A bit of a change this time: an AAR from the Stipsicz Hussars with an encounter set in French Indochina in 1951.
The game uses IABSM rather than CDS, perhaps appropriate given the period, and features a huge 6m table. A French column begins the game at either end, and heads towards a Point d'Appui in the middle. Needless to say, neither column nor PA escapes the attention of the Vietminh.
Click on the pic below to see all.
More I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! action from Joe Patchen: with a move to the Eastern Front in 1942.
The Soviets must break through the German lines. Will they do it? Click on the pic below to find out...
I have been trying to use scenarios other than those I've written myself, so my latest game of I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! featured a game taken from the TFL Summer Special 2005 based on the Royal Tanks scenario adapted from Skirmish Campaigns by Tom Ballou.
The game was quite short: involving me being completely tactically outsmarted and looking certain to lose until a sudden and very major reverse turned the tables on my opponent with devastating effect...on both his chances of winning and his temper!
Click on the picture below to see all:
Another great write up from the gaming table of Joe Patchen. The Americans are driving forward into occupied France: their next obstacle a small village bordering the road they are moving down. Is it safe to advance? Or is the village crawling with the enemy?
Click on the picture below to see all:
A change of scale now, with another 6mm I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! battle report from Mark Luther.
This features the third game played on the same "Operation Epsom" table: an encounter that saw the Tigers coming out to play!
Click on the picture below to see all:
The third I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! after action report from Joe Patchen to be showcased this week.
This was a cracking clash between German and American forces near Anzio, but not at "Wildcat to Whale" time: much later on in 1944.
Click on the pic below to see all...
Another excellent battle report from Joe Patchen: this time set on the Eastern Front in 1942.
It's July 1942 and the Russians need to break the siege of Leningrad. A new batch of brand new American lend-lease armor has made its way through U-boat infested waters to Murmansk and down by rail to the battle area. Into the maelstrom it is thrown...click on the picture below to see all.
Great battle report for I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! from Joe Patchen featuring a German assault on an American held town.
Click on the picture below to see the whole thing:
Incidentally, this AAR hasn't appeared elsewhere on the web: Joe sent me the images and words to be loaded specifically onto the Vis Lardica site. Anyone else who wants to do the same for any of the TFL company-sized games (IABSM, CDS, Q13) should feel free to follow suit. Prompt service guaranteed! E-mail me at admin@vislardica.com with the "deets" (as my daughters would say).
A quick seven-picture AAR from Mark Luther, featuring a huge game played at Gigabytes in August 2010.
There's only a few pictures because Mark was too busy running the game to take more!
Click on the pic, below, to see all:
Recently, Martin981463 posted the text of an IABSM after action report onto the TFL Yahoo Group. He also popped the pictures to accompany the words into the Group's photos section.
I hope he doesn't mind, but I've joined the two together in the AAR that you can reach by clicking on the picture below. That way, you can see words and pics together.
It looks like an excellent game of IABSM, unusually fought in what looks like 28mm scale. Click below to see all:
News from the front: the TooFatLardies are having a January Sale. Here's what Rich said on Lard Island News:
"It wouldn’t be January without a Sale, and this month we have not one but two great deals on offer. Firstly we have all of the Sharp Practice range available at 35% off list price, that’s the rules in hard copy or PDF format and all of the supplements. You can find them on our web site here: Sharp Practice
"Secondly, we have a focus this month on I Ain’t Been Shot Mum, our hugely popular Company sized rules for the Second World War. The rules and all of the huge range of supplements are available at 20% off for the rest of January. Our IABSM products are listed here: IABSM
"There’s never been a better time to get hold of two Lardy classics!"
You can click on the titles in bold to go straight to the TFL online shop.
Another great I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! battle report from the Mark Luther archives.
This is a follow-on game from his last AAR: this time the its the Germans who are on the advance, counter-attacking towards Mouen.
Click on the picture below to see all...
