End of Year Review 2024

With the four month long Commercial Festival (aka Xmas) thankfully behind us, and with us all in recovery mode, I thought I'd take some time to look back on my gaming year in 2024. So to kick things off, a broad overview as in previous years, followed by some thoughts.

Rules Bought

Basic Impetus 2

Lion Rampant: The Crusader States

Midgard

I had no intention whatsoever to buy any new rules and in a sense I only bought one set, which was Midgard. This was a Xmas treat, whilst the others were really for Army Lists only. Fingers crossed Lion Rampant and Midgard will grace the table at some point in 2025...

Wargaming Books Bought

The Great Game: On Secret Service In High Asia

Barbarossa: How Hitler Lost The War

Big Week: The Biggest Air Battle Of WWII

The Samurai Sourcebook

Armies of the Crimean War

Rapid Fire Blitzkreig France 1940 Scenarios

Osprey D-Day Gold & Juno Beaches 

Osprey Kharkov 1942

Retribution: Russia 1943

The Armies of Europe Illustrated

Shenandoah 1862

Blitzkreig by Lloyd Clark

The Glorious Revolution 

Wargames Campaigns by Henry Hyde

Bad Roads and Poor Rations: War of 1812

Sedgemoor 1685

Warhammer: Chariot Wars by Nigel Stillman

Rapid Fire: Crete

Rapid Fire: Canadians in Normandy

The Savage Storm - Italy 1943

A Wargamers Guide To The Crusades

The World On Fire- Britain's Involvement in the ACW

1848 Revolutionary Spring

The Tudors

The Anglo-Saxons

The Norman Conquest

The Crusades

Edward I, A Great & Terrible King

I thought that this year I would buy less books than before, but failed miserably in this regard😉! Many of the purchases were presents or vouchers, as all my family know my love of books. Most were for periods that I really like, but the Crusades came in from left field, but has been fun to gain more knowledge, in advance of possibly creating some forces for Lion Rampant. Most of the books have been brilliant reads, some less so, with some still to be read. Certainly I won't be short of material for 2025.

Miniatures Bought

WWII USMC

Samurai

Landing Craft

WWII Bits'n'Pieces

18thC ImagiNations additions

A fairly restrained year (he says!), with the USMC and Samurai being the two big purchases. The Samurai were a bit of a spur of the moment buy, after watching 'Shogun' on tv and loving it. Whether I actually get to do anything with them remains to be seen, as my ardour has cooled somewhat. The USMC speak for themselves really.

Miniatures Painted

Commission Figurines MDF ImagiNations extras

19thC ImagiNations 'Germans'

Probably a similar effort compared to last year, but at least I did get to paint something, but more on that later.

Terrain 

Geek Villain Summer field cloth

Geek villain Normandy beach mat

Fields - scratch built

6mm Damaged Buildings

6mm Church

Snake Rail Fencing - scratch built

Scatter items painted

The Geek Villain mats were my big buys this year and I've been really happy with them. Rather like the painting above, not much done terrain wise until late in the year.

Projects

Normandy 1944

My aim was to do a narrative campaign based upon the Canadian landings in Normandy, but real life put pay to that big time. Something I hope to return to next year. I did have some other plans, but frankly forgot what they were!

Games Played

Startline - 3

BKCII - 7

Honours of War - 3

BPII - 6

A2W - 1

Total - 20

A year of two quarters really, which started well and then stopped dead for about 6 months. Things picked up towards the end of the year and so I'm happy with the end total, which was more than I expected. Let's hope next year improves upon this. Below are some photos of all the games played:

Poland 1939

Russia 1941

18thC India

Seven Years War

Seven Years War

Arnhem 1944

Arnhem 1944

Arnhem 1944

ACW

ACW

ACW

ACW

Abensberg 1809

Russia 1941

Germany 1945

ImagiNations-cum-ACW

19thC Europe

 1944 D-Day +1

1944 D-Day +2

Spend

Books - £120

Rules - £75

Terrain - £155

Figures - £225

Paint & Materials - £20

Total - £595

For the first time I actually tracked my hobby spend this year and it came as a bit of a shock. I used to think I spend about £250 or less, but as you can see, I'm somewhat way off the mark! Next year I really need to curb my spending, which, famous last words, should not be too difficult as will be discussed below.

Shows Attended

Partizan

Colours

Cotswold Wargames Day

It was great to be able to get to these shows again this year, with all of them having something different to offer the gamer. Partizan is by far and away the best show IMHO, but it was good to see Colours bouncing back with some very good games this year after a few fallow years. The CWD was fun as always and the new venue worked well and was great to catch up with many familiar faces. 

