OHW Scenario 20: Fighting Retreat - A HoW AAR

Having done a spurt of painting on my Early War German AFV's these past few weeks, I needed a change of scenery as it were. My first port of call in these moments is often the OHW scenarios and either Honours of War or BPII. In the end I plumped for the latter as they are one of my favourite rulesets and I also hadn't played them in a long time. Normally I would set up a 3 1/2 x 2 1/2' table, to give me some room for manouevre, but this time I wanted to see how things would play out on a 3' x 2' one.

Scenario Details

The Austrians have been raiding in and around Berlin, circa 1760, and are on their way back to their lines with their ill gotten gains, hotly pursued by some rather miffed Prussians. The game last for 8 Turns, with the Prussians only arriving on Turn 2. Both sides have Dependable Commanders, as they've sent their best chaps to battle! The Austrians have 2 Brigades, the Prussians 3. 

The Table Set Up

Below are some photos to help give an idea of the layout and forces involved.

An overview of the table. The Austrians are on the right and need to cross the river and reach the safety of the BUA on the left hand table edge.

The Austrian entrenchments.

An Austrian Brigade, with 2 x Line, 2 x Artillery and 1 x Dragoons.

The other Austrian Brigade, with 1 x Light Infantry, 1 x Line, 1 x Artillery and 1 x Hussars.

The Prussians, with two Brigades, each: 2 x Line, 1 x Artillery and 1 x Dragoons/Hussars. The other Brigade has 1 x Light Infantry, 1 x Horse Artillery, 2 x Dragoons.

Some of the plunder...

...and the remainder on the hoof.

The Game

As always, the captioned photos will attempt to tell how the game unfolded.

The end of Turn 1. The Austrians got over the bridges with ease, leaving a rearguard at both.

The end of Turn 2. The Austrians manage to get their rearguards over the bridge in the nick of time as the Prussians arrive and begin to form up.

The Austrian right flank rear guard takes Artillery fire as it exits over the bridge.

The Austrian right flank begins to occupy their entrenchments.

The Austrian left flank is safely over the river and safe from the Prussians at present.

The end of Turn 3. The Austrians continue to move towards safety, as the Prussians need time to change formation to try and cross the bridges.

The Prussian left flank decide to send the Dragoons over first.

The Austrian left flank reaches their entrenchments too.

The Prussian right flank decide to lead with their Line Infantry, due to the Austrian Jaegers across the river.

At the start of Turn 4, the Prussian Dragoons catch the Austrian Line Infantry in the rear, causing them to (rather unsurprisingly) rout...

...then pursue into the Austrian Dragoons, who destroy the Prussians in the process...

...then the Austrian Dragoons pursue into the Prussian Line Infantry on the bridge...

...only to be forced back to Reform. Phew!

The end of Turn 4. Aside from the made clashes by the stone bridge, the rest of the Turn consisted of both sides forming up for defence or to cross the bridges.

The Prussian left flank.

The Prussian right flank.

The Austrian right flank in a strong position, but doesn't have many troops having lost one Line Infantry unit already.

The Austrian left looks stronger.

The plunder is safe for the moment.

The end of Turn 5. The Prussians begin to cross both bridges as their third Brigade begins to arrive on their left flank.

The Prussians form into line as they cross the bridge.

Both sides Hussars clash with each other, with the Prussians being routed!

The end of Turn 6. As the Prussians continue to move forward, they come under fire, making progress hard.

A target rich environment for the Austrian Artillery.

The Austrian Jaegers destroy one Prussian Line Infantry unit.

An overview of the Austrian left flank, with Prussian losses meaning they have lost any real offensive capability here.

The end of Turn 7. Whilst the Prussian right flank falls back to the wooden bridge, the Prussian left surges forward to threaten the Austrian right flank.

The Prussians pour forward, but one Line Infantry unit is force back to reform due to close range cannister from the Austrian gun.

Austrian Hussars await their moment to charge into the Prussian flanks if they become weakened.

