Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Flames of War: North Africa 1942


My posts get queued up for a while, so I'm hoping by the time this one pops up, Brian will have already posted his own battle report with the most important thing of all...details. I confess, I'm not the biggest WWII gamer, although it's huge right now in the gaming world, but I'm just foggy on all the details, theaters, campaigns, dates, etc.

I'll do my best from recollection. Mind you, every time I show up for a game, I'm also having to learn the rules on the fly as well as take in all the details of the scenario. We're in the North African desert in 1942, and the forces arrayed for the battle were the British versus the Germans. I believe the scenario was a canned one from the book called [edit: Breakthrough]. The table was split in four quarters, with British troops defending the dentral town and objectives in the southeast quarter. The German forces started the game in the Northwest quarter. Both sides would be able to bring on reinforcements throughout the game.

Whenever I'm able, and want to get in on a great historical game with convention level terrain and fully painted forces, Brian and the three-letter name group of guys are the way to go (Tom, Bob, and Ken). WWII makes the most appearances, but ancients aren't uncommon either. If there's a post here with 'historical' in the tags, chances are I was playing with these guys. So we'll let Brian write it all up and I'll just give y'all some eye candy.


The British Big Guns


Lorries hauling more guns


My tank squad!


The German forces


British tanks score first blood


Revenge! I slag three of Andy's British tanks in one turn


British infantry digs in and a smoking Panzer is sign of things to come...


The skies were thick with the smoke of charred, armored husks


German infantry assault a British tank, schnell, schnell!


Usually I'm a visitor at someons else's house when it comes to historicals, but this time I hosted the game at my house. Mind you, everyone had to bring everything (terrain, armies, etc.) but I did contribute some homemade, colon-cleansing salsa! I loved the game, I always do, and dang it if I couldn't see myself getting into to it, but that's the last thing I need; more minis to paint. Fortunately, these guys are all loaded to the freakin' gunnels with beautifully painted armies, vastly huge armies. Only if I wanted to be an absolute glutton for punishment would I ever need to plop down for some WWII minis.

2 comments:

  1. Had to go out of town right after the game, so never got a chance to post a report (and I've now forgotten most of the details). The scenario was the Breakthrough scenario from the FOW rulebook. We Brits had some pretty good luck with the arrival of our reinforcements and managed to get the Germans to stall and deal with our trickle of tanks. That gave us time to dig in on the objective. That scenario is all about the defender having time to prepare their position on the objectives. Bob and Tom have done a great job on the models and it looked great. I'm sure we'll see more North Africa in the future

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  2. Aha, I new I could rely on you for reference. Yeah, I had a blast, it was a lot of fun, and I'll offer to host again if everyone's up to it.

    Hopefully next time I can make a better showing than being a howitzer magnet.

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