Hold The Line!

Even with all the War & Conquest excitement I couldn't resist playing a game of WHW's "The Great War". When Rob last visited he kindly brought along another batch of Great War Miniatures Late War Germans, which gives me almost 500pts of the fellows. Of course they're not painted yet which is why you'll only see a few of them in the following pictures.

Hurriedly unpacking new figures, blu-tacking them to bases and getting on with a game really brought back memories of when I first got in to Warhammer Fantasy Battle many, many years ago. Anyway, before I go all misty eyed and start rambling even more, here's some notes and pics from our game.

The basic scenario for the game is that the German Spring Offensive of 1918 has run out of steam and the Allies are vigourously counter-attacking, in this case somewhere near Amiens. A small force of German Stellungsbataillon have been pushed from their original lines on one of the quieter sectors and have hastily dug in on the outskirts of a small village. There's about 750pts of BEF and 420pts of Germans.

My wife kindly took command of the BEF - as they're painted - and I led the shiny new Germans.

The forces were approx as follows

BEF
Battalion Command - Colonel and 4 soldiers
Red Company, Command Group + 2 platoons of 10 figures incl Lewis Guns
Yellow Company, Command Group + 2 platoons of 10 figures incl Lewis Guns
2 x Vickers HMG section
1 x Light Mortar section
1 x Platoon of Highlanders incl Lewis Gun

Germans
Battalion Command - Colonel and 3 soldiers
Grey Company, Command Group + 3 platoons of 10 figures incl MG08/15
1 x MG08 HMG section
1 x Light Mortar section
1 x Grenade Launcher
Flamethrower detachment (not strictly allowed for a Stellungsbataillon but shhh! ;o))

Here's a shot through the trees from above the German lines.

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The fine fellows of the BEF prepare to advance!

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And get off to rather slow start?

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Now they're after them ... and the German mortar is doing it's best to slow them down. Captain Carruthers and one platoon from Red Company are pinned by the blast.

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On the other flank the Flamethrower detachment got bogged down in the woods so the Highlanders fixed bayonets and rushed forward. Now, I must confess that I got the combat rules slightly wrong here and the Highlanders wiped out the German detachment in one turn, whereas some should have survived - but the I'd have needed to pass a morale test with a whopping -5 modifier, so the end result was about the same.


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Not to be outdone, the British mortar team land a shot amongst the German battalion command. Amazingly only the Colonel is killed and the others hold the their nerve.


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After another turn or two the superior British numbers really began to tell as the Germans were whittled down to just a handful of troops stoically clinging to their positions. By turn 6 it was clear that the British had driven the Germans back and could claim a clear victory. Had the German HMG not been taken out early in the game then it might have been a much closer run affair.

Considering that I've only played a handful of games of TGW, and this was my wife's first game, things went very smoothly indeed. Only a few rules had to looked up in the book. It was also a very enjoyable game with plenty of laughs.

Now I just need to finish off my BEF and then paint 40-50 Germans! Plus I could really do with a bit more Great War specific scenery.

+STOP PRESS+ Just received a copy of "Over The Top". Huzzah!