Over the past weekend Kent and I headed up to Christchurch
to take part in Andy Tucker’s Sword beach landing multiplayer game of FoW to
commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D Day landings. Andy and the
other Christchurch gamers really put in a mammoth effort in getting the game
together and countless hours of work in creating fortifications, terrain and
making sure the whole event went off without a hitch. Having organised events
myself I really appreciate the work that went in behind the scenes to make sure
this game was a huge success, we even managed to get on the national news!
Anyway, Kent and I headed up on Friday afternoon. We were
both running British lists, I had some commandos and Kent was taking a confident
trained 3rd infantry division force- once we’d locate his army and
borrowed it off Martin who was also gracious enough to host for the weekend.
Saturday
It was a great game. On day one we landed and stormed the beaches.
Re were six British players (me, Kent, Jonathan, Graham, Lionel and Jamie) vs
three Germans (Andy, Thomas and Josh) so from the get go the Germans were
seriously outnumbered but their fortifications, bunkers, HMG nests, sea walls ,
minefields and other defences mitigated this somewhat.
As the allies our objective was simple, storm the beach,
overcome the beachfront defenes and push inland as quickly as we could before
the Germans could counter attack.
My commandos landed at the far left end of the beach and
used a lot of smoke (once my artillery support arrived) to neutralise strongpoints
and avoid as much damage as I could as we struggled through the initial rows of
fortifications. On my immediate right Kent’s confident trained infantry got
badly chewed up but eventually made it over the seawall and took out the first
line of fortifications and, with the help of Jonathan’s troops, spent a large
part of the weekend clearing the very tough casino complex and nearby bunkers. Beside
Kent Jonathan’s forces stormed over the wall and into Ouistreham and pushed
inland, decimating his son Thomas’s defending forces in the process. On our far
right Jamie, Lionel and Graham (our Wellington import for the weekend) also
ground out a bloody toe hold and by the end of the day vs Josh and Thomas and
by the end of the day on Saturday had too had overcome the beach defences and were
starting to push inland in the face of fierce resistance.
Sunday
Sunday morning we resumed the game which had found the
allies firmly ensconced in Normandy- having cleared almost all of the first
table of enemy though the flak tower in Ouistreham cotinued to hold out for
most of the day- though Kent used smoke to neutralise its use as an observer
platform. The beaches were reinforced with several armoured squadrons landing whose
assistance was greatly appreciated. My commandos had dug in as they were were
somewhat exposed to counter attack on the far left of the British front line but
Jonathan and Kent soon moved armour and tank destroyers over to support and
Jonathon’s other armour started to push out of Ouistreham and so outflank the
next line of defences.
Day two turned into a major tank fest as the Germans counter
attacked with several companies of panzer IVs, panzer grenadiers and other
assets. As I said, Andy ended up commanding the entire German right flank vs
Jonathan, Kent and I so did a sterling job trying to keep track of everything
we were up to whilst still managing the overall game- ah the joys of higher
command.
The Germans had random reserves and luckily for my commandos
most of the German armour ended up pushing against the British right flank and
so for most of the day Lionel and Graham were hard pressed defending vs large
amounts of massed German armour. As part of the game rules Andy had assigned
possible air or naval support each turn and the British had 3 such units available
(depending on dice rolls- which we tended to divvy up as one per pair of
players). However, on day two we all gave all our artillery assets to Lionel
and Graham as they needed everything they could to hold off Thomas and Josh. By
late afternoon however the situation had improved considerably. Our AVRE
Churchills were pretty hard for most of the German tanks to deal and were ably
supported by numerous troops of Shermans and Cromwells so slowly but surely the
balance swayed in our favour and in the end we blunted (aka destroyed) the
German counter attack and the Germans were forced to withdraw inland.
Final result: A very hard fought minor victory to the
British.
It was a great game andI love games where the table is so
big that artillery assets need to redeploy forward to get back in range of
enemy forces, really adds another dimension to the game, and the result. It
probably was close to reality in that the Germans faced overwhelming numbers
and their counter attack, s in the real one od D Day stalled in the face of
overwhelming numbers. In the actual battle the commandoes managed to link up
with the paras at Pegasus bridge whilst the counter attack by the 21st
panzer prevented a link up between Sword and Juno beaches.
Inspired to get back
into gaming
Before the event I’d been a tad reluctant to take part. I’d
not taken part in a Flames of War games for quite a long time but this game has
once again inspired me both the play Flames (V3) and also rekindled my love of
large multiplayer big battles- they can be a hell of a lot of fun.
Truth be told over the past few years I’ve really pulled
back from organised gaming, comps and events like this and this year with
everything else that’s been going on have had little motivation or interest in
gaming in general. In fact more often than not this year Kent and I have
postponed our scheduled games as a range of other things have cropped up to get
in the way of our regular game. So long story short I wasn’t that keen to get
involved and almost decided to pull out a couple of weeks ago. I had too much
other real life stuff I was dealing with and really wasn’t that motivated
to play so told Andy I wasn’t going to be able to make it but after a few
messages between us I changed my mind tans in the end thought bugger it and went.
I am really glad I did go. Not only did Andy put on a
fantastic weekend but the guys participating were a great bunch that really got
into the spirit of the event. Andy not only ensured that everyone had fun but also bravely took command on the entire right flank of the
German counter attack on day two and fought vs Kent, Jonathan single handedly
so was a tad busy all day ensuring things ran smoothly whilst still trying his best to focus on the
game.
But for me, more important than the gaming was getting out
and having a chance to catch up with Martin Wilkinson, Stephen Stout, Eric
Juhl, Dave Dreaver and a few other old lags, reminisce about the various Day of Days
weekends we had ran, other events we’d gamed, the pros and cons of the various
rulesets we were playing, and so had a great opportunity to just shoot the
breeze and reconnect with a great community of gamers. It really was the pick
up I needed so thanks Andy.
A few pictures follow:
Cheers
Craig
