IABSM AAR: Les Attacques

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Vaggelis has begun playing his way through the Defence of Calais scenario pack, beginning  with scenario #01:  Les Attacques.

It is May 1940, and with British troops being evacuated from the beaches at Dunkirk, the ancient port of Calais stands on the critical western flank of the Anglo-French lines. In a desperate bid to shore up this flank, Churchill has committed the British 30th Infantry Brigade to defend Calais to the last...

Click on the picture below to see the full AAR:

IABSM AAR: Action in the Far East: Ban Sadao

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Cracking game of I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! at the weekend, with a scenario from the Fall of the Lion Gate scenario pack.

See if the British can stop the Japanese advance into Malaya at the village of Ban Sadao. Click on the picture below to see the whole report.

Ruined Buildings from Commission Figurines

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One of my purchases at Warfare were some of Commission Figurines 15mm ruined buildings in laser-cut wood.

I was quite excited by these, so let one of them jump to the head of the painting queue, and knocked it up in a few hours late on Sunday.

This particular building, Konig Strasse, is easy to put together: four walls slot together and then mount onto the four pavement pieces if pavement is required.

Painting was pretty simple too: I painted the whole thing orange, then put a very heavy black ink wash over the top. Once that was dry, I dry-brushed very lightly in orange again, and then in a bone colour to bring up the relief. The doors I did in brown, the pavement in three shades of grey. The interior I just painted all grey, with no washing or dry-brushing.

I'm very pleased with the result, and can't wait to build the others. I think they'll do for any big city: Berlin, Stalingrad and even sci-fi...and at £13 for the one below, quite good value too.

IABSM AAR: German Recon Breakthrough

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The Wasatch Front Historical Gaming Society (WFHGS) produce an excellent quarterly, free, full color wargames journal available to download from their site, called Warning Order.

Each issue of Warning Order features battle reports from their Friday night games, reviews of board games, figures, and gaming products, gaming analysis, and several regular features plus an editorial.

It's a very good read: I particularly like the regular Memoirs of a Miniatures & Board Wargamer and Blast from the Past columns...which shows you what an old fogey I'm becoming! The reviews are always useful as well.

Here's a IABSM battle report from the Spring 2015 edition (#40). Click on the pic of the front cover to see it.

IABSM AAR: Radekhov Station

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A nice little battle report from Mark Luther dating back from 2010.

Click on the picture to see all.

I have noticed a dearth of AARs for the TFL company-sized games (IABSM, CDS or Q13) out there on the net at the moment.

Don't forget that the offer is always open to post any reports you might have up here on Vis Lardica: just send me in the words and the pictures and I'll do the rest.

In the meantime, plenty of content to browse on here: over 250 AARs and growing fast!

 

IABSM AAR: Pouppeville

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Superb After Action Report from Carojon featuring a game  based on one of the scenarios in the All American scenario pack.

The tiny village of Pouppeville covered the end of one of the four designated exits from Utah beach on D-Day, so members of the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were dropped behind Utah beach to help in the clearing and securing of the area prior to the landing of the seaborne troops.

See how they do by clicking on the picture, below:

New 15mm WW2 Manufacturer: Waugh Games

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Waugh Games, a wargaming retailer/online shop based in Teeside, is now producing its own range of resin 15mm WW1 and WW2 vehicles.

At the moment all that is available is a handful of German vehicles, but they look good to me and are very competitively priced.

The vehicles are in resin, with integral bases (which won't please everyone, but that I quite like) and metal turrets/gun barrels.

Currently listed in their store are:

  • Tiger I
  • Panther
  • King Tiger
  • Jagdpanther
  • Panzer LV70
  • SdKfz 250/1
  • Opel Maultier

And at the moment they are running a series of promotions that make the models even more affordable.

They need some good pics to really sell the models, but here's the Opel Maultier: 

Now I need some Maultiers for my Gebirgsjaegers, so I'm going to buy some (probably the three for £7.50 offer...very good value) despite the fact that although, as I said, I like cast-on bases, the base shown above is VERY big and, if you look carefully, there do seem to be lots of bubble-holes in the paneling on the main body of the truck. Or maybe they are supposed to be, or will look like, bullet holes. We shall see!

