British

By Tom Burgess,

My friend Charles and I recently met up to have another go at a Firestorm Gazala campaign. We had played a game, in Turn,One of the Campaign, where Charles’s Panzers managed to break up my British Motor Company and Crusader force. See that AAR . After breaking my reinforcing Crusaders and destroying all of my Anti-tank guns, his Panzers had free reign to take down my defending infantry.

Charles hoped to keep that momentum going for our next Turn Two battle.  This made a lot of sense since Charles was effectively just continuing the attack northward with the 5th Panzer Regiment. So he chose to play Battle One from Turn One at  El Edem (B6). This area was just to the south of Tobruk (see inset map).

Knowing I would be facing a mostly tank force, I based my defending force off of a British Rifle Company, with maxed out 6 pdrs. I also beefed up my Crusaders with a Grant Troop to assist the Firestorm Grant unit already provided from the campaign scenario.  I was very glad to have two Grant Troops as my Crusaders fared very poorly against Panzers in our last battle. Charles force was very similar to our last battle, but he did swap in a full unit of Panzer-IIINs to get some higher firepower.

By Ed Hall and Tom Burgess

Continuing with the Breakthrough Assault and No Dice No Glory online Firestorm Gazala Campaign.  Ed wanted to play Battle 5 at area C5 “Hill 171.” Ed selected 80 points, before the addition of Firestorm Troops as the point level for this battle.

We both chose formations representative of the forces committed to this battle.  So for Tom that would be a Motor Co, backed up by a reinforcing Crusader Squadron. Ed wen with an Afrika Korps Shutzen Co. Tom chose a Defense stance to model the situation and Ed chose Maneuver.  Using the Battle Plans matrix this resulted in a Dust Up Mission.

By Tom Burgess

Turn One of the Firestorm Campaign was a complete success…maybe not so much for the British effort per say but overall we had 21 games from around the globe reported in. Additionally, Battlefront has risen to the occasion and is now offering two boxed sets each turn as awards for those who submit the most/best written Battle AARs.

So the campaign, as joint Breakthrough Assault and No Dice No Glory effort, is doing exactly what we had hoped it would do, generate themed Flames of War games.  Though Mark, allowed any mid-war forces be used for games in this campaign, the AARs I have seen all have used proper Mid-war Desert British, German, and Italian miniatures on nice desert boards. Huzzah to you all in the field!

So how did Turn One’s 21 battles turn out from the British Perspective?

By Tom Burgess

As part of the Breakthrough Assault and No Dice No Glory online Firestorm Gazala Campaign my friend, Charles, and I managed play Battle 4 from turn 1 in the campaign. I’d be playing the defending British with a force themed on the 7th Motor Brigade, while Charles was to roll with a 5th Panzer Regiment force with some loaned support from the 132nd Areite Division’s tanks.

We naturally decided that the British would take a defensive stance while Germans would be attacking. Using the Battle Plans matrix we rolled up “No Retreat’ for a mission. Charles set up the table using my terrain while I finished updating my list from a battle I played on the previous day. Charles set up a mostly open deep desert board. I chose to defend on the slightly more hilly side and where I could have better access to the short table edge.

by Tom Burgess (standing in as General Ritchie)

The game is afoot…..

Mark from Breakthrough Assault and I finished the operational moves for Turn 1 in the Breakthrough Assault and No Dice No Glory Collaborative Firestorm Gazala Campaign. Several battles have already been reported but there’s still time to get in those first-round fights.

King and Country need you!

As the British C-in-C, I wanted to share some thoughts about how we got to where we are in the turn one battles and what my hopes for each are.

Though we rolled a high number of battles for turn one, miraculously the British won the initiative in two of these against steep odds.  That was the good news. The bad news was that initiative came late and after the main German attacks had already been committed. The opportunities for spoiling attacks were limited to just one option.

See Turn 1 Battles

By Tom Burgess

One aspect of playing World War Three Team Yankee that many people enjoy is list building. Trying to design the most perfect list to take on all opponents in all mission is almost a hobby withing itself.  However commanders through history rarely ever get to “design” their force.

Instead, Commanders are generally are assigned units to accomplish a specified task. As much fun as it is to design a force and test it, it also can be very enjoyable to see how well you can do with a set force challenged to contest with specific historical conditions.

We are talking about playing historical scenarios rather than playing generated missions with designed forces.

Though World War Three Team Yankee is set in a fictional World War Three setting, Battlefront has done a great job including “historical” scenarios from this hypothetical war in their  World War Three Team Yankee books.

By: Ron Winkler

After several weeks of lockdown occupied mainly with painting my accumulated inventory of figures, I felt the need to try a solo wargame. Since I haven’t had much practice with I decided on the Battle of North Point scenario in the book using my 15mm inventory of 1812 US and British Napoleonic figures.

The scenario came from the Black Powder main rule book page 144. The first picture on the page shows Continental Unit uniforms from the Revolutionary War. Subsequent pictures depict 1812 uniforms for both sides. The battle map shown displays all units deployed in line at the start of the battle. I decided to have the British march down the road then deploy for an attack to add a little variation.

With some adjustments, I was able to assemble units for both sides as provided in the scenario. Because I was using 15mm figures I felt using centimeters instead of inches for movement and firing was appropriate. Also, having no game table, I converted the dining room table for use with the consent of the WAR OFFICE (wife).

By Tom Gall and NDNG Dane

The (PSC) will be releasing shortly* a much anticipated new set of rules covering World War III, while a “what if”, a conventional war has touched off and the forces of NATO and WARPAC are enjoined in battle across Europe, each in a desperate struggle to take/give ground before presumably, the nukes might fly.

Titled Battlegroup: NORTHAG, the book focuses on the Northern Army Group section of the front, thus NORTHAG. The setting is 1983 which Warwick Kinrade choose as it was a time of heightened tensions between the powers and was the dividing line before the introduction of a wide range of new equipment.

In this series of articles, we’ll be looking at the rules, the British and Soviet army lists that are included with the new book and finish up with a couple of BatReps.

by Matt Varnish

Here we go, myself and fellow No Dice No Glory contributor Scott ‘Obsidian23’ Roach, get in a game using the new British D-Day book. As always, the video of the game is linked at the end of the article.

We actually debated using the special D-Day missions in the book but they were either on 4ft by 4ft tables or Airlanding, so we opted to use the normal Battle Planner.. and wound up with Free-For-All. We WERE using the new Bocage rules, however, Bocage Hedgerows are Tall Terrain and provide Bulletproof Cover to gun and infantry teams shot through them. Looking at the above table Scott laid out, you can see that Line of Sight would be an issue for things like Achilles, 88s and Panthers.

D-Day +2, Monty’s forces have pushed past the beachheads and are heading towards Caen.   In their way lies a German Recon Coy sitting in an outskirt called Herouville-St-Clair.

The British army has landed on D-Day shores, and we finally got our nerdy hands on the new D-Day book. Mitch did , while Tom M. went for . In this article, we’ll look after four 100 points lists you can now do with the new D-Day book, expanding the Fortress Europe basic list we all used in the last months.