End of Year Thoughts

It has been a funny and somewhat disjointed old year, for a variety of reasons. It started off well and then suddenly in Spring, our son found supported independent living that he loved, so all of my time and energy went into sorting that out, so all gaming activity aside from reading came to a halt. Now he is in his own place, which is great, it still takes up a lot of my time and energy, which is just beginning to settle down into a more manageable state of affairs.

The upside of this was that out of the blue SWMBO allowed me to have his old bedroom as my games room! This was something that like many gamers I had dreamed of for years, only for it suddenly to become a reality! To be honest I'm still getting used to the idea and forgetting that I can leave games set up to be played at my leisure. As this becomes the new normal for my gaming I'm hoping this will see an increase on the gaming front in 2025.

The downside of this, if you can call it that, was that I simply did not have the time nor the energy to focus on my gaming, so I simply parked it for the duration. Dealing with Local Government is simply exhausting! Fingers crossed I've got one more major issue to sort out, which I'm hoping has been done, then I can relax a lot more and take things in my stride. Hopefully I will know in the next few weeks when people are back to work.

Whilst all the above has been going on, it has given me plenty of time to ponder upon my gaming situation, which has been very useful and helped me really consider what I want and what works for me going forward. So below are my thoughts and plans in no particular order:

Looking Forward To 2025

Having pretty much everything in one room now, it has been quite salutary to see what I have got and how big the lead pile is. Probably like most gamers, I have projects in various stages of completion or simply still in bags half forgotten until now. So my aim is to finally finish off those core forces for the main periods I love to game, starting with my WWII British and Germans, followed by whatever takes my fancy. To aid this I'm trying to tie this in with campaigns so that it 'forces' me to paint units up for the next scenario etc.

Core rulesets will be very much to the fore next year, as seeing the variety I have on my bookshelf that have never been played, raises the question as to why keep them? A cull will be in order and I will try to offload them if at all possible, but based upon previous experience, this can be quite hard to do with old and unfashionable rules!

I've found over the years that I really like to run narrative campaigns that are quite simple to organise and are fun to play. To aid this I have a magnetic pinboard I need to trim to size to stick on the door of the games room to aid some of the campaigns. As mentioned above, this helps me to try and paint up units to get to a decent force size for future games.

For my 18thC and 19thC games, I will be sticking with my ImagiNations approach as I just enjoy it so much! Both are still nascient sizes but should grow as the move along the painting queue, once the WWII forces are finished. I'm still torn between setting them in the Baltic or the Balkans, with the latter edging it at the moment as I can use some 'Ottoman' style troops for a bit of exotic colour. I need to really sort out some background fluff too, which is something I really like to do.

I am pondering as to whether to put on a demo game at a show next year. I've done this in the past and know how much time and effort is involved. Whether I have the energy or inclination remains to be seen, but from my perspective, it would be nice to show a 'standard' sort of game that we can all put on at home, as a counter balance to the large superb games seen at the likes of Partizan et al. 

I really need and want to minimise my hobby spending next year right across the board, as honestly I have so much stuff just waiting to be started upon. In the gaming downtime this year it really allowed me to realise what I have, how little time I actually get to work on it, so I would rather try and focus on the leadpile rather than adding to it. A pipe dream maybe but it's something I hope to achieve.

Somewhat related to the above, I'm going to continue with my 25mm x 25mm bases, for all none WWII forces, which gives me maximun flexibility for my forces, as the can easily be rank and file or loosely positioned for skirmish games. This helps with storage issues, less painting time and gives me more bang for my buck. Whilst I agree that round bases look better for the like of Lion Rampant et al, currently I don't have the time to do seperate units, when existing ones work across various sized actions.

I love making terrain as many of you know and hope to make some more during the course of next year. Rather like seeing the figures all in one place, I've realised how many bits I've had tucked away for years.

Blogging has been a blessing and a curse at the same time. It really helps me feel connected to the wider gaming community, even if mosts of the hits on my Blog are from bots, whilst at the same time providing me with plenty of ideas and inspiration. At times I have pondered giving it up due to the perceived pressure to produce new content all the time, but have just decided to post as and when I have something to say, that might be of interest to some of you out there! So thankyou to all of you who have commented on my posts, it is greatly appreciated!

Well done on getting this far and so it just remains for me to wish you all a Happy New Year!

TTFN.

Merry Xmas!

Just a quick message to wish you all a very Merry Xmas! 

