The Best Bridge

I've driven across the Best (the Dutch town) bridge lots of times  on my way to friends, unaware of the fighting that took place there in 1944. After watching Sidney's battlefield challenge on Youtube and discovering the scenario in Lard magazine 2019, I was keen to try it out.

Exacty 76 years after the actual events took place, Lieutenant Wierzbowski of the 101st airborne again tried to capture the Best bridge. (I only found out that it was the exact same date just before the game when I was reading the Lard magazine article again).

The paratroopers start at the left side of the table and have to destroy the 88 in the upper right corner (the actual bridge and canal  are just off table). The Germans  start in the middle.

After the patrol phase the paratroopers quickly moved towards the road and crossed it with minimal casualties.

A lucky German command dice roll (1,2,2,3,4) led to a screen of Germans being deployed to block their advance.

One German squad moved tactically towards the American deployment area.

Meanwhile the paratrooper squad that crossed the road, entered the woods and ran into a German squad.

Both sides took casualties. The German junior leader was wounded.

A double 6 on the command dice for the Germans! The German senior leader rushes towards the leaderless squad and starts removing shock in order to be ready for action in the next phase.

But, the Amercans use a full chain of command dice to interrupt and open fire on the German squad!

Bad luck for the paratroopers, as the dice roll only causes minimal damage.

Now the Germans get their turn and enjoy a much better dice roll result (10 hits out of 12), shredding the paratroopers and wounding the junior leader.

A bazooka team is also wiped out. The American force morale drops at an alarming rate.

Wierzbowski arrives on the scene.

Our flank is exposed sir!

And is almost immediately wounded.

At this moment we called it a day. The remaining American squad was pretty much closed in by 3 German squads.

Historically the Germans destroyed the Best bridge on this day. The Americans were unable to prevent this outcome in the refight.

Commando raid

While browsing through Silver Whistle's Blog and admiring his beautiful terrain, I came across his CoC commando raid post, which I liked a lot: 

http://wargamingwithsilverwhistle.blogspot.com/2015/12/commando-raid-coc-picture-heavy.html

The scenario provided a nice opportunity to field my commando's. I did have to tweak the scenario a bit to fit my figures and terrain. I do not have a chateau or a radar station, so I built something resembling a Freya radar from a bit of sprue and moved the scenario from France to the Dutch coast where British reconnaissance has discovered a strange device on aerial photographs. It doesn't look like the Würzburg radar captured in another raid. Dutch resistance has confirmed the presence of Doctor Spitzenfinger, a notorious German scientist involved in Vergeltungswaffen research, at a house near the beach. Communications have been picked up referring to the device as the Schmetterling Gerät.

Doctor Spitzenfinger and his bodyguard and assistant Helga.

The Schmetterling device

The Commando's primary objective is to capture as much as possible of the Schmetterling Gerät. 

Secondary objective is to capture or, when capture is impossible, kill Doctor Spitzenfinger.

For the game we stuck to the force composition in the Silver Whistle post, replacing only the Panzer 38(t) with a Sdkfz 222.

A quiet night on the Dutch coast.

While my gaming buddy moved the commando's towards the dunes, I moved the sentries along the wire.

Commando's sneak up on a sentry....

But they fail the silent kill dice roll!

Alaaaaaaaarm!!

Commando's rush forward to overcome the other sentries.

Meanwhile a German flare goes up turning night into day while German squads pour out of their barracks.

2" mortar puts down smoke in front of the MG in the bunker.

The racket has woken the German commander and Doctor Spitzenfinger. The German commander urges Doctor Spitzenfinger to get out of here.

Not so fast Fritz! The commando sniper takes out Doctor Spitzenfinger.

Nevertheless, he is pulled in the car by his trusted bodyguard Helga and whisked away to a nearby hospital.

Under cover of the intermittent darkness, commando's advance towards German positions and try to outflank the bunker.

Alas, the Sdkfz 222 appears on the scene and the commando sections take a beating, wounding both the senior and junior leader.

The Commando engineering section succeeds in getting a grenade through the bunker aperture, but it fails to kill all the occupants. Another British senior leader is wounded when the remaining German opens fire with the MG in the bunker.

