Author: bucksurdu

Tank ran a Bear Yourselves Valiantly game featuring Carthaginians versus Romans.

Tank also ran two iterations of his immensely popular brawl on a train using Blood and Swash.  I just love this game!

Dave ran two iterations of his Zulu ambush scenario using Combat Patrol(TM): WWII.  Dave is working on a British colonial supplement.

Chris ran a fantasy game using the under-development feudal version of Combat Patrol.

Title:  Rear Guard at Outpost Priebe

Rules: Star Wars Supplement for Combat Patrol™: WWII

Period: Science Fiction – Star Wars

Description:  Clones are advancing toward the Republic base camp on the planet of Christophsis.  Supplies are running low and the Trade Federation is refusing to let any through to the Clone troopers.  Droid forces advance steadily.  Lieutenant Boomer and his Clone platoon conduct a delaying action at Outpost Preibe to give time for supplies and reinforcements to arrive.  Can Boomer hold long enough?

Greg and I ran our sixth game of Historicon Saturday evening.  We used a modification of the France 1940 scenarios we had run in the morning and afternoon.  We swapped out the terrain a bit and replaced the Germans with Droids and the British/French with clones.

I don’t have enough droid tanks to exactly replicate the earlier scenarios, so the droids had two tanks, and the clones had shoulder-fired AT rockets.

This was probably our least successful game of the weekend.  We are still struggling to get the balance right in these Clone Wars games.  Sometimes the clones just shred the droids and people complain.  Other times the droids don’t die fast enough, and the clone players complain.  We had a critical clone player who didn’t quite understand the activation sequence, and as a result the anti-tank rockets never really played a role.  The droid tanks shelled the clone positions with impunity.

The clones needed to draw in the droids.  Instead they sat on the roofs of the buildings and just got shelled over and over.  Lots of lessons experienced, but no lessons learned.  Had the clones dropped down behind the buildings out of sight, the droids would have been forced to advance to where the shoulder-fired rockets could have taken out the tanks and where the high rate of fire and accuracy of the clone small arms fire would have been decisive.

Saturday Morning

Title:  The BEF in France

Rules:  Combat Patrol™: WWII

Period: WWII

Description:  The Germans have swept through France and Belgium with dizzying speed.  Lieutenant Fotheringay and his stalwart platoon form the BEF have been assigned the unenviable task to holding a small rural crossroads to delay the German juggernaut.  Can they hold long enough for their battalion to take up defensive positions, or will they be overwhelmed?

Saturday Afternoon

Title:  A Skirmish in France

Rules:  Combat Patrol™: WWII

Period: WWII

Description:  The Maginot Line has been outflanked and bypassed. The Germans are dashing through France to the coast.  Lieutenant Carnot and his small platoon have been tasked to hold a small rural crossroads to buy time for his battalion to form a new defensive line to the West.   Can the small band of Frenchmen hold back the German juggernaut long enough?

Notes:  Rules will be taught.  Younger gamers welcome with a participating adult.

On Saturday, Greg and I ran two games on the same terrain.  The setting was a small French town in 1940.  The German forces were tasked to seize the town and eliminate resistance in preparation for the battalion following them.  The two scenarios were the same, but in the morning the defenders were British, and in the afternoon they were French.

The German forces were the same for both scenarios.  Two squads (dividing into two half squads) were forward ready to cross the stream.  Behind them were four Czech 38(t) tanks and two more squads in trucks.  It is subtle, but you can see that the table with the river bed is slightly shorter than the other tables to provide a look of flood plane.

The British (and French) deployment had one squad in the village (but outside the buildings), a machine-gun team in a corner of woods to cover the avenue of approach for German infantry, two Matilda II tanks, and two more half squads just to the left of this picture.  The Germans had twice as many tanks and twice as many infantrymen as the defenders.

The Germans got three unanswered shots from their 38(t)s on one of the Matilda’s, failing to penetrate with every shot.  Then the Matilda opened fire and quickly brewed up both of the 38(t)s it was facing.

After losing a tank on the German left, they advanced to the cover of a ruined building and established a support-by-fire position.  They traded fire with the British machine-gun and a half squad of infantry for several turns.

The Germans to to the town and began to close assault the defenders.  The Brits had an ATR in the second story of a building, but it bounced off the 38(t).  A Matilda finished off the last German tank.  The German infantry seized two of the four village buildings.  With the loss of their last tank, the Matilda’s could maneuver with impunity.  They backed off and began shelling the towns.  At this point, we determined that while the Germans held the town, with now support, they couldn’t hold it.  We called the game a British victory.

In the second running, with the French defenders, the Germans won.  The French lost one H-35, and the Germans lost two 38(t)s.  The Germans were able to seize all four buildings through close assault.

Both games were a lot of fun for the players, and we enjoyed running them.