Thanks especially to those Bots from Hong Kong and Singapore, that make up 75% of visits to this Blog😉. I hope you continue to enjoy my musings etc and in a few days, once the chaos of Xmas is over, my review of the year will follow.

TTFN.

Normandy 1944 Campaign - The South Glos Fusiliers - D-Day +2 - Assault On Cardonville

The Background

On D-Day +2, the South Glos Fusiliers supported by their brethren, were tasked with making a hasty assault upon the hamlet of Cardonville, before the German defensive crust could begin to harden. Having lost heavily the previous day, the Germans threw together a scratch Kampfgruppe under the command of Major Wagner, with orders to delay any attacks for as long as possible.

British OOB - The South Glos Battlegroup

1 x CO

5 x HQ's

2 x FAO

1 x FAC

9 x Infantry (veterans)

1 x MG

1 x 3" Mortar

1 x 6 pdr ATG + tow

6 x Shermans

2 x Firefly's

3 x 25 pdr's (off table)

1 x Naval 

1 x Typhoon

Various scheduled assets

German OOB - Kampfgruppe Wagner

1 x CO

4 x HQ's

6 x Heer

2 x MG's

2 x 81mm Mortar's

1 x Pak 38

1 x Pak 40

3 x SdKfz 250 half-tracks (various marks)

2 x H-39's (Ft-17 models in the game)

1 x Pz IV kurz

Various field defences

Scenario Overview

The scenario is 'Assault' as per the rulebook, but with the South Glos Battlegroup having 75% more points due to the campaign effects from the previous game. In short the South Glos Battlegroup needs to be in control of Cardonville by Turn 6 for a Major Victory or Turn 8 (end of the game) for a Minor one.

An overview of the table, with the South Glos Battlegroup arriving from the West. Kampfgruppe Wagner are deployed in and around Cardonville.

Infantry dug-in in Cardonville.

The German right flank dug-in on the outskirts of the hamlet.

Merde! Poor Francois le Fermier is in a precarious position within the minefield!

The German panzers in the orchards to avoid and Jabos.

The remnants of the Recce kampfgruppe from the previous game.

The South Glos right wing.

The Centre.

The Left Wing.

The Reserves, FAO's and FAC.

The Game

As is the norm, captioned photos to try and give a flavour of how the game unfolded.

The end of Turn 1. HMS Avon kicked things off with a concentrated attack on Cardonville, that managed to suppress a few German units, who were rather well dug-in it would seem. The South Glos troops made slow but steady progress, when a bit more 'va va voom' was more the order of the day. The Germans had limited targets but wisely chose to keep hidden from view until the British got closer.

HMS Avon's shells had limited effect.

The German panzers move up as the enemy tanks are spotted.

The SdKfz 250's move forward to try and locate the enemy.

The Shermans edge forward across open terrain, not sure what lies ahead for them.

The rest of the Battlegroup moves forward.

The end of Turn 2.

The City of Bristol Volunteers lay down a smoke barrage, limiting Germans options as they cannot see. Yet again slow progress is made by the South Glos Battlegroup, but luckily for them, the German Pak 40 fails to receive its order to open fire.

Despite tempting targets to their front, the Pak 40 crew fail to open fire.

The SdKfz 250's push forward, aware that they might be at risk from Jabo attacks.

It's all rather too quiet on the Cardonville front...

Whilst the troops move forward, albeit slowly, the FAO's ans FAC have taken up position at the edge of the fields.

The start of Turn 3 and sure enough, a Jabo suddenly appears and wreaks havoc, KO'ing 2 x 250's and damaging or suppressing the others.

The end of Turn 3. After the Typhoon did its thing, the CoBV Artillery brought down a barrage of fire on Cardonville. Whilst not causing any major loss, the cumulative effect of the attacks is wearing the Germans down. As the South Glos troops advance, they come under fire from the 'Pak Front', with the South Glos right flank losing tanks in quick succession. Things have really begun to hot up!

The dug-in Pak 40, in quick succession, exacts a fearsome toll.

As the Reserves arrive, the Infantry are struggling to get forward to support the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars.

The Pak 38, whilst unable to KO any tanks, has given them a real 'wake up' call.

The Pak 40 adds two rings to its barrel.

No rings yet for the Pak 38.

Another cab rank of Typhoons arrives and finishes of the SdKfz 250's. Caught like a fox in the open.

The end of Turn 4. With battle well and truly joined, the CoBV Artillery suppresses the Pak 38 and KO's an MG42 unit, but HMS Avon fails to receive coordinates for an attack. As the South Glos Fusiliers advance, they manage to KO an Infantry unit in the orchard to their front. As they push forward all across the line where able and prudent to do so, they lose a Sherman to a panzershreck and the German panzers, as well as an Infantry unit too.