At this point every British leader was wounded while the Germans were in sound control of the radar station. Also the commando's had nothing but bren guns to fire at the Sdkfz 222. So they retreated to the boats, disappointed about the failure to secure the Schmetterling device but satisified that they were able to remove Doctor Spitzenfinger from the German war effort.

However, due to some pretty experimental and gruesome medical procedure, Doctor Spitzenfinger managed to recover from his near lethal wound, his commitment to the cause and hatred for the allies greater than ever.......

What a Walker first game

Ever since I bought the What a Tanker rules from Too Fat Lardies, I have been thinking about using them with my SciFi walker models. After playing a few regular WW2 tank games, I played the first game of What a Walker with my son.

Two Fire Toads faced off against 2 Golgoths (from the OOP game AT-43).

I used the Quadrant 13 ruleset (also from Too Fat Lardies) to "quadrulate"  the stats:

Fire toad: Armour 4, Strike 8, Fast, Small, Rapid Fire (2)

Golgoth: Armour 6, Strike 10, Fast

Extra rules: 

Entire board is short range.

Acquisition sensors: replaces (un)buttoned. Player has to decide to expose acquisition sensors.

Stabilizers: retain aim while moving

Walkers can step over obstacles up to half their leg hight.

Armour value includes active defense equipment, ECM, etc., etc.

I'm well aware that these modifications are insufficient to replicate future or even modern vehicle combat. Firing at each other from over 2 kilometers away would be more "realistic", but would require very small models at 6x4 feet table size. Since I like the big walker models and game play with a minimum of book keeping I wanted to stick as close as possible to What a Tanker.

Let's just say there is a reason to get in close and cause a minimum of collateral damage when gaming Sci Fi. (otherwise the attacker could just nuke the site from orbit), e.g. capturing vital supplies, a power generator, research facilities, prisoners, etc.

The game:

We played the Fat Boy scenario with 2 Walkers each. After some manouvering, my son stepped his Golgoth in front of a taxi trying to flee the battlefield. The taxi crashed into the Golgoth's legs, causing minor scratches on its paint. Towering over the taxi, the Golgoth fired its railguns at my Fire Toad: Hit! Temporary loss of 2 dice.

After this my son decided inexplicably to retreat behind a building with his Golgoth. I retrieved my dice with 2 6-s and advanced towards the second Golgoth, intending to blast it from the side.

Meanwhile the second Golgoth and Fire Toad were firing at each other across a road. Without achieving a single hit my Fire Toad was destroyed. This the repeated itself with my remaining Fire Toad, resulting in a sound victory for my son. Apart from the paint damage caused by the taxi, his Golgoths remained undamaged.

An extra Fire Toad would probably provide a more balanced game. Or I might throw in some larger Walkers....

This trip stops here.

In the line of fire...

One Fire Toad down.

Going down in a blaze of glory

 

Roads

Roads are basic terrain items for almost any period and very easy to make.

I made mine using thick cardboard, double sided tape and different kinds of paper.

Using double sided tape instead of glue prevents the cardboard from warping.

You can even use both sides of the cardboard to increase your terrain vs. storage space ratio.

The type of road is determined by the type of paper.

Black sandpaper for asphalt:

Paper with brick printed pattern: 

 (All kinds of patterns can be found on the internet.)

Wallpaper with cobblestone pattern painted grey and drybrushed:

Wallpaper with texture looking like wheel tracks, painted brown and drybrushed:

Disadvantage: realistic curves in the road are not possible unless the wallpaper texture has them already. 

I came across these cheap puzzle toy roads and bought them just in case. The puzzle bits help keep the road in its place but are more conspicuous than straight lines. They also have a glossy surface which makes them less attractive. Also note that the "country roads" side with the grass in the middle occurred only after motorised vehicles were common.

Instead of printing a suitable texture on paper you can also have it printed on other things like blankets or towels. During one of their discount plus free shipping promotions I ordered a towel from Artscow with a printed  dirt road texture and cut roads from it with scissors:

(http://www.artscow.com/gallery/towel/dirt-road-fri0bwzwl3b5)

  If you want to see how the roads look on a gaming table see my game blog posts. 

