Rapid Fire

I joined in a WWII game this week, it was set in Normandy and both sides had to defend their own village while capturing the enemy village, we used 20mm troops and vehicles and the quick-play rules Rapid Fire. I am not a fan of quick-anything, my wargaming has to take place when I can fit it in nowadays so I go to great lengths to put up a nice table with nice troops and I like to enjoy the spectacle over several relaxed hours with perhaps the odd beer or glass of wine. I do not like to fight Waterloo on a 2x2 board with the same number of men Sharpe had in the TV series in under an hour. Obviously this is not always possible at a club but surprisingly we do manage most of the time to have decent tables and finish normal games in the time allotted.

And so to Rapid Fire, I thought the game at first sight was a tad ambitious we had three infantry battalions with support while I think the Germans may have had slightly less, there was a huge piece of open ground between the villages which was going to be a death trap for any tanks or vehicles trying to cross it, but we had to try. Our first battalion occupied our village and no sooner had our tanks turned up and got to the outskirts than the first one was brewed up by an 88. It turned out not to be knocked out but heavily damaged, luckily we had a repair vehicle in reserve so it was called up.

Our village.

An 88 in the distance covers the road.

Our handy recovery vehicle.

Now that we could see something we brought in mortar fire, one 88 scratched, quickly followed by a second and a 20mm FLAK, it looked like we could simply sit still and mortar the enemy to death, things even improved later when we were allowed to bring in our artillery. The Germans opened up knocked out one of ours, gun or tank, then we replied knocking out one of theirs, we won this exchange as the enemy were left with only one AT gun and two routing StuG's while we had our Firefly, our repaired Sherman and a Stuart. Our infantry were advancing very slowly down the road and had not yet reached halfway, the German infantry were almost within shooting distance of ours when the game ended. As none of us had managed our victory conditions it was declared a draw, if it had gone on then the Allied armour with mortar and artillery support would I suspect have destroyed the German defence but you never know in a wargame.

The infantry advance down the road.

My dice.

The game did what it said on the tin, but it was too quick for me, it is for big games but even so it seemed more like a shoot-em-up than a wargame. I can see the appeal however, Andy had some terrific models of all sorts of stuff either on the table or in his boxes, he had at least four or five different versions of the Universal Carrier for instance. I was also impressed with his figures and the painting of the same, some of the plastic figures which came with vehicles were not up to much but his metal troops were lovely sculpts.

Not much happening at the moment after my rush of posts last week, I was away at the weekend and this week we have the decorator in, so not much in the way of miniature painting, I do have my second Bolt Action squad to base this evening as I can manage that in the study, but I need the light of the dining room for painting.