July 1st continued, 8:15 am - 3:45pm.

The Gettysburg game continues with leisurely turns conducted in the evenings. It has been very enjoyable. Here is a record of what has happened.

Turn 2: 8:15 - 9:30

Heth's Division advances along the Chambersburg pike towards Pleasonton's cavalry who are set up on McPherson's Ridge and block the road. For the Union, I Corps reinforcements are beginning to arrive but are not yet concentrated.

Turn 3: 9:30 - 10:45

Heth's division launches an attack on the cavalry. Both sides take casualties but Calef's artillery and Devin's brigade are shattered in the effort to hold off the Rebels. 

The aftermath of Heth's attack. 

Gamble pulls back towards Seminary Ridge as reinforcements from I Corps come through the town. 

McPherson's Ridge is clear.

I Corps and XI Corps converge on the town. 

Turn 4: 10:45 - 12:00

Heth's Division reorganises after the fight and advances on Seminary Ridge. I Corps prepares for battle as XI Corps marches on. Pender's Division begins to come in behind Heth. 

A period of manoeuvre

Turn 5: 12:00 - 1:15

Heth's Division takes up position on Seminary Ridge. Pender's Division takes side roads in order to come in on Heth's right.

I Corps swings the door to hit Heth's division on its right. 

Breckenborough is shattered and Pettigrew is forced to retreat off the ridge. I Corps takes heavy casualties. 

Heth's men have been made to pay for their hard-marching, but the Iron Brigade has also been hurt.

Rodes's Division is coming in along the Carlisle Road; I and XI Corp organise a defensive line through the town and up to Seminary Ridge.

Turn 6: 1:15 - 2:30

The Rebels come in hard to attack I Corps on the ridge and left of the town. In bitter fighting both sides take casualties, fail morale checks and retreat. Pender's Division hits Biddle's brigade on McPherson's Ridge but is driven off. 

The Rebel yell is heard. 

Both sides are left somewhat dazed by the furious attacks. Early's Division is now also on the field and the Union is under pressure.

The battlefield at 2:30pm.

Turn 7: 2:30 - 3:45

Pender's Division regroups to overrun Biddle's brigade. The Union pulls back from Seminary Ridge and forms a line behind the town so as to force any imminent Confederate attack to come through unfavourable ground. They hope for XII Corps to begin appearing on the battle field sooner rather than later. 

Pender's Division is advancing recklessly to pressure the Union line while the rest of the line is scattered after the fight. 

The casualties so far have been fairly heavy. 

The position at 3:45. Objective hexes are marked with cubes.

The day is in the balance. Can the Confederates take Cemetery Hill and Ridge? It is not an impossibility, but there are only three turns in which to do it, and Union reinforcements under Slocum will be arriving soon. It will depend on how well the attacks can be coordinated and what fate has in store. 

It all lies ahead of us!

July 1st

As all wargamers know, there is only one thing to do on July 1st. In my case the game is Battle Hymn Vol 1: Gettysburg and Pea Ridge. 

Heth's Division comes down the Chambersburg Pike. 

My favourite Gettysburg gaming experience was my first one: a solo play of Rick Barber's Summer Sword. The maps are spectacular, but do require a rather large space. The rules as I recall were simplified from the orginal by a chap on boardgamegeek. A close second was Thunder at the Crossroads with Pat Hirtle. 

This game is slightly more modest than either, being a one-mapper. The artwork is still impressive.

Not sure how far I will get through the game, but I hope to manage a few turns at least before the dreaded boardgame ennui strikes. 

For some reason Gettysburg is one of those battles that just send chills down my spine. Frankly, I blame Ronald F Maxwell, Michael Shaara, Ken Burns, Shelby Foote and Bruce Catton!

Is anyone else putting a Gettysburg game on the table over the next few days?

The mighty Ben Stokes

As a New Zealander who loves 'the thwack of leather upon willow,' it would be remiss of me to not mark the retirement of the great English cricketer, Ben Stokes.

Ashes winner, World Cup winner, 20/20 World Cup winner, he has done it all for England, and on one of those most memorable occasions he did it against us.

It seems to be the way of things for those in the public eye that they move from hero to villain as the commentariat decides. Stokes deserves to be remembered for his mighty feats, not for his failures. His retirement is a loss to all cricket.

Stokes on the way to World Cup glory against New Zealand

What a talisman. 

