Dien Bien Phu at Gotcon XL

My PTCD (Post Traumatic Con Disorder) has faded and it’s time to start posting again.

Our very fashion-conscious Thomas showing off his new Casquette Bigeard . I don’t know if it’s the cap or the model, but…

We (me, Koen, Thomas and Laffe) had a participation game of Chain of Command and the as yet unpublished Indochina supplement at this year’s Gothcon. We set everything up on Thursday night and played all through Friday and Saturday with everyone who was interested to give it a go.

Here you have some pics from the different games in no particular order.

French Colonial Paras attack very unprepared Viet Minh troops (aka speed bumps)

A Chaffe, or Bison as the French called them.

Close combat is extremely costly unless the enemy is pinned and severely chocked. The poor Viet Minh are just that here.

Viet Minh reinforecements. At this stage of the battle it was just one very lonely officer who wondered where all his troops were (due to rather bad dice rolling)

All those Viet Minh look very intimidating

But so does the tank...

Notice the paras sneaking by on the flank. The victory condition was to exit a French unit off the Viet Minh side of the table and they did just that.

Another game another speed bump running for it

Undergrowth in the forest was judged to be very heavy, limiting sight to 6". Problematic when you're in close combat when you're within 4" of  each other.  This meant some very nasty firefights followed by close combat attacks. Incredibly bloody affairs for both sides, often totally eliminating one side while the other was severely decimated.

Another attack begins.

So you hit on a 4, 5 and 6 and roll like this... It was a hard day for Viet Minh...

You can read more on the build-up of the project at my friends’ blogs and Thomas already have a post on the event.

On the train-ride home we decided on the theme for next year. Think the Battle of Raate Road in 1/72 scale and you commanding a small unit of Finns in a game of epic proportions.

See you there!

Chain of Command at Gothcon XXXIX

I went to Gothcon during the Easter holiday with my gaming buddies Thomas, Laffe and Koen, playing participation-games of Big Chain of Command (Big CoC, written by Rich Clarke of Too Fat Lardies) and a fun time we had.

The following is a short description of what we did and some pictures. I let them tell the most of the stories.

One of the jump-off points

...and another

We started with coffee at my place on Thursday after lunch and off we went in heavily dented rental car. We arrived rather late in the evening, checked in at the hotel and went to sleep.

A real-life sunset over the North African walled compound

Friday saw us browsing the vendors and gaming halls and setting up the table for our first participation game, starting at 1400 hours and continued into the evening. Four players, each commanding a platoon.

Saturday saw two more Big CoC games and an evening/night game of ordinary CoC with two players commanding a platoon each.

German platoons have a much higher firepower but the British ones have the 2” mortar that showed its power time and time again in the following battles. A shootout between two squads will probably give a German win but the smoke-grenades from the 2” mortar gave crucial cover.

We changed the available cover a bit between games to try to encourage movement and manoeuvres as the games tended to become static with both sides trying to hug the few pieces of cover there were.

Victory seemed to go the side that actually tried to manoeuvre into favourable positions and in the final fight we threw in more AFV:s and anti-tank assets as we really wanted to see Thomas’ on-fire marker in action.

Burn baby, burn!

We were very satisfied when something finally caught fire.

Gott im Himmel. Engländer!

A great ending of the final game.

Sunday saw some frantic last-minute shopping (I bought the board-game Tsuro – great game!) and then a long trip back to Stockholm.

Afri-Cola – the perfect beverage for a game set in North Africa.

In summary: We were satisfied after an exhaustive weekend playing with Rich’s Big CoC…

Welcome new followers:

James Cotgrave - no blog that I could find

Wardy-la who’s got a bunch of blogs, for example Gjallarhorn - Viking/Saxon/Dark Age campaign, A Project too Far – WWII and Chain of Command and “By the orders of the Great White Queen” – colonial and darkest Africa wargaming. Well worth a look.

Pedro Lopez with blogs Pedro Lopes – his comics and drawings, and Warriors from the Danish Wasteland – wargaming in the Dark Ages, Old West and in an post-apocalyptic world – newly started and shows a lot of promise. Niiiiice!
Fellow Swede Hobbyworker with Hobbyworker blog – all about painting and modelling historical miniatures. Great blog!

29 Let’s Go – a Chain of Command campaign - first game

Thursday evening we had a great game of the Chain of Command campaign 29 Let’s Go by Too Fat Lardies. It’s one of their pint sized campaigns – for the price of a pint (£3.50) you’ll get a 32 page campaign set in D-day +1 when the US 175^th Infantry Regiment (played by Thomas) pushed in-land to try to link the beach-heads Omaha and Utah. Against them I played the 352^nd Infantry Division, tasked with delaying the aggression of the overseas imperialists against the unified Europe.

Spoiler Alert!

If you want to play this campaign the following might spoil your fun, so don’t read further than this. I think it is safe for Thomas to read, though. (I am withholding some information for his sake J)

The board from my side. There's an orchard on the left side of the road this side of the hedge. We had no more trees left, though.