One of the great things about Battlefront is the huge range of models they produce, even if sometimes the vehicle or gun that the models are based on only fought in one particular theatre or weren't produced in very large numbers.
Their recent Berlin supplement and its related new releases contain many good examples, one of which is the giant Soviet 203mm howitzer: something that, showing appropriate restraint, I ordered as soon as it hit the streets.
This thing is a monster. It's also easy to put together, easy to paint, and looks absolutely cracking. A very worthwhile addition to the arsenal!
This weekend, I played my first game of IABSM in 2016. Wanting to make it a bit of a special one, I decided to empty my terrain cupboard of all buildings with a possibly Soviet flavour and play a giant Stalingrad-style city game.
Click on the picture below to see how it went...
Fellow Lardy Patchen1863 posted the following battle report and photos on the TFL Yahoo Group recently. Hopefully he won't mind me reproducing it here so that people can see the words and pictures together.
Click on the picture below to see the AAR:
Here's an I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! battle report from the excellent Tracks and Threads blog.
Click on the pic to see the action:
I played the third scenario from the Fall of the Lionsgate scenario pack this week with the boys from Benson. Two great games featuring plenty of action. Click on the picture below to see the full reports:
For those who need to buy some more Lardy products (cough, my scenario books, cough*), Rich is running a 15% off sale over at the main TooFatLardies webstore. You can get there by clicking here.
Not sure how long the sale will last: Rich says until he's finished the Xmas Special...so Easter then!
*all my scenario books are updated for IABSMv3...and if you don't fancy them, there's always Q13!
Earlier this year I added Waugh Games to the list of WW2 figure manufacturers. If you remember (assuming you follow this blog fairly regularly) I ordered three Opel Maultier from them at the bargain basement price of £2.50 each: under half the cost of the Battlefront equivalent. I've now had a chance to paint them up, giving my Gebirgsjaeger a bit of additional transport.
So, how did they turn out?
The first thing to point out is that they come with a HUGE base built in i.e. on one side of the truck the base sticks out at least an inch; on the other, at least a centimetre. I'm not sure why they come like this, but they do. Here's the picture from their website that shows what I mean.
The other thing the picture shows is the holes in the resin: you can see a big one on the door, and lots of little ones in the main body's wooden panels.
Well, I could do something about the bases - snapping them off to a decent distance from the tracks wasn't too difficult - but I decided to ignore the resin bubble holes: far too fiddly to fiddle with.
A black undercoat was followed by an all-over coat of a medium dark grey. I then dry-brushed the canvas top in a lighter grey, then dry-brushed both canvas and body with white. The windscreen and other glass was dark blue and then my (only slightly successful) attempt at a glare effect. The tracks were my usual gunmetal covered with flesh wash. Here they are:
As you can see, the resin holes aren't really significant: they just look like wear and tear. The bases are still a bit thick, and aren't very even...but that won't show on the tabletop either. The only real disappointment is the bit between the tracks and the main body paneling: there's a big resin bulge that looks like, well, a big resin bulge.
In all, however, not bad for £2.50 a time. The old adage that you gets what you pays for has certainly held true!
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The first of three or so IABSM after action reports from Mark Luther, all based around Operation Epsom.
Here we see the British on the attack at the start of the campaign. Click on the pic to see more...
Vis Lardica is a website devoted to wargaming and military history, with a special emphasis on the company-sized rulesets produced by the TooFatLardies: I Ain't Been Shot Mum (WW2); Charlie Don't Surf (Vietnam); and Quadrant 13 (science fiction)
Welcome to Vis Lardica, a not-for-profit website mostly dedicated to the company-sized wargaming rules produced by the TooFatLardies, but encompassing my other gaming interests as well.
If you need to contact me, you can do so at:
vislardica@gmail.com
If you have enjoyed visiting this site, please add a link to it on your own wargaming blog: www.vislardica.com.