Market Garden

SP popped over this afternoon for another game so I set up Market Garden for Memoir '44. It has an interesting mechanism to reflect both the Germans having been initially caught napping and the Allied difficulty in maintaining momentum. 

(I have mixed up 82nd and 101st Airborne all the way through this post!)

SP took the Germans again (I sense a theme?) and we got down to business. The Allies start out with 13 command cards and the Germans only 3. The goal is to get 13 victory banners through a combination of destroying enemy units and taking key objectives. 

XXX Corps looking formidable

The 82nd - oops, it seems one unit didn't make the dropzone!

The 101st, with three units equipped with inflatable boats. 

1st Airborne.

To start the Allies focused on activating XXX Corp and 1st Airborne, trying to open the road towards Eindhoven with the one and taking Arnhem with the other. 

XXX Corps drive on Valkenswaad.

The Airborne establish a foothold in Arnhem.

There is little progress for the Americans.

The 101st and 82nd Cautiously approaching Eindhoven and Nijmegen. 

Turn three sees the first signs of organised German defence. An armoured unit is damaged near Valkenswaad. The 101st takes casualties from air attack and a bombardment. 1st Airborne is hit at Arnhem. 

Each Allied unit destroyed sees the Germans draw a new command card immediately and the Allies discard one of theirs at random. The initial 13 - 3 card differential is now 10 - 6.

German resistance catches XXX Corps in a crossfire and blocks the road. 

101st is hit and dispersed.

German counterattacks at Arnhem: note the Tiger approaching the bridge. 

Turn four starts well for the Allies: the 82nd close-assaults Eindhoven and secures a portion of the town.

The Tiger unit is forced to retreat from Arnhem.

But the Germans reinforce Nijmegen, and the prospects of the 101st being able to take it appear remote. 

Turn five sees the fighting intensify for the Americans. More units lost, meaning our command cards discarded and more picked up for the Germans.

 The 1st Airborne are now embattled on two fronts.  

XXX Corps are still fighting their way forward.

Turn six will be our last turn, as SP has a dinner date. The card differential is now in the German's favour, something like 11-8.

The 82nd is half destroyed.

But they still hold Eindhoven.

XXX Corps is bogged down clearing enemy remnants.

1st Airborne is still holding on in Arnhem (just).

And have difficulties to the rear, with heavy enemy presence in the woods.

And the whole scene:

The Germans are leading the victory count 8-6, but the card differential is now 12-6 in their favour. We call the game for the Germans - the Allies have shot their bolt and are just holding on everywhere but in the XXX Corps sector. 

***

Well, it was another entertaining afternoon of Memoir '44. It is a hell of an enjoyable game, even when Monty's gamble fails. This is an interesting scenario, and you really feel the Allied attack stagnating as the Germans begin to inflict casualties and alter the command card differential. I would like to try this scenario again. It's certainly a hard fight for the Allies. 

Thanks to SP for a great day at the table. 

Littoral Commander Australia arrives

Got home from work tonight and there it was, sitting in a box by the back door. It is up to the same high production standards as the first two games of the series. Four large maps (Port Darwin, Kokoda Track, Timor Leste and Solomon Islands), and it seems to have a swag of scenarios. 

I must admit to having less desire to play modern battles at the present moment but no doubt I will get to this in time. 

Well done to Sebastian Bae and the Dietz Foundation. 

ANZAC day game, Operation Lightfoot

We had a beautiful sunny day in Tasman yesterday for ANZAC day. It was a happy-busy day for me - dropping the lady of the house at the airport at 5am for her trip to Japan; coming home for a two-hour nap (which turned into a four-hour nap, meaning that I missed the local wreath-laying service!); a large pot of coffee and some guitar strumming in the sun; a walk; a trip to the local store with my son; a phone call to mum; dinner prep; and finally a game with SP from 7 (well, 8:30 once we'd caught up on all the news).

As our friends across the ditch say, how good!

We hadn't played Memoir '44 for a while, and the ANZAC day weekend seemed a good time to play out a battle that the 2nd NZEF had a role in. I went with 2nd Alamein: the scenario is Operation Lightfoot from the Through Jungle to Desert expansion, using the Overlord (double-sized board) rules. 

A Wikipedia map of the situation:

By Noclador - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2547277

And a view of the Memoir 44 map, looking south from behind El Alamein itself.

