Fall Red, France, June 1940

Having spent plenty of time painting terrain and figures so far this year, it was high time to try and get a game in. After a bit of a ponder, I plumped for my favourite ruleset, namely BKCII. But what theatre, scenario etc? In the end it proved a fairly simple choice, based upon the following:

Certainly a mini-campaign that has sparked a lot of interest since its publication.

A superb book and on a sadly neglected part of the Invasion of France in 1940, given that it has so much to offer the gamer.

Seeing Norm Smith's excellent posts on using the 'Junction Jeopardy' campaign book set during the 1809 Danube campaign, I wanted to see how they might work in a more modern setting, given the increased movements, weapon ranges etc. A simple solution was to try and replicate the whole campaign map on my normal 6' x 4' table.

As for the theatre, I did consider the AVBCW, as it's been ages since these have seen action and are long overdue their moment in the sun. Normandy 1944 was considered, but then France 1940 popped into my head and especially the 'Fall Red' campaign, which just seemed right for the terrain as shown on Henry Hyde's maps. It was also a good excuse to get my new French BUA's onto the table!

Table Overview

So I spent a few hours today having a play, setting things up and tweaking them a bit. the results can be seenn below:

An overview of the table. North is on the right hand side and will be the German entry point, with the British coming in from the left.

One of the river crossings that will be an important objective. An earlier bombing run has missed its target.

The other bridge, but one that can only take light vehicles and tanks, but nothing heavier than that.

A weir on the original maps, but here I'm classing it as a ford, next to the marshy land. Crossable by any units, possibly with a movement penalty.

The view from the British table edge.

Likewise from the German one.

A large farm and outbuildings.

Windmill hill with vineyards at the bottom of it, which will really hamper movement for all units.

The vineyards.

The churchyard on the hill overlooking the main river crossing.

The results of the bombing run.

A view into the town from the German approach road.

Likewise from the British point of view.

The War memorial in the old centre of the town.

Francois le Fermier: "I'm going to need a bigger boat tractor!" as he surveys 'Big Bertha'.

The duckpond across from the marshy areas and the ford across the river.

A bomber's eye view of the town.

Just a few eye candy shots of the terrain, with the blue wall working well as the sky.

What Next?

Well of course, there's the actual game to play, but before that I need to work out some OOB for both sides. I have some ideas, but need to firm them up, but am rather tempted to have a small Fallschirmjager force drop near the bridge for a coup de main type operation. 

Alongside this, there is the issue of coming up with the actual scenario, which is pretty easy in terms of its objectives, namely the control of the bridges and river crossings. But how to implement will take some careful thought. Broadly the idea is to have some small recce forces moving forward, with the main forces following on. Luckily the 'Fall Red' book has plenty of info should I need some inspiration. 

Thanks for reading and hopefully you enjoyed the photos and by broad overview of how I plan to go about playing the game. As always, any comments greatly appreciated!

TTFN.

Buildings, Big Bertha and Bogs

Well, with Day 40 of rain here in the West Country, I thought I'd do a bit of an update of what's been going on on the gaming front. Certainly no gaming, that's for sure, but at least I've been busy doing more terrain, which can be seen below.

Another 6mm Battlescale farmhouse or 'the Big House' as part of my 'French' buildings for BKCII.

A joy to paint once again, but it took me some time to finally get these finished.

Another 6mm Battlescale building, which is a shop or cafe, I'm not sure which to be honest. I set it back slightly from the road to give the impression that you could have some chairs and tables outside if it was a cafe. 

I added some enamel advertising signs to the sides of the buildings. A little too large, but they have the right visual impact once on the table.

For years I've always wanted to make some freestanding advertising hoardings to decorate the table. The bases are 1" wide to give you an idea of size.

A WWI memorial, again purely for decoration in the BUA's. The base is 1/2" square.

Some very old school metal trees that I was gifted by David Crook, that I based and added flock to the sculpted leaves on the originals, to give them a cohesive look with my other trees.

'Big Bertha', an Austrian WWI Skoda 30.5cm Morser M11, for use in my AVBCW games, mainly as an objective in a campaign setting.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but the colours are too dark for my liking, but given how much time it will spend on the table, I'm not that fussed!

A few 10mm MDF fences from Pendraken. I have some 6mm ones too. Having a gate in a couple of them is a nice touch.

I hadn't been entirely happy with some of my fields and as such, they rarely got put out on the table. So having everything set up in the games room, I pimped a few of them to make them into sort of allotments or fields belonging to a small holding.

As with the above, but wanting to make them more like rough terrain or bogs/marsh. The bogs/marsh (right hand side) didn't work quite as I'd have imagined, but I can always make some more in the future

What Next?

I've still got plenty of miniatures primed for painting, but the awful weather we've had all year so far has meant it's hard to get motivated to paint anything, hence the focus on the terrain. However now I've reached a natural halt on the terrain front, I want to get the new 'toys' onto the table and some small games to get back into the swing of things.

As mentioned before, I have plenty of ideas whirling away, especially for campaigns, but to start with I think some one off games are the order of the day. A mix of periods and scales of action would be nice, but let's wait and see what grabs me first.

Alongside this, the Ark is coming along nicely, and will probably be in action soon given the weather forecast for the next few weeks😒.

As always, thanks for reading and any comments greatly appreciated. Any sunshine and dry weather than you can send this way will be gratefully received😉!

TTFN.

It's All A Question Of Bridges

Having finished off the French buildings and in a bit of a terrain groove, I decided to finish off a bridge I'd had basecoated for ages. All told it only took about an hour to finish, but longer given the time taken for the glue to dry for each stage of flocking. A nice and easy win for once. 

For years I didn't bother with bridges, just using my roads and having the river sections run either side of it, which worked OK, but lacked that visual punch that an actual bridge brings. So I bought one from Leven Miniatures, then scratch built one, as for many scenarios from Grant & Asquith et al, you need more than one. Last year I added to the collection with one from Battlescale. These can all be seen below:

All of my current bridges.

The latest one from Battlescale and 6mm (I think). I had to raise this up by about 2mm so that it could sit astride the Pendraken river sections, as otherwise it just sat on the banks floating in space.

This bridge is wider than the Leven Miniatures one, so tanks can generally sit quite comfortably on it. They do a cobbled version which in hindsight I wish that I'd bought, as blending the colours into my road sections was tricky, but sort of works.

My 'old' Leven Miniatures bridge, that I cut into my existing river sections as this was pretty much the only way to get it to work. Not as flexible as the freestanding ones, but visually much nicer.

The bridge is much narrower and so any tanks, or even 1" wide infantry bases sit on the bridge sides rather than the bridge itself. Still, it's a lovely piece and probably looks better for earlier periods.

A really simple scratch build to give me a wooden style bridge, with foam ramps covered in grit, with an MDF central section covered with matchsticks. Quick and very effective.

Perfect for the Eastern Front or hastily assembled bridges by engineers in say the 18thC & 19thC.

The one thing I would takeway from all of these would be to buy the bridges you like first, so that you can check what size river sections would fit underneath, without it being a tight squeeze. It saves a lot of hassle later as I know from experience!

What Next?

Possibly some more simple terrain tweaks or upgrades whilst I'm in the mood. It would be nice to get a game in of something or the other, but nothing floats my boat at present. Of course painting more AFV's is an option that is staring at me from across the painting desk.

As always, thanks for reading and any comments are very welcome.

TTFN.