Romps in the Sand: Rapid Fire AAR

The Italians got themselves into position early, occupying 2 of the three victory locations

Finally got another game in after a three month break. Such a busy year with work and family and a good dose of Covid-19 with some lingering after effects and hosting a life long friend from overseas for a much appreciated visit.

British advancing from the other side of the embankment

It was my turn to host and as I have only just started my new major terrain project (more later) I trotted out my trusty home-made desert mat which stood in for North Africa ... yes Kameraden, it was time for Rapid Fire!

General Grant and I had a couple of games in fact - first an early war clash between British Commonwealth forces and the Italians, followed by a later stouch between Americans and Axis forces 'somewhere' in Tunisia. We randomly diced for sides (both forces and table edges) and got to it.

First A/C nailed - they passed morale only to have the other two destroyed also

I set up the first early war battlefield as a fight to cut a rail and road line and to seize a telephone line signal station. I crafted a raised rail embankment using XPS foam which slipped under the mat, along with several hills. The embankment and hills blocked line of sight and provided 6" dead ground out of sight from the other hills.

I'll not provide a blow by blow but long story short, my recent out of character winning streak came to a crashing end as the arms of fascism triumphed against my British forces which were ingloriously slaughtered in a desperate but at least well co-ordinated rush for the road.

 

The second game went even worse for me as the Axis player. The troop of American M3 Grant tanks pressed forward aggressively and overwhelmed a fragile and outclassed panzer troop of mark IIs and a III.

I did suffer from a glimmer of hope in round one when I diced on my Heinkel 111's table-top debut. I elected to drop a cluster of six bombs on a reckless concentration of US forces, only to take out two soft-skins and miss those bloody tanks.

The Americans kept rolling on fighter air-cover which bounced a later Heinkel attempt and helped to drive an endless series of nails into my coffin.

We have developed a few home rules or gaming protocols which may be of interest. Not covered in the rules, we determined that units fired upon are compelled to return fire on those elements rather than 'gaming' preferred targets.

We also allow firing groups to split fire against divergent targets. As we sometimes disperse our firing groups (8 or 10 figure companies). When they concentrate fire on one target, we take the range from the majority of those figures and apply it to the whole firing group: we figure you win some and lose some across a game and all evens out.

I base all of my vehicles (I'm very much in that school) and I write vehicle details underneath. This has not proved as handy as it should be and I will now label underneath them their gun class details, caliber as well as armour class and speeds ... anything to save looking up the rules more often than is absolutely necessary. 

This was the first outing for a number of my models and on average, those units did some good service. I really do need to get around to motorizing my Italians and three Lancia trucks are now on my work bench to make good that intention.

Comments

  1. A lovely looking couple of games…

    All the best. Aly

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Aly. I've had a few more games since (Napoleonics) - I think year has been a record for me.

      Delete
  2. That's some excellent looking pew pew :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Jay. They were extremely fun also - even if I was done like a dog's dinner.

      Delete
  3. Great looking game as usual. Well unlucky it seems to be once again a moniker!
    Matt

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheers Matt. My previous winning streak was a freak.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular Posts