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. 

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. 

The March of Father Time

Sadly, the house of Prufrock had a recent birthday, which forced the painful realisation that I am not as young as I once was. 

One bonus though was that workmates kindly put the hat around to get a prezzy card for me, accompanied by the stern directive to 'get something for yourself'. 

Needing not to be told a second time, I promptly ordered some Memoir '44 materials - the Breakthrough kit and the Winter Wars expansion, to be exact.

SP came over today (Labour Day) and we tried out the Sword Beach Breakthrough scenario. What a good game it was.

As the Allies I took an immediate pounding from a well directed air attack on my left. We had some hard fighting for the 6th Airborne to do around the Orne and Caen canal bridges while also trying to get off the beach. 

We took a beating, I have to say. Despite some fortunate dice, the Airborne were first ousted from the bridges and then destroyed as SP got reinforcements to where they needed to be.

We made heavy weather of it on the beaches. Fierce counter-attacks held up progress and took heavy toll on our men before looming reinforcements eliminated them. 

We were crushed. Thrown back into the sea, even.

Not far advanced from where we had started, but with significantly fewer troops, and about the same number of those damned Jerries!

Well played SP. We both thought it was a cracking scenario, and breakthrough a superior game to vanilla Memoir '44. 

You could almost call it...

Testing out Memoir 44

Over the last few weeks SP and I have caught up for a couple of nights yarning and gaming with Memoir 44. I'd picked up a secondhand copy within NZ through a facebook page connection and ordered some expansions from Amazon following an introduction to it during a fleeting visit to Japan.

We tried out the Pegasus Bridge scenario (won both times won by the Allies) last week and Hellfire Pass (both times won by the Allies) tonight.

Hellfire pass, from the German side

Pegasus Bridge from the perspective of the Allies

It's simple but effective and we think we can probably get our young lads interested in a game as well. It may turn out to be a good purchase for that alone.

I'd initially thought I might be put off by the out of scale miniatures the game uses, but in fact they remind me of the maps I used to pore over in the Purnell History of the Second World War zines my grandfather collected.

The scenarios require some pleasing strategising, but as with all the C&C family of games there is plenty of potential for things to go awry. Overall I'm pleased I bought into it, and there is a lot of scope for ongoing play.

It's not going to replace heavier games in my collection but will probably get more play.

We also gave Twilight Struggle a go, but that is for another post. 

December WWII gaming

Before Christmas I was lucky enough to be able to head over to Japan with the family for a short trip to catch up with some people and spend a bit of time back in the old haunts.  We had various trips planned and things to do, but as fate would have it two of the young ones (not so young really, given they are now sixteen and fourteen!)* caught influenza which kept as mostly housebound for about half of the time I was over there (the family is staying over there a bit longer). 

Still, I managed to catch up with some old friends in our old town, one of whom has become quite a collector of games. One of his favourites is Memoir '44. I asked if he had anything he wanted to play, and this was what he was most keen on. At the age of 49, therefore, I got to play my first games of Memoir '44.

Memoir is not a series that I had ever been particularly interested in. It looked like toys in a box, the tanks are out of scale to the figures, and I played Commands & Colors: Ancients. 

There did not seem any need.

Well, what do I know. It turns out it was great fun. Trust Richard Borg!

Ben quickly ran me through the rules. Of course, the mechanics were familiar from C&C:A, but the tweaks oozed class and induced that nodding satisfaction that comes when you encounter something, know where it came from, and can see how it has built upon earlier iterations.

We played a desert scenario called Sbeitla, Tunisia, which was part of preprinted pack, saving the need to set up the terrain on the map. 

I played as the attacking Germans first up. The tactical position was interesting. The field was dominated by strongly positioned US artillery in the centre, a forward left flank of infantry and armour, and a refused infantry-heavy right flank with anti-tank capability. 

To face this I had a centre of infantry complemented by mixed infantry and armour on the flanks, with my left, bolstered by a veteran (four tanks rather than three) unit, stronger than my right.

Five banners were needed to win, which could be achieved by occupying key positions and/or eliminating enemy units. 

My main concern initially was the artillery, and early moves were focused on neutralising it. While working to this end I was hit by a couple of devastating special cards which destroyed one of my infantry units immediately. Gradually however my armour got into advantageous positions that, in combination with good cards, created opportunies to take enemy units in a crossfire and threaten the terrain objectives. 

Mid-game from the German side. Three banners scored each, but with some excellent opportunites for German armour... 

As it happened, the Germans were able to squeeze out a win by hunting down the vulnerable infantry on the US right. 

We switched sides and played again. In this game the Germans took an early lead and appeared to have the game for the taking, but a US fight back with a special armour assault card combined with lucky dice allowed the double-whammy of destroying units and taking objectives to snatch a victory. 

Game two in progress, from the perspective of the US.

I was impressed enough by Memoir to research its availability in New Zealand.  The boy though is not interested in wargames at this stage. If he were, it would be a great option. But the fact that he would rather do other things and that the subject of the original game is Normandy, which I already have plenty of gaming options for, means that I will likely hold off. Unless of course I find a secondhand copy going, or just change my mind!

When I got back home just after Christmas I took advantage of the 'bachelor life' to get in a game of Undaunted Normandy with SP, just before he took off to go on a cruise with family.

As always, it provided a good game with numerous tactical challenges. I forget which scenario we played, but it was one from the base game that we'd enjoyed first time round. Playing as the US I had a corner position on a hill trying to take objectives in the middle of the battlefield, but with not much cover around. SP as the Germans played an excellent game, presenting multiple threats that forced me to respond. While attempting to prevent my troops being massacred I worked on setting up a machine gun fire base to first neutralise his mortar and then dominate the centre. In doing so I was distracted from what I needed to do to win, which was take ground. SP gave me too much to do and while I was stuck in a reactive cycle he advanced into jump off points. I tried to respond in kind, but it was a little too late. He punished my infantry as they tried to contest the centre, took the objectives from his forward positions and won in handsome style. 

The field at game end.

And they've done it!

It really is a fantastic game, and such a good option to pull out on a week night. Plays fast, is engaging all the way through, and you can have a couple of beers and a yarn beforehand and still have time to get through a game or two.

Anyway, happy new year to you all, and hope it's a good year for everyone. 

*Where did those years go?!