Warhammer 1.914K

Mike ran some more Great War games at Morningstar Sunday afternoon and I was lucky enough to take part again. The first scenario we played was very small, the third scenario in the Skirmish Campaigns: Rommel's Route to Verdun series. I'd played the German side last weekend so wanted to finish it up as the Germans. Ian lent me a hand on the German side of the table. Mark and Jim took the French and Mike refereed.

The game went quickly... Ian and I moved our guys up to the stone wall in front of the two closest buildings, hunting for French.

We sent two soldiers over the wall to peek in the windows. A terrible difficult terrain roll left the guy on the left dangling in the wind.

The French pick off Fritz and take a hail of gunfire in return. One French soldier is wounded, precipitating a massive French rout from the building! They are living up to their reputation. Hahaha.

Otto crept forward towards the hedge-line to reconnoiter it and got gunned down for his efforts. Again, German morale was unaffected. We'd gotten to turn 8 and the French only had 10 unbroken troops on the table of the required 12. A cheap German victory! Hurrah!

Game two was a much bigger deal. Instead of a little skirmish screw-around, each side would have 40+ troops, machine guns, mortars, cannons, etc. We left the table as it was. The Germans had to capture two buildings in the village.

Ian and I again used the Germans, joined by Mike this time. Jim and Mark took over a British contingent this time, much better quality than their French in the first game and better than our Germans!

Our initial dispositions and planned attack routes. My troops are in pink (2 squads and a MG). Ian's are in blue (3 squads and a mortar). Mike's single squad is in off-white. The Brits are littered around the village.

The Germans move out. "hut hut hut hut"

The mortar gets a fabulous shot off against one of the British squads on the wall - two kills! Jim gets rattled easily and has his troops fall back straight away into the buildings. We were very surprised that they pulled back so quickly, expecting an absolute meat-grinder for the first third of the table.

We keep pushing forward as quickly as possible.

 Jim and Mark - the British leaders and Mike, playing for the Germans this game.

Ian, my other co-general

The author of this blog.

Our advance continues. The howitzer at the British rear is taking big chunks of troops out of our force advancing up the road.

A turn further in, and the situation just keeps sucking for the guys coming up the road.

But what our opponents did not expect was that I'd halt for a turn and open up on the squad in the house by the road. I fired a bucket o' dice and ran that squad off! The British players were terribly unhappy that they'd taken so many casualties.

Ian did his damnedest to get the remnants of his road squad into the vacated building. The squad was shot up rather badly in the process and only had two guys left, but their morale held. I wanted to storm the other building but couldn't get a weight of numbers that I was comfortable with, so my guys skulked off left.

My forward squad prepared to assault the guys in the hedge, supported by gunfire from the squad behind. The gunfire ran off the Brits whose morale just wasn't up to par! Ian's two remaining squaddies managed to make it into the empty building and hunkered down.

The British took their eighth turn, which resulted in nothing of consequence. With that, the game was over - a minor British victory since managed to only capture one of the two objectives. We did wipe out two squads, but only had two and a half squads left which I don't think would have accomplished much with the artillery from hell still working its dark magic.

The game was a whole lot of fun for everyone, even considering the shady GW rules. I'd really like to try those Rommel scenarios with Chain of Command or Close Quarter Skirmish instead - the 40K rules don't do it justice.