IABSM AAR: Strongpoint Hillman
/James Mantos played in a D-Day scenario put on by Brian Hall: Strongpoint Hillman. Not a full report but duplicating the pictures he posted to the I Ain’t Been Shot Mum Facebook Group:
On a beautiful October Saturday, when I should have been doing some gardening, I instead drove with Weirdy-Beardy to deepest, darkest, downtown Hamilton for a Lardy themed game day. A change in route thanks to recommendations from a Hot Lead friend made the drive there and home much less fraught with peril, unlike my last three trips to play in Hamilton. Victory for old fashioned map reading! Take that Google Maps and GPS!
I got a spot in friend Brian's 6mm I Ain't Been Shot, Mum game refighting the 1/Suffolk Regiment's 2nd assault on Strongpoint Hillman during the afternoon of D-Day. See also a Youtube video here.
Brian is a fantastic game master who always brings his depth of knowledge about the battle being played to the game to help the players understand what is going on and facilitate any rules interpretation required. His terrain is also very well made and thought through.
This scenario was one of the players fighting the GM/table since the Germans were pretty static and didn't have much to do except react. Looking at the situation I quipped to my team mates: "Two up, one back, bags of smoke?" One of them replied, "Yeah, sounds good."
Fortunately our supporting 25 pdr batteries got on the job quickly and the first missions were on target so we had the most dangerous German MG emplacements blinded for the critical break in phase while the Engineers widened the gap in the minefield to let the tanks in.
Brian introduced me to using Force Morale for IABSM, which is a great idea that I'll use from now on instead of troops fighting to the bitter, ragged end.