Flakpanzer I Ausf. A from Minairons

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I'd been wanting to add Minairons' 15mm Flakpanzer Is to my early war German army for some time, but had been put off by the cost: £17.25 for a box of two makes for just over £8.60 per model, and they are mostly plastic. Must be something to do with the import from Europe, but that makes them even more expensive even than Battlefront! 

Anyhow, a Plastic Soldier Company sale gave me the excuse I needed to get them, so get a box I did.

The models go together pretty easily, although I did have a problem with bent gun barrels. They arrived a bit bent, and must have been battered during the construction process somehow, as one barrel needed gluing to keep it from falling apart, and the other took ages to get properly straight.

The crew figures that you get with these models are nice, but pretty damn tall. The chap standing up leaning forward slightly, must be at least 6' 9" tall; and the kneeling guy is as tall as a standing infantryman from most other manufacturers.

Here they are painted up. In summary: nice models, but crew very tall, and very expensive for what they are.

AAR: A Game of IABSM

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Hello All!

Well I'm back from San Francisco and feeling somewhat jet-lagged. Even flying business class, eleven hours there, three days of conference (including entertaining, which also included a great concert from the Killers and Foo Fighters: the former being particularly good) and then ten hours back is a lot to take. 

The obligatory shot of the Golden Gate bridge

And one of the Bay Bridge at night

[RUGBY SPOILER ALERT]

I managed, however, to stay awake long enough today to watch Japan beat South Africa at rugby: an unbelievable result that came from an incredible performance from the Japanese team. To give you an idea of their guts, with one minute to go they were three points behind and were awarded a penalty on the Springboks' five yard line: three times they made the decision to go for the try rather than the safer kick-to-draw option. 

Which nicely sets us up for today's IABSM battle report: a pick-up game from Charles Eckart which comes with no pictures but some great story-telling. Click here to see the AAR.

Potential IABSM Market Garden Game in Sweden

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Long time Lardy Thomas Nissvik (you can see his gallery in the 2015 Painting Challenge, and several AARs in the appropriate sections) has posted this piece of news on the TFL Forum:

My buddy Daniel asked me to post this. I will be participating as an Umpire, but Daniel is running the event.

"I plan to hold a big game event next year. The event will be a four day event, probably a Thursday to Sunday thing. It will be based on the 101. Airborne sector during Market Garden and the fighting around Hell's Highway. Rules will be IABSM (I Ain't Been Shot Mum) with a good amount of some local "house rules". Knowing the rules is not necessary as all tables will have umpires. It will be for friends so it is not some commercial event or open to the public.

A pic from the Lardy D-Day Games Day showing British Paras in action around Ranville

My thought is to do this some time in August (when most people have vacation) in the a place which is only ten minutes by car from Arlanda airport and about forty minutes from Stockholm central by train. The idea is to rent a community house. It has a pentry so it will be possible to make food. I am still inquiring with the people responsible and will visit the house in September. I will ask all participants for a modest entry fee to cover the rental expense for the house (which will be fairly low).

It will be played over several large tables with the Son bridge in the south and Uden in the north. Each player will command a force or battle group either consisting of elements of the 101. Airborne, XXX Corps or the German forces. Each force might be equalling a reinforced company or so. I also have plans of having people being commanders of the whole Airborne force, XXX Corps and so on, responsible for coordination, allocating resources, reserves and supplies and communication as well as some higher level support units (especially when it comes to the XXX Corps).

The idea is not to cover the whole Market Garden operation so the Nijmegen, Arnhem, Eelst/Driel sector will not be covered. Some tables will be connected to each other making it possible to send troops directly over to the next while others while require some "extra move points" or "deductions".

I plan to use my friends Koen, Jocke, Laffe and Thomas as umpires. Myself also being one but more on a coordination level. Perhaps they will also have some force responsibility depending on how many will join. All of us will obviously do our best to bring forth the necessary terrain and so on.

I would like to ask you if you would be interested in joining this. Perhaps you also know some people who would be interested in joining as player participants or as umpires, full or part time?"

So, anyone interested?

Cheers/Thomas

Those of you who haven't been to a Lardy games day before should visit the AAR section of this website and see the reports from previous events. They are at the bottom of the right-hand column of AARs.

It would be great if this happened, so if you do fancy a trip to Sweden next year for a big game of IABSM, let Thomas know by replying to his post on the forum here or by e-mailing him at thomas.nissvik@gmail.com.