Commanding the Commonwealth forces my aim was to clear a route through the minefields, attack Miteiriya Ridge (in the centre of the battlefield), drive through, and claim victory. We needed 14 banners to win, these coming from unit kills and by achieving terrain objectives.

For SP, it was hold us off, deny us objectives, and score banners from delaying the allied advance.

As with most Memoir games, too much happens to relate it in detail. In broad terms we pushed in the centre and on the right. There were messy scenes as engineers clearing minefields were attacked by entrenched infantry and marauding armour. 

Drive on Miteiriya Ridge

But the advance through the centre and right seemed to reach a critical mass.

Strength in numbers on our right.

Yet each turn SP would find some way to give us a bloody nose. Our infantry was chewed up on the advance; Armour Assault cards were used to great effect on the counter-attack; Ambush cards were used to pre-empt our close assaults.

Looking north from Ruweisat Ridge.

Ground being taken in the centre.

Suddenly, the battle was on the line. Over two turns SP makes a clear scoring break to come within two banners of victory. This is achieved by repeated armoured assaults picking off exposed units and judicious counter-attacking play.

With five banners needed for victory and just one chance to do it, the Allied army plays the 'Their Finest Hour' card, allowing us to activate units all along the line.

We come agonisingly close - two units killed; two terrain objectives achieved; but the crucial final kill eludes us.

SP storms to victory!

The front denuded!

It was an excellent game. SP did Rommel proud with a masterful display of disciplined defence and devastatingly-timed counter-attacks.

While not a great game to blog about for various reasons (it looks too toy-ish; units are representative rather than exact; it's too busy to photograph well), Memoir '44 is a great game to play. It was an excellent evening of good company, the kinds of jokes that you can only enjoy with an old friend, and a gripping ANZAC battle. 

We really do need to play this more often.

Thanks to SP for a great evening of gaming. 

Edit: while my material here is light, I would encourage any readers to look at this wonderful post from Craig at Craig's Wargaming about a family connection to ANZAC day. In the Antipodes we all have our family stories to bring out in their own time, and Craig has done so here. Well worth reading. 

This and that

There has been some movement in the wargaming room since Easter, including some painting, which has been a welcome development. The day job's intensity has recently risen and as a way to declutter the mind before sleep my better half suggested I paint some of those figures taking up space in all the nooks and crannies of the house. Very thoughtful of her!

Mind you, this painting did not happen immediately. First I had to reorganise my storage by buying stackable plastic containers. One for figures primed in bags, one for figures primed and on temporary bases, one for figures half done, one for all the elephants I bought late one night from Potbelly Miniatures, and so on.

I then had a 'some of these boardgames on the shelves should really be played' fit and after a week of picking boxes up and then putting them down I finally settled on GMT's Fields of Fire. It was the third time I have set out to learn this highly-regarded solitaire system. Over the next week or so I spent about ten hours on it before packing it up and putting it away again. The third time was not the charm.

Alongside this I watched the entire series of the Japanese anime Attack on Titan. Also at the instigation of my wife. She is a fan of the series (as are two of my children) and convinced me to watch an English subtitled version through Crunchyroll. This took us about four weeks. Anime's not my usual sort of thing but it grabbed the interest and it's always a plus to have something to watch with the beloved. 

And so, by roundabout ways, and having exhausted all other options, I came at last to painting. 

It has been quite good. The figures are Xyston Theban hoplites that any other right-thinking ancients enthusiast would have finished ten years ago, but which I have not. Helping me through are podcasts on Napoleon. I'm not quite sure why Napoleon became the subject, but he has done the job. 

I'm on the home stretch with this batch of figures and was planning to get another couple of hours in last night, but got distracted by a link to an Armchair Dragoons review of the Phil Sabin introductory wargame Take That Hill. Originally found in the Simulating War book, this game has now been spruced up and printed by Fight Club International. It is free to download and print from the website. The target audience is people who have not played wargames before, especially those in the armed forces or defence industry. 

Also linked there is a Connections Online webinar on the game presented by Phil and three other affiliated persons, which I started watching and couldn't stop. If you are interested in Phil Sabin's designs and design philosophy at all it is worth a look.

The simplicity of Take That Hill is certainly in contrast to the fiddliness of Fields of Fire.

Anyway, time to go back to the painting desk. It's been six months since I last finished off some figures. If I keep going at this rate the unpainted lead will outlast me!