The Bridge

 The rain is back, which means that my promise to give an hour of my time to the garden can safely be ignored, being an old sailor there is nothing worse than gardening for me, but I am stuck as the missus is still not 100% from her op and the estate needs looking after. How did plants manage before we humans took an interest?

Despite all the women's work, I managed to paint up my two 3D vehicles, I got the files from RKX Miniatures and my mate Stuart of Magpie Designer ships fame printed them off for me. The Flakpanzer because I cannot resist most vehicles based on the Pz38(t) chassis and the StuiG33 because it looked good and was different and the files are cheap, so a want rather than a need. I could have painted the StuiG in the later Dunkelgelb but decided as they were around late 1942 to go grey.

I took the opportunity to dig out all my AA vehicles, and saw that only two have yet to see action, the early 88 and the British Crusader, no Jabo's have yet been seen at Casa Anderson, wonder why? If anyone ever does a 1/56 Mobilwagen I might still be tempted.

Back to NW France last night at the club, the British were required to capture a bridge intact for the drive inland and 21st Panzer had to stop them. I was playing Jimi at 900 points and he brought a couple of squads of infantry plus two small veteran squads of Paras, a Sniper an MMG and a Sherman Firefly, I had four squads of infantry, a panzerschreck team a Flakpanzer 38(t) and a PzIV, I got two tank slots due to the 21st Panzer list. As the defender I also got two minefields and Jimi got a preparatory bombardment.

The objective.

What it says

The British bombardment was no hardship and although I lost one man I managed to rally the troops for turn 2. Jimi got all his people on apart from the MMG, which must have got lost and would never turn up and the Sherman which was delayed slightly. I had no problem as all my men were eager to stop the Tommy's, I hid the Flakpanzer behind a building and opened up on the courageous sniper across the river, very quickly this team bit the dust. The Sherman turned up and took its revenge, the 38(t) was immobilised and set on fire, at least it was still there, as Jimi advanced his elite squads to the bridge I moved the PzIV ever closer and raked the structure with machine gun fire.

Easy does it boys.

Here they come.

I had miscalculated and the Panzer took a 17pdr shell and went up in smoke, I had fired a panzerfaust at the Allied tank but it had bounced off. The clock was ticking so I advanced my panzerschreck towards the annoying Sherman, more misses, my Flakpanzer was being even more annoying to the British as it turned on the men around the bridge who had now come into sight. Just as I had to advance to within three inches of the bridge in order to contest the objective I threw a FUBAR and my lead squad ran away! As the British on the bridge were cut up I managed, just, to get in a position which guaranteed a draw.

End of a dream.

 

And there you have it, a good game and Jimi played it well and almost managed a very difficult task. I find that with many of the Bolt Action scenarios you can safely wait until the last couple of turns and simply swamp the objective to get a draw. In this particular scenario the bridge could have gone up at the beginning of turn 2 with the result therefore being a draw, so why bother, we didn't play it this way. I need to take a leaf out of Matt Crump's book, put more thought into the scenario and make things more realistic or with several objectives, I looked through several of the Campaign books I have and found that most are not conducive to a club evening, needing specific terrain or more time to finish than is available. The newer books, D-Day and Fortress Budapest are much better, but no good for a club night.

Talking about getting off my backside I need to look at something for tomorrow when Julian comes for some Italian Wars. I am tempted by the battle of Agnadello, but we will see. On that subject I am now painting up the two cavalry units I have in the lead pimple, I also now have the figures I need to bring Francis I to the table to lead my French. I now realise that most of the Imperial army at Pavia was in fact Spanish, I seemed to have missed that, so the next infantry will be Spanish. This gives me a headache as it is quite possible they were organised into Colunela and although I have a template, I have no idea how they would work with Furioso rules. Aaaagh!