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!