The Royal Glos Hussars are really suffering!

The Pak 40 and Panzers make life hard for the Hussars.

The South Glos Fusiliers begin to KO some of the German units in Cardonville.

As the Shermans edge forward, they lose a tank as they do so, but KO the unit that caused the loss.

The Fusiliers come under fire as they reach the edge of the cornfield.

A view from the Germans positions.

At the Start of Turn 5, the RAF Johnnies once again come up trumps, this time KO'ing the dug-in Pak 38.

The end of Turn 5. At the RAF boys arrive, HMS Avon and the CoBV Artillery add more hits to the German troops as well as suppressing them, but manage fo KO a H-39 (Ft-17 model) in the process. Other German units begin to be lost and as a result, the Kampfgruppe reaches its breakpoint, but manages to pass its test and carry on. However, seeing the writing on the wall, Major Wagner begines to order what troops that can, to fall back to safety.

The Hussars receive a reprieve at the Pak 40 and Pz IV is suppressed by the combined naval and artillery fire.

With units suppressed, the Germans begin to withdraw.

The South Glos Fusiliers reach the edge of Cardonville.

The German Beutepanzer begins to withdraw.

The German right flank is wide open.

The end of Turn 6. With no targets for the FAC and troops too close for naval fire, it is left up to the CoBV Artillery to KO the dug-in Pak 40, much to the relief of the remaining Hussars tank. Elsewhere as the Fusiliers occupy and push forward into the village, the other Hussars on the left flank swing round and cut off the retreat for the Germans, KO'ing the Beutepanzer in the process. More or less surrounded, the Germans have no option other than to surrender.

The Hussar tanks on the right flank move forward to close the trap, now that the threat from the Pak 40 has gone.

The Germans trapped in Cardonville.

South Glos Fusiliers move through the churchyard.

The Hussars close the escape route.

An overview from the British position.

The view as the Fusiliers close in.

End of the Game

So despite a slow start, all of a sudden the South Glos Battlegroup has managed to pull of a rather convincing win! But losses from both sides need to totted up to see the effect upon the campaign.

British losses.

Germans losses.

Captured German troops.

The ones that got away.

Campaign Effects

Well the South Glos Battlegroup achieved a Major Victory, both in terms of seizing the objective within 6 Turns, but also in terms of the casualties caused compared to those taken. The Germans managed to fail to score any Victory Points at all. So for the next game:

British - + 25% points for reinforcements.

Germans - No points for reinforcements.

Whilst this might look good for the British, a poor dice roll meant that they just failed to get +50% for reinforcements, which would have given them a significant advanatge to say the least!

Post Game Thoughts

I had this game set up for a few days, taking my time which was nice, and tweaking a few things before the game kicked off. It still seems a novelty to be able to do this and something I should bear in mind more. But as always a few things that stood out from the game:

• The Shermans on the right flank really took a battering and if the odd command roll had gone the German's way, then they might have been wiped out. This certainly felt right as they were advancing over open ground and could not see the enemy until they opened up at close range.
• The value of having so much artillery and air support on hand, cannot be stressed enough, as without it, I doubt of Cardonville could have been taken. Again this just felt right and time and time again, you read of attacks faltering or failing fue to lack of artillery support.
• The Pak Front really worked pretty well in this game, but if the Pak 38 had managed another shot or two, it might have been even better for the Germans. Alas the British have lots of Shermans in reserves, but less so Infantry.
• For once the German mortars didn't exact their normal dreadful toll on the British Infantry, due to a number of factors.
• As with many a game, you realise what units you really need to push to the front of the paint queue. Currently this will involve some more Pak's, a Flak 88, some dedicated AA guns as well as some Panthers. 

What Next?

Well I know what I want to base up and paint for the next game, which will mainly be some more units for the Germans, namely some more Pak's, a Flak 88, some dedicated AA guns as well as some Panthers. It will be a while before I can do this due to family coming to stay, which means I will not be able to strike whilst the iron is hot!

At least it will give me plenty of time to figure out the next scenario in the campaign, takin ginto account the after effects of this current Campaign Turn. It would be nice to wrap this up before Xmas, but I doubt I will be able to, maybe getting in just one more game if I'm lucky.

My Midgard order is due to arrive today, so I'm looking forward to reading this, but maybe I should leave it until Xmas so as not to get too distracted from this campaign! 

Well I hope you enjoyed this and as always any comments are greatly appreciated.

TTFN.