Skip to main content

Large Flames of War Battle - Market Garden

Justin has a huge collection of 15mm Battlefront minis. For example, he has more Cromwell tanks in his collection than I have total tanks in my collection. And the Cromwells are one of the uncommon 15mm models.

Justin and his wife have decided to move to a smaller house that is more manageable for their busy family. Which means his massive collection will have to be pared down.

So, to celebrate before the Great Purge, Justin held a large 15mm variation of the Battle of Arnhem and invited some of the local players to participate.

Five players including myself showed up. Justin commanded 30 Corp; Wes controlled Axis forces; the US 101st Airborne under the superb leadership of Chris. Meanwhile the 82nd had the tough fight led by yours truly against the SS and panthers of the German 107th hiding within the city and the Grosbeak Heights.

The game took place on a 6' x 14' table and we used the Version 4.0 rules, a first for most the players. Justin setup a huge scenario with densly packed terrain and copious amount of figures. Many of the figures in use for the first time!

My airborne companies started the game on the eastern side of the table, near the western edge of the river. I was effectively surrounded by German MGs and snipers hiding in the buildings of the town, a platoon of Panther tanks arriving from the southeast, another platoon with AA gun and 88 gun dug in to the north, a platoon of Stugs coming from the southwest, and finally German reinforcements arriving across the bridge. The 30 Corps was coming on the map from 14' to the west. Piece of cake right?




The German artillery bombardment started immediately on turn one. So, rather than sit and take the damage, I marched out of the foxholes and attempted an assault on the town. The most vulnerable point was a wooden barricade with a AA gun. There was plenty of incoming fire from the nearby buildings so my assault failed. After that, I did all I could holding the heights for three turns longer forcing additional assaults and time lost to the Germans.

At the end of 7 completed turns and 6 hours including lunch break we called it quits. The axis earned a marginal victory.

The rest of the allied forces struggled as well. 30 Corp got past the town of Vegal before the end so they nearly reached the 82nd's position.




The 101st had opened a good corridor that might have allowed for more dash speeds. 30 Corp could have also fanned left and right to deal with flank pressure.

30 Corp lost one platoon of Stuart’s but, sustained about 14 tank losses. Most were attacked by Falschirmjaeger troops on the alternate rood with panzerfausts. The remainder of the Allied casualties where from the front-line Vets that held the road for 4 turns and survived everything 30 Corp could muster.

Because the battle was so large, we rushed through the gameplay.  We didn't play most of the special rules and kept the game fast and loose for the sake of time. So, I can't comment on the V4.0 rules except to say they were simple enough. I would have to play many more games to have a honest opinion of them.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Blog is going on a Permanent Vacation

Ok, I haven't had any comments on this blog on an post for many, many months. The only post that seems to get any traffic is my 2015 post about Star Fleet Battles.  I don't fully understand why that post has generated so much interest, while the rest of my content has been mostly ignored.  Clearly, this has not been an successful blog. I get much more traffic with my Facebook content and the YouTube channel is showing promise. Perhaps the subjects of my posts have been too random. I may need to focus on a specific game or subject. Maybe I didn't generate enough posts to keep the audience connected. Whatever the case, I am ending this blog with this final post.  I'm calling it a 'permanent vacation' because the blog and posts will still be here, though I will not be adding any new content. I might continue to comment on the SFB post since that is still generating traffic 3 years after it was published. To anyone who might still be reading, I say 'Thank

ReaperCon - Live Vlogging

Hey all! This year, I made the trip to ReaperCon in Denton, Texas.  This is new for me because I have never been to this convention and I am more focused on the gaming rather than the painting segment of the hobby. But I do want to improve my painting skills and learning from better painters is a way to improve. Another new challenge was that I decided to do a video blog of my experience at ReaperCon. aka a 'VLOG'.  This is a new way to share content with friends and hobbyists and it was exciting to try. And I was able to take the trip with my brother who lives out of state, that made it fun as well. We took classes, painted figs, took the factory tour, and entered the painting competition all in just three days! Below is the link to the VLOG playlist. Most the videos are less than 10 minutes long. All the videos together comes out to 56 minutes if you play them all in order. Enjoy!

Team Yankee Night

Our local Team Yankee community has a regular game night called 'Cold War Thursdays'. I was able to make it out to the store about a month ago. Chris had enough USMC figs to make a 75 point list for me to use. He took an equivalent West German force. We played out a NATO-v-NATO version of the Hasty Attack scenario. I am currently building a list that is heavy on Cobras and Hueys. Chris had plenty of air units to choose from. So, I grabbed all the Hueys and deployed them with a platoon of Marines loaded inside. The Leopards were absolutely deadly! The majority of my force was wiped out by three of them. My Humvees were the only unit that could even put a scratch on them. The Hueys were useful at moving troops forward quickly. I was able to drop the Marines nearby an objective. There was a squad of grenadiers inside a house close enough to still hold the objective. Except for the Leopards, most of the Germans were wiped out quickly. The Marines cleared the hou