looking game, it has to be said, that the result never seemed in doubt. The Germans still hadn't deployed an infantry squad, 2 bazooka teams and their infantry senior leader when the game ended. However, if the American AT shooting had been a bit more effective, perhaps it would have been more close.

Part of the fault lays with me and my rather evil choice of tanks. I simply could not resist the temptation of using some of my heavy tanks. While Steffen had picked a more realistic and appropriate force, I certainly did not. 

Nevertheless it was still a beautiful game, and we were both very happy to see our fully painted armies in action on a nice looking table. We actually played another game after this with an infantry platoon and a AFV platoon each. However, I didn't take pictures of that game, so Steffen can claim that he won that one.

We are talking about doing another Big Chain of Command game in the future as we both really liked this version of the rules. Some times big really is better.

Game - Undead vs. Wood Elves - Blood Bowl

My brother and I had another game of Blood Bowl the other day. My Undeads took on his Wood Elves. While the Elves were missing no less than 3 linemen, their wardancers and catchers were ready to play. The Undeads were missing a wight, but were otherwise fit for fight.

The Undeads started with the ball and the Elves spread to avoid battling it out with their opponents and see where I took the ball.

Uncharacteristically the Elves managed to stay on the field and even gave the Undead a casualty in the first half. That meant that my attack stalled and the Undeads lost the ball.

In a daring play in the last turn of first half a wardancer managed to get the ball in-between 3 opponents, dodge out, run forward and pass the ball to a catcher, who then ran like to hell towards the endzone. Only one go-for-it was needed to score. Unfortunately the Elves had no rerolls left, so the result was almost inevitable.

The Undeads started second half getting a blitz against the Elves, which didn't do much. The Elves started their attack, but somehow the Undeads stopped them, and even more surprisingly a lone skeleton suddenly had the ball only a few steps from the endzone.

 

It was no trouble for the Elves to steal the ball back, and they quickly moved towards the other end again. Time was, however, running out so they needed to be swift. In the final turn of the game they were in a good position to score. All it took was for a wardancer to dodge out and make a blitz. A failed 2+ dodge with reroll later the game somehow ended 0-0.

A crazy tense game with some unlucky rolls at the worst possible times.

Painting - End of January painting challenge

 So January has come and gone. As mentioned earlier my friend and I tried to do a challenge where we had to paint at least 15 minutes every day. While my friend unfortunately had to drop it due to outside events, I actually managed to do it.

I did have one day where I couldn't paint because I was away on a small trip. Although I actually had taken some painting stuff with me, I had forgotten some things and so couldn't paint one day. I also had one day, where I only did a lot of priming, but I still accepted it as a good day.

My small box of painting stuff for my trip. Unfortunately I still forgot some important items

In conclusion the challenge was very good and worthwhile. It did show that even 15-20 minutes of paint will provide some progress. And even more importantly it actually proved to be motivating in several ways. There were days where I initially thought I wouldn't paint more than the 15-20 minutes but then ended up spending even more time.

Baccus Marian legionaries used as Pontic imitation legionaries

When my friend and I talked about the challenge we speculated on how much we would end up getting painted. In truth it was less than I imagined. But even so I will call this a great success.

I had planned to kind of continue the project, but extending what I could do in the 15-20 minutes to also include assembling miniatures or terrain, painting terrain or other relevant hobby activities. Unfortunately I have some issues with my shoulder at the moment, so this week all hobby work has stopped momentarily.

Here are the bases I have painted in the final weeks of January.

4 bases of skirmishers with javelins

4 bases of skirmishers with javelins

4 bases of imitation legionaries (bases not done)

Painted - 6mm Pontic Thureophoroi

 As part of my January painting challenge I have been painting some 6mm Pontic Thureophoroi, which is medium infantry. Most days I have been painting more than the 15 minutes a day I am required to. It was, however, very nice to have some days where I just painted the minimum 15 minutes, and still felt I made some progress.

I paint 8 strips at a time which corresponded to 2 bases. Normally I would do such a batch on an evening.

They are painted with GWs contrast paints apart from some small metal paint on the spear tips and on the shields. Although I look for inspiration various places I just try different colours and hope it looks good. I finished a total of 8 bases which is 4 units in Sword & Spear. Afterwards I actually realized that on the Spanish and Roman medium infantry bases I only had 12 figures on, so I made a small mistake putting 16 figures on these bases, but it doesn't matter that much.

Next on the painting cue is some Pontic skirmishers.

Game - Chaos vs. Humans - Blood Bowl

 The other day my brother and I had another league game of Blood Bowl. I had recently painted my chaos team, so both teams was painted, which is always a nice thing to see.

Both teams were somewhat hurt by casualties and had to use journey(beast)men. Chaos was on the receiving end and immediately began a bloody way towards the end zone. The minotaur managed to blitz the ogre and knock him out.

First half ended with 1-0 lead to chaos. It was a bloody half with 4 casualties in all, and even 2 human players knocked out.

The humans came close to scoring when a brave catcher almost picked up the ball in the end zone, but unfortunately failed.

The beastmen picked up the ball and started moving across the field. The brave human catcher desperately tried to steal the ball but with no success. The rest of the human team was being in check by the chaos players.

The depleted humans team was unable to prevent another goal to the chaos team, who took hime a rather secure 2-0 victory.

Painting - January Painting Challenge

My friend, Steffen, and I have started a painting challenge in January, inspired by a Youtube video by Storm of Steel Wargaming(who I believe was inspired by another video). The challenge is to have painting session of at least 15 minutes every day in January.

For me the purpose of the challenge is not that I expect to paint 15 minutes every day for here on and forth. By rather to acknowledge that in periods where my painting motivation is very low, just doing 15 minutes some days will still mean something. I suspect we all have periods where we don't paint as much as we would like to. And then, rather than get too disillusioned about not painting, simply doing as little as 15 minutes worth of painting once awhile will hopefully help the situation somewhat.

I have no specific painting project I'm going to work on during January. Rather I will just paint what I feel like. So this first week I started of with 2 bases of 6mm Pontic cavalry. At the moment my painting motivation is rather good so I will most likely paint more than 15 minutes a day. But I have had a couple days with only about 20 minutes of painting, and it actually felt rather good, that I didn't feel like I needed to do more.

First day of work. Just painted the horses.

Second day I added a bit more colours.

Third day they were done apart from the base.

Next couple of days I worked another 3 strips.

On the sixth day I was done with both bases.

It has been a good experience, and I really can feel the appreciation of not thinking I need to paint a lot more and for longer time. So it will be interesting to see how much I get painted in January.

Game - Middle-Earth - Elves/Rohan vs Moria

 Last night I played a game of Middle-Earth against Chris and his Moria goblins and their friends. We played 600 pts.

I had 3 warbands, one with Legolas and and 14 warriors from the Halls of Thranduil list, one with a mounted Rohan captain and 12 Riders of Rohan, and one with Gamling and 10 warriors of Rohan. I don't have that many different troop choices for my LotR armies, so that is why it is all common troops in this list.

Chris had 2 warbands, one led by a Balrog and one led by a goblin captain. He also had a cave troll and about 25-30 goblins.

Deployment. Chris put the Balrog in the middle, and the goblin captain with the cave troll on his right flank. I tried to spread out my army as much as possible to outflank the goblins and avoid the Balrog as much as possible.

We played the Clash at Moonlight scenario, which although randomly selected seemed very appropriate. This meant that shooting ranges were only up to 12" which hampered me severely, but shootings attacks also had +1 to wound which was very nice.

I really didn't know what to do against the great Balrog, so I quickly decided to just go for his goblin friends instead. One of the Rohan warriors did, however, get a lucky hit quite early, which actually earned me a victory point.

When my Rohan riders stormed up my right flank, Chris decided to move the Balrog and most of his army towards that threat. This left my elves on the right flank a bit out of the battle, but at least there were a few goblins they could kill on their flank (apart from one lucky little bastard who somehow survived in combat against 2 elves most of the battle).

I had hoped to make a dashing cavalry strike on my right but when the Balrog turned towards the Rohan riders they quickly changed their minds and tried to get away from the monster.

The Balrog did manage to catch and slay a handful of riders, but the rest managed to get away, while the rest of my army killed a bunch of goblins.

The Elves cleared my right flank and much of the center (apart from that little bugger seen in the left corner here).

The Balrog got ready to charge the center of my army, but it was too late. I had killed almost all the goblins and so the Moria army was forced to retreat.

A fun game were I fought hard to avoid or limit the Balrog's killing ability. I had quite a lot of shooting in my army, so I think it was lucky that we played a scenario that limited it. Legolas did very little in the game other than kill a few goblins. The heroes of the game were those unfortunate Rohan riders and warriors that had to give their lives to ensure the rest of the army could go goblin hunting 😀

Always fun to play against Chris, and I am sure he's fine tuning his army and tactics for our next game.