Memoir'44: Battle of Arracourt

I hadn't had a game of Memoir'44 for ages so I tried a scenario I'd never played from the base game, the Battle of Arracourt. This was a major armoured confrontation with plenty of artillery thrown in on the Allied side.

The game started well for the Germans who immediatly launched an armoured assault on their right flank knocking the US tanks back to the next hill line. This was followed up by a hand of good cards for the Americans who initially countered the German advance but over time their options narrowed so that they ran out of anything in the centre and couldn't activate their artillery to good effect. 

The situation became dire as the German tanks pressed on to the US baseline and the game ended quite abruptly with a 6-2 victory. Looking back I would have played the Americans much more cautiously and waited for the Germans to move towards me but the game did give the feeling of a force put into panic by some aggressive tactics that completely unbalanced them so from that perspective was quite a sobering gaming experience.

The cat made a dash across the battlefield towards the end! 

 And after I packed away the game pieces, basked in the glory of victory.

Some Recent Acquisitions

I've been spending a small birthday fund that I'd accumulated at the start of the year and have made several interesting purchases that I'm sure are going to give me a lot of payback once I've invested a bit of time in them.

First up was a set of rules I'd wanted for some time, Sharp Practice. This fills a nice little niche allowing large skirmishes which is a wargame I really enjoy. Also set during one of my favourite periods covering the entire black powder era. So it will be with a Napoleonic focus at first but whose not to say whether I will dabble in ACW or AWI scenarios too. I also got a set of cards at a reasonable price and these are very nice.

Next was the WWII version of the rule booklet for Battlegroup. I was so impressed with the Cold War set and had seen such good battle reports on YouTube and on-line that it looked to be a very promising candidate as my preferred WWII ruleset. Also Amazon was selling this at sales price so enough said! It is a lovely book with excellent illustrations and clear, well written text and explanations.

I've also always wanted to recreate medieval skirmishes ever since I used to play out extensive battles with my 1/32nd toy soldiers in my early teens. So the prospect of a clear and simple ruleset at a below £10 price was irresistable. This ruleset has a great reputation and reading through it I was immediately impressed and  enthused. I even searched out his Dark Age adaptation Landwasters and Raven Feeders so I can extend this without any trouble into the earlier period and use my Anglo Saxons and Viking figures. There is even a Fantasy version that I've seen but that's a future project.

Final purchase is the WRG 1685 to 1845 Wargaming Rules. A bit old school compared to the others but was this was more a substitution and preservation move to replace my original rule book and prevent any further wear and tear. By getting a nice fresh version that is in a pleasing A4 size format I can now leaf through the rules with confidence that I'm not causing further damage to my precious original. I read through these again and they are still absolutely up there as one of my favourite sets of rules. They have a charm and quality that just just lends itself to the size of game I prefer involving only a handful of brigades.

So that was a well spent budget delivering a lot of bang for the buck. The cat was content with some treats that I managed to divert a small portion of the funds for.

 

One Hour Wargame: Scenario 2 Pitched Battle

Almost immediately after my previous battle I found a little time to setup a straightforward line-up based on Scenario 2 in the OHW book. This time it would be the Austrians as the opponents with a scenario set in the middle of the 1809 campaign. 

I used my add-on morale rules again and tweaked these a little to make them less invasive to the play. This worked much better and with the use of the solo event cards produced a compelling game that delivered a lot of entertainment. 

The poor Austrian general tried to be creative and use his superior cavalry in order to mass them on the French right flank but their envelopment was stalled by some determined French dragoons and artillery that held firm. Meanwhile the French line was able to blast away at the Austrians and make their units start to falter and break.

It took 7 turns and the Austrians had lost all but their hussars and jaegers. So another fine game that delivered wargaming enjoyment.

The cat was a little more sceptical