Bill Acheson ran a Helm’s Deep game using the under-development feudal version of Combat Patrol.  This game uses 4″ tall figures.  he scratch-built the defenses.

Duncan Adams ran a Portuguese ambush on a French convoy in the Peninsula game using the Napoleonic supplement to Combat Patrol.

Title:  Sea Lion Begins

Rules:  Combat Patrol™: WWII

Period: WWII

Description:  France has fallen.  Though invasion is expected, the people of Little Basely by the Sea are nonetheless surprised when a barge full of Germans appears on the beach. The Home Guard and other auxiliaries take up arms and rush to repel them.  Will they be able to throw the Germans back into the sea, or will the Germans secure their first foothold in England?

In a continuation of our Thursday night scenario, Greg and I ran a Combat Patrol(TM): WWII game Friday morning in which the Germans landed on the coast.  We used the ending situation (with minor adjustments) as the starting point for this scenario.  The Home Guard had been badly mauled in the Thursday nigh game as had the Land Girls and the church ladies.  We reset some things a little and then had the Germans hit the beach.

The German bomber crew and few remaining Fallschirmjaegers occupied the town.  A platoon of British regulars arrived to throw them back into the sea.  The remaining Home Guard and ladies of town with improvised weapons pitched in.  The Land Girls had been wiped out Thursday night and so didn’t participate in Friday morning’s action.

The game was a lot of fun and came down to the last couple of card flips.  Unfortunately when Greg and I were resetting the scenario we forgot to remove a machine-gun from the German side, and we were part way through the scenario before we realized we had done so.  The German player took full advantage of the extra gun and really tore up the advancing British.  This skewed our play balance a bit, but the game still went well.

This game won an award from the Historicon convention staff.

Here is a listing of the games that will be run at Historicon 2018 with Combat Patrol(TM): WWII and some of its variants.  Get into one of these games to learn more about this terrific set of rules and see how intuitive it is to play.

As with yesterday’s post, I took hundreds of pictures and videos, but only a few are presented here.

This whole trip was built around Tankfest 2018.  We had tickets for the director’s enclosure so we had an assigned area to sit and didn’t have to worry about staking out a hunk of ground early.  Nonetheless, we got up early and drove to Bovington, arriving over an hour before the gates were scheduled to open, because we didn’t know what traffic was going to be like.  The re-enactors were set up near the gate, so we got to see some of their morning activities as we waited.  Interestingly, the organizers had brought in a bucket loader to dig a trench for these Russians.

As soon as the gates opened we beelined to the tank park.  Here is where all the vehicles that were going to be driving during the day were parked and ready for the show.  This was only open for about 90 minutes, so we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss the opportunity.    What follows are a series of pictures I took in the tank park.  There were no “do not touch signs.”  In general you couldn’t climb on any of the vehicles, but you could walk up to them and fondle them.

The live portion of the show began with a demonstration of the three German Leopard tanks.

They then showed some modern British tanks and vehicles.  The next “show” was of a number of light reconnaissance vehicles.

A million years ago, when I worked briefly with the 15th/6th Queens Royal Lancers I was able to get inside one of these.

The British have a lot of light reconnaissance vehicles, while the US has never really embraced this concept in the same way.  The announcer partially explained this as a need for lighter, cheaper vehicles to police the empire, but this doesn’t really explain why the US concept doesn’t generally include these kinds of vehicles.  These would seem to be useful in the cavalry regiments in the light units.

The recon vehicles were followed by armored personnel carriers.

Then they brought out a couple of British engineering vehicles.

The engineering vehicles actually did work laying the bridge, picking up debris, and laying a fascine.

Then came my favorite part of the show, in which the WWI and early WWII tanks drove around the arena.

Click to see a video of the German A7V.

Click to see a video of the French Char B

Click to see the French FT-17 and British Mark IV

Click to see video of the Stuart and Sherman driving around the arena.

It seems to be agains the anti-sedition act of 16 something for a British historian to ever say anything good about Americans, but the announcer did a great job debunking all the myths about the Sherman and actually talked about both the Sherman and Stuart in positive ways.

And more German WWII vehicles:

The day culminated with three mock battle scenarios from WWI, WWII, and Iraq.

The presentation was unabashedly pro-British.  Some of the history presented clearly presents a British bias.  I have no problem with this.  This is the British Tank Museum on British Armed Forces Day.  Americans are pathologically self-loathing and self-destructive, so it was refreshing to see people touting their military history and accomplishments.  Actually, it was refreshing to see people who even knew anything about their history.  As the US Armor Museum is reconstituted in Columbus, GA, I hope the curators were here today seeing this for themselves.  THIS is what the new Patton Museum should be like.  The fact that the vehicles were moving I think really made this accessible for younger people in the audience without resorting to special effects or cuteness.  This was tank history in action.