 

Oldtown

From my terrain building archives.

Oldtown or Building a dirt cheap (fantasy) village in 10 easy steps

• 4 residential buildings with 1 floor
• 4 residential buildings with 2 floors (first floor is lift off)
• 1 bell tower
• 1 smithy

 

Step 1 Collect materials:

• corrugated cardboard
• regular cardboard
• (brick) textured wallpaper
• wooden popsicle sticks / coffee stirrers
• matchsticks/toothpicks
• drinking straws
• bits

Step 2 Ground floor (2 types):

• use rectangular thick cardboard as base
• Cut walls from corrugated cardboard
• Glue textured wallpaper on walls (options: stone pattern, spackle pattern)
• Cut out windows and door openings
• Attach walls to base
• Cut "cornerstones" from cereal box cardboard
• Glue stones on corners and optionally around door/window bits

Type 3 chimney (see step 8)

Step 3: First floor

• Use rectangular thick cardboard as the base (make sure the base overlaps the walls from step 2)
• Cut walls from corrugated cardboard
• Cut out windows openings
• Attach walls to base
• Glue wooden popsicle sticks / coffee stirrers on walls
• Alternatively construct half-timbered first floor 
• Alternatively use textured wallpaper (spackle pattern) instead of textured paint

Step 4: Smithy

Same as residential building with only ground floor and a large outside (back)wall chimney (see step 8). Leave out  front wall.

Step 5: Bell Tower

Same as residential stone buildings, only different cardboard shape and makes use of  “stepped” facade.

Step 6: Paint stone

It’s easier to paint the textured wallpaper “stones” before adding details so:

First layer: black, subsequent layers: drybrush greys, and white as finish.

Step 7: Roof

• Cut a piece of cardboard (thicker than cereal box card, thinner than the cardboard used for the base) to size
• Draw a line across the middle
• Cut halfway trough with a sharp knife
• Paint your 1 sided corrugated cardboard black (preparation for step 10)

You can get corrugated cardboard by peeling off one side of regular corrugated cardboard, but cardboard with one corrugated side is also used as packaging material.

Perils of the Warp:

In order to prevent warping roofs it’s a good idea to give the 1 sided corrugated cardboard a basecoat before cutting it into strips. This basecoat will cause the cardboard to warp, but after cutting strips from it, gluing them on the roof and drybrushing them, the roof itself will not warp.

Lesson learned: It is better to paint the roof base on which the tiles are glued black before you glue on the tiles. This prevents the lighter base being visible trough cracks between the rows of tiles.

Step 8: Chimneys

• Cut the sides from corrugated cardboard or blocks from polystyrene depending on the type:
• - roof chimney (type 1, polystyrene)
• - roof chimney (type 2, polystyrene)
• - outside wall chimney (type 3, cardboard)
• Glue textured wallpaper on chimneys
• Cut “cornerstones” from cereal box cardboard and glue them on corners (optional).
• Cut small cardboard strips and glue them on to hide corrugation

Type 1 chimneys

Type 2 chimneys

Step 9 Details & roof finish**:

• Add details: windows, curtains, wire mesh (stained glass windows), smithy interior, etc.
• Add doors,
• Add wooden sheds
• Glue roof onto walls and fix with rubber bands while allowing to set
• Add beams under roof and first floor
• flock base
• Attach chimney type 1 or 2
• Cut strips from 1 sided corrugated cardboard
• Glue strips on the roof
• Glue wooden skewer on top ridge of roof***
• Cut a drinking straw in half lengthwise
• Cut small pan tiles from the halves
• Add a line of pan tiles on the top ridge

 

Step 10 Further detailing and Paint:

• Add lots and lots of bits (especially the smithy).
• Paint the pieces in the desired colours.

** Actually you could shuffle a bit between step 8, 9 and 10. To prevent paint getting on the wire mesh it is easier to paint the window ledges first and subsequently add the mesh, curtains, etc and then glue the roof on the walls. Chimneys type 1 & 2 can also be attached later.

*** I only found this out after my first idea didn’t work. The ridge without the skewer has insufficient surface for  gluing the pan tiles. Inserting a wooden skewer increases that surface. (see sketch)

Finished town