At the start of Turn 8, the Prussian Dragoons charge and the Austrian Dragoons, despite being outnumbered, manage to hold on, with both sides forced to retire to reform.

The end of Turn 8. Despite finally having crossed the river in force, the Prussians are unable to evict the austrians from their positions and to re-take their plunder.

The Prussian high water mark.

The Austrians hold firm within their entrenchments.

The Prussian Line Infantry have taken too many hits already and would most likely break if under fire again.

A final overview of the positions at the end of play.

End of the Game

In the end it proved too difficult a task for the Prussians, with early losses really hampering their ability to prosecute their attacks.

The 'Butcher's Bill', Austrians on the left, Prussians the right.

Post Game Thoughts

Well for a relatively quickly thought out and set up game, that played well for me and was a nice change from all of my recent WWII stuff. So as always some thoughts on the game etc:

• I was pleasantly surprised at HoW well the 3' x 2' game space worked. I did think it might be too small, but with the HoW movement distances, it was not a problem, allowing the action to happen almost from the off. If I was using BPII, then I would definitely go for a bigger table.
• The benefits of sticking to a few core rulesets was immediately obvious, as I rarely had to refer to the rulebook, with the QRS being more than adequate. It meant that I could focus on the game itself, rather than purusing to rulebook just to 'check' on something I wasn't sure about.
• Solo play once again showed its value, as I set the game up the night before and had finished before lunchtime the next day. Being able to fit in games as and when time allows is such a luxury, which I do not take for granted!
• Having all the Commanders rated as 'Dependable' gave the game the speed I was hoping for. The thought behind this was, having read Horace St Paul's second volume (published by Helion), that both sides would tend to send their best Commanders for these sort of operations.
• Again the entrenchments idea came from Horace St Paul's book, with them often being thrown up, with abattis to the fore too, to protect their encampments etc. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but these may have been a step too far for the Prussians to give them a fighting chance in the game. You live and learn!
• River crossings are tricky and often not the most exciting games if I'm honest, but at least this game was quite a nice challenge due to the victory conditions.
• The Commission Figurines were good to get on the table again and are so versatile. I could paint more, possible as a different 'Nation', but I have plenty enough troops for most of the games I play. Let's wait and see...

What Next?

I'm not sure if I'm honest! Probably some more painting, but for what period remains to be seen. It is after all a hobby, so I'm in no rush and let's see what the grabs me first.

As always, thanks for reading and any comments are greatly appreciated:)!

TTFN.

Maintaining Momentum - Of Mice & Men

Well the past few weeks have been a real mixed bag of the sort of stuff that 'real life' throws at you, when it decides it wants to derail all of your best laid plans and all that! So gaming related activity has been intermittent at best, as my poor old grey cells have been too muddled for anything much if I'm honest. At least after my recent Fall Rot 1940 game (AAR here), I did have a spurt of painting, which can be seen below, as I wanted to finally get some paint on a mix of AFVs that I've had in the lead pile for over 15 years now!

The dangers of browsing ebay, where I picked up this nice French WWII bomber for future France 1940 games.

Some Panzer 38 (t)'s.

6 of them that I think I bought for Rommel's 'Ghost Division'.

Pz III Kurz, that I 'converted' from the Lang variant by cutting down the barrel length. Back in the day I think this was the only Pz III Pendraken did.

Stug III ausf A with command vehicle.

Whilst the German panzer grey is a tad dark for 10mm miniatures, it does paint up very quickly, with a wash and drybrush over the base coat. I'm in two minds as to whether to apply balkan kreuz's and turret numbers to the vehicles, with the former being very tiny and thus hard to apply, ditto with the latter, especially when trying to cover turret hatches, as they don't sit flat, which would annoy me!

The Barbarossa Campaign

Whilst painting the above AFV's and with others in the queue and on painting sticks, my mind turned towards trying a few games set during the invasion of Russia in 1941. This was another driving force in getting my long neglected Panzers painted. I read a good Osprey Campaign book on Army Group South, where the Russians at least put up a good show of resistance in places, and on occasion actually counter-attacked, just the sort of thing to make for some fun standalone games or mini-campaigns.