This was a GREAT day, and I am very glad that we came to Bovington for Tankfest.

After breakfast in the hotel we headed for Bovington.  Friday was “preview day.”  Tankfest is officially Saturday, but getting there on Friday allowed us to see the museum and all the additional vendors brought in for the day.  Since most of the people were out watching the tanks drive around the track, the museum was pretty empty most of the day, which was great.

I took over 500 pictures on Friday, but I’ve only included 25 or so in this blog post.  That isn’t really enough time to even hit the highlights.  Suffice to say, it was a great day.  We took our time, read all the signs, had a chance to talk to some of the reenactors, and just immerse ourselves in the development of tanks.  It is really cool to see in person tanks you have only seen in pictures.  It really gives you a sense of scale.  The small tanks are really small, and the large tanks are really large.  The magnitude of the differences really hits home when you get to see them in person, stand next to them, and touch them.

The initial exhibit traces the development of tanks in WWI.  I think we spent more than 90 minutes in just this section of the museum.

In many cases, there were glass windows cut into the WWI tanks so you could look inside them.  In other cases you could walk through them.

After the WWI exhibit, you enter the Hall of Tigers, dedicated to Tiger Tanks.

After the Hall of Tigers, we entered the WWII floor.  Again, I took over 500 photos, but I am only including a few.  It is very difficult to imagine the size of the museum and all the really investing vehicles on display.

Then we entered my favorite part of the museum, the Hall of Tanks.  This traces the early development of the tank (on the left) through the Cold War (on the right).  There are a number of displays that allow you to view archival footage of many of the vehicles.  Note that despite this being Tankfest weekend, the crowds were low inside the museum.

One of the interesting displays what was not here last year is a display of tank concepts throughout history.  There were probably 30 on display, but I only provide pictures of two here.

There are a number of visiting, refurbished or reproduction tanks on the display, including those pictured.  Most of these are supposed to be driving around the track on Saturday.

There were a number of re-enactment groups set up around the periphery.  Some of the groups were very happy to interact with you.  Others seemed somewhat standoffish.

An thus ended our first day at Tankfest.  After an uneventful ride back to Poole, we had dinner in a local gastropub, watched a couple episodes of Hogan’s Heroes, and went to bed relatively early.

The next morning we checked out of our hotel, left our bags at the front desk, and got on the train.  Our intent was to hit the Churchill Cabinet War Rooms, the Imperial War Museum, and (if time permitted) the National Army Museum.  After an uneventful tube right to Westminster, we headed for the War Rooms only to find out that the wait was over two hours and that we should have booked our tour ahead.  I have been here before, and there has never been a wait, but apparently the recent Churchill movie has made the War Rooms immensely popular.  So we walked to the Imperial War Museum.

The Imperial War Museum is free.  The lowest floor is mostly WWI, and it is quite well done.  It hadn’t changed — that I could tell — since I was here with my family last Summer, but it is nonetheless very nice.  I took a WWI class at West Point, and it is hard for Americans to grasp the impact of WWI on the British and the Commonwealth, where almost an entire generation was killed in France.

We had planned to spend 90 minutes here and then head to the National Army Museum.  After two hours we had just completed the WWI section.  We decided to take the short, guided tour.  This tour highlighted displays on the first three levels of the museum.

The tour was short but informative.

After a short break for lunch in the cafe, we had about 45 minutes to take in some of the other exhibits before heading back to Paddington and our hotel to pick up our bags.

This was one of the more interesting displays for me, since I just bought one for gaming hypothetical Sea Lion scenarios.  It fired a 6-lb armor piercing shell that was useful out to 50 meters and an HE (anti personnel) shell out to a couple hundred meters.  When tipped on its side, the lower wheel became the traverse mechanism and the upper wheel provided some overhead protection.

So, we had intended to stay 90 minutes.  After four hours we hadn’t seen everything, but we had to get on the road.  We took the Great Western Railway train to Burnham where after another short walk (to Don’s dismay) we arrived at Enterprise to hire a car.  Most of us packed lightly, but Eric brought a steamer trunk, so I was a bit worried about whether we were going to fit.  While I filled out the paperwork, Duncan, Eric, and Don Tetrised our stuff into the boot.  I have to say that driving on the left side of the road is much easier the second time around.  In two hours we arrived in Poole and checked into our hotel.

In London at the Mitre House, we could barely fit into the room, but the room here at the Holiday Inn Express in Poole was quite spacious.  We then took a mile walk to the seaside where we had our choice of several pubs and restaurants for dinner — along with some football hooligans.  We got to bed quite later (nearly 2300 GMT).

On the way back to the hotel, we passed this statue of Lord Baden Power, the greater of Boy Scouts.