We played the first scenario – Probe at la Cambe. Unfortunately our terrain was spread in different locations so it was a bit improvised and I forgot to take pictures most of the time.

My mission was to hold the line and not let any enemies exit the board on my side. My problem is that I have to conserve my forces as I only got one infantry platoon and losses from that will spill over into later games in the campaign. So if I put on an all or nothing defence and lose a lot of soldiers they might be lost permanently or temporarily. I got very limited support and no AFV:s in this scenario. 

Against me I have an enemy that will pump in a fresh platoon every new game and also have a lot more support than I have.

I started really scared of the US firepower that can really punish you and I was anxious not to lose any men this early in the campaign.

Oh, no! An unpainted gun. It will surely die.

Anyway it started very well for me as I deployed my PaK 40 the first round and knocked out one of Thomas’ Shermans immediately. 

My unpainted gun killed his unpainted Sherman. Poetic justice.

The tin-foil tank exploded. Really satisfied with that. 

A painted tank this time. Unpainted ammo can't do nothing against that.

I damaged and shocked the other tank before my heroic gunners were killed or routed. 

Stangely enough everything from Thomas' side of the board targeted my poor gun.

Anyway that destroyed half the enemy armour and had the other half covering and hanging back for a long time.

Coward!

Then I didn’t do much other than collect Chain of Command dice for a long time as Thomas advanced slowly over open fields with his infantry. I had no men on the board and was just waiting for the right moment to unleash hell on him.

Finally he moved his remaining tank forward and I sprung my second surprise on him – an off-board 88 (the real thing, hehehe) from the flank. At that point I had four Chain of Command dice and I had to use one for every shot with this gun. Three misses on three turns but with the forth I got him. 11 dice penetrated and he saved one. Extra nice explosion as he was close to his own infantry giving losses and shock.

Kaboom!

At this time I deployed another support weapon, an MG 42 on tripod mount. Deadly against infantry in the open. Also one of my squads behind a hedge and another one in a house. The combined firepower was horrible against the men in the open and a few rounds later they had sustained very heavy casualties and some units routed off-board. Thomas called it a day and the Americans ran for their lives (or made an orderly withdrawal, depending on whom your talking to)

My losses were one man down from my platoon (I think). A victory to be proud of.

Thomas looked shell-shocked.

As you can see from the pictures Thomas used more unpainted figures than me – an obvious receipt for disaster and lost games.

Next game will be worse. Much worse. Same scenario, even more Americans this time as they really want to break through and this time they will know what they are up against.

Thank you Laffe for umpiring this!

LRDG at Flemcon

The first weekend of December saw the group at Flemcon, one of the local cons that we have been with from its start. This time we had two games, LRDG and Winter War, both played with Too Fat Lardies’ Chain of Command.

The Miniatures Man of Arabia (it was cold, bloody Winter War)

I spent all my time at the desert table, I was far too lightly dressed for the sub-zero temperatures on our Finnish board. There we had our own Finnish hero, Ville, who had flown in from Finland for the occasion. Way to go!

Both tables got in two games each during the Saturday, and I really have no idea what happened in Finland.

 The setup. Notice the sabotaged fence.

In North Africa both games had three British commanders each, and each commander had three vehicles to game with. The rules were somewhat modified Chain of Command, and it was very much Hollywood feel, with jeeps and trucks zapping around shooting the hell out of the poor Italians. The longer the attack took, the more initiative the Italians got - speed was essential.

Who goes there?

A big plus was that 50% of the attendees were female, who had never played anything like this before and seemed to enjoy themselves.

No wonder the Italians fougt badly, they are not properly painted!

Sneaky LRDG going through the fence. Not fair at all!

 Planting bombs

Going up in flames

 A pilot making a run for it...

...and he escapes with his plane!! Hotly pursued.

 First reinforcement, sort of...

The heroic tricycle-troops score a minor victory

 A more substancial reinforecement, this time a LRDG-trooper tries to plant a bomb on it, a failure by the way...

And another one bites the dust. Planting a bomb on a cistern and having the car stall when you try to get away is not a good thing. LRDG-barbecue.

The Italian soldiers celebrating that one of the cisterns were not blown up! In their mind the most important one.

That was the end of the first battle. LRDG had had lost both men and vehicles, so it was a minor victory.

 The next bunch of players goes all out to cover the airfield with troops in a very short time. 

Some vehicles just drives through the italians to reach the most distant targets, while others takes care of what's closest to the gates. Those two girls were born generals!

 They are everywhere, and the italians don't have time to man the guns or do much of anything.

Reinforcement, that pesky tankette again. It retreated off the table in a hail of bullets.

Everything ablaze, no LRDG-losses and vehicles filled with prisoners. Time for an ice-cold in Alex. A total victory!

All in all a couple of very nice games, each taking around two hours. And another Flemcon done, a very nice small con, well worth a visit. We have already promised to be there next year.