Campaigns In General

The campaigns I've played last year highlighted one or two issues with regards to maintaining the momentum of them, certainly with regards to WWII. Firstly it is one of actually having all the kit you need before embarking on the campaign itself. It's all well and good thinking the campaign will drive you to paint more stuff, which on one level is true, but I find that I actually struggle to find the time for this. Much better to start things off once you have all the kit you need, which is rather blindingly obvious! Secondly as 'real life' is wont to disrupt your plans, keep things to around 3-5 narrative campaign games, as anymore than that and the drive dissipates in my experience and generally you've reached a natural conclusion to the campaign anyway.

What Next?

Well I did manage a lovely little Honours of War game today, so an AAR on that will follow in due course, most likely at some point tomorrow. I have plenty more AFVs to paint, both German and British, as well as a mixed bag of Infantry and Support Weapons. I need to take stock of where I'm at before ploughing ahead regardless. Easier said than done of course!

Spring is threatening to give us some nice weather, but not for a while yet I'm afraid. We could all do with some sunshine and warmth after the all too brief taster of last week. Once it does arrive gardening and other activities will take lots of my time for sure.

Thanks for reading and as always, any comments greatly appreciated!

TTFN.

Time To Mix'n'Match On The Wargames Front?

After the end of play yesterday, a package arrived with one of the French WWII aircraft contained therein, that I'd ordered as part of my current plans for a Fall Rot French force. Trying to find aircraft in suitable scales to go with my 10mm figures is always tricky, especially if you are going outside the standard ones such as the Spitfire, the Me-109 etc. 

This got me to thinking of how over the years I've changed my attitude with regards to aircraft, but also to buildings. When I first got back into historical wargaming, everything had to be in 15mm/1:100, as that's what was standard at the club back then, or ditto with 28mm skirmish level games. The latter was always a bit of a challenge, as the buildings had to be huge to accomodate even just a section of figures!

As I moved heavily towards 10mm/1:150th (or 1:144th depending upon manufacturer), I stick with the same scale for the buildings are aircraft too, as that's what I was used to. But then I saw my friend Keith's SYW games (and others online), where he went a scale down for his buildings, so 1:72nd with his 28mm figures, and they just worked. Thus began my journey to do the same, using 6mm/1:300th buildings, which worked a treat. No more cases of just a few buildings representing a town or a village, but in the same footprint I could probably double their number and get that right visual look.

As I began to look at my airforces for my BKCII games, I slowly went in the opposite direction, moving a scale up, generally trying to go with 15mm/1:100 scale planes, which worked a treat. I worked on the assumption that of course they would be closer to us with our God's eye view and so would give the impression of being at height over the games table. 

Availability of models is somewhat limited as mentioned above, so I've had to generally go with what I can find, this I have 1:144th Zvezda kits, 1:100 diecast planes and lately a couple of 1:72nd ones too. There is of course the issue of storage for these, as whilst a 1:44th scale bomber is still pretty big, at least I can store it easily, but a 1:100 or even 1:72nd would be a challenge!

But mixing scales on the games table certainly works for the sort of games I play, and that trompe l'oeil effect that it creates does add greater depth and dare I say it, a more realistic look to the game?

My latest purchase on the right, a 1:72nd MS. 406 French fighter, next to some 1:100th diecast aircraft. Seen like this the scale difference is marked.

But when on the games table, the trompe l'oeil effect really kicks in, with the different scales not really noticeable, but the illusion of depth is created.

What Next?

Well with the Met Office forecast for at least another month of wet weather, there will be precious little time spend outside, unless it warms up a bit, that's for sure! The games room has been cleared up so with luck, some painting might kick off later today. It's also the annual Pendraken painting competition, so I might try my hand at an entry of two, but i'm not pressurising myself to do this, unlike in previous years. It is after all a hobby!

Thanks for reading and hopefully this might have given some of you food for thought? As always thoughts and comments greatly appreciated!

TTFN.