EW French Artillery & Rapid Fire!

I painted up my 75mm artillery last night and now only have the infantry to go.








For some reason I forgot to add some camouflage to them- too much time spent painting Soviet guns I suppose. I may go back and give them so camo at a later date.

Rapid Fire!

I bought Rapid Fire! when FoW was still in playtest mode and was going to use it to replace the rules my friend Ian and I had developed over about 20 years- our original rules being Lional Tarr's rules in Donald Featherstones Wargaming (which we laboriously hand typed as 9 year olds!) but were later incorporated parts of Operation Warboard (the first wargaming book/ruleset I bought) and then modified over the years- eventually Ian changed our rules to a D10 standard.

I started wargaming in 20mm and had a very large collection of models. After seeing the Battlefront miniatures at the Nationals in 2002 I sold all my 20mm stuff and started again in 15mm- partly as getting specialised vehicles from the UK wasn't cheap but also as a few of the local gamers wanted to get into WWII and the Battlefront range semed both cheap (not so much now though!) and readily available. After having spent much of my free time in the three years I had been living in Japan building 1/76th Fujimi kits I had no intention to build more and the Battlefront minis suited my purposed nicely so we all started gaming in 15mm and evetnually FoW became our default ruleset.

Stephen, Tony and the other historic gamers at the club have been starting to get back into WWII gaming via Rapid Fire. They had their first game in 1/300th scale last week. To my mind, that defeats the whole purpose of 1/300th scale- rather than 1 tank represents 5, smaller scales are ideal to get the grand manner feel of massed brigades with LOTs of tanks! However, they had a fun and that's the main thing.

Even so, I have a cunning plan to try to try to get them involved in 15mm gaming. They don't like the gaminess of FoW- which is a very valid point- but with so many of us owning 15mm WWII forces it would be sensible to build forces at a scale that is compatible to the rest of the club, so to try and lure them to the dark side I am running a 15mm Rapid Fire! participation game for them tomorrow night.

I still quite like Rapid Fire! It's fast play but it does have issues- for me the main one being the 8 figures to a company just doesn't look right- it looks more like a skirmish game to me! But for me my main gripe has always been the single HMG, mortar or AT gun to represent a platoon of such weapons. I've toyed with modifying the rules a number of times to double the number of such weapons on table but always given up and gone back to FoW.

To get round the skirmish look we'll use 7-8x FoW stands to a company, so will have about 30-40 figures. Indeed I've been toying with the idea of taking it down a scale and running it as a company level game- and simply use the FoW organisational charts to determine forces.

I've two ways I'm considering running things
1) Treat each FoW unit as a company and play it as a battalion (rather than brigade) level game - doubling the number of AT guns and machine guns (the lack of mortars, HMGs and AT guns being one thing I don't like about RF). However, I am worried that 2x HMGs will be twice as effective, of course we could simply halve their ratings)

2) Run it as a platoon level game and simply use FoW platoons- but possibly keep HMGs, mortars and AT guns at one 2 per platoon.

3) Morale- I intend to run morale by platoon (company) and see how that goes, rather than by battalion. Indeed there will proably be a number of players each using a platoon/company each.

Forces
We will game using a battalion of 8th Army infantry:

• 4x companies (4 FoW platoons)
• Support company with: 2x HMGs, 3x carriers, 2x 6 pdrs.
• 3x valentines
• supported by a battery of 25pdrs

The German battalion will be represented by:

• 3x FoW platoons
• Support platoon: 2x HMGs, 2x mortars, 2x pak 38s
• 3x panzer IIIs
• a battery of Italian 105mm guns.

I look forward to seeing how it plays- and trying to remember the rules!

We'll be using the original rules but Stephen has ordered Rapid Fire II and I've been meaning to for some times so if the new version is okay I may end up playing more Rapid Fire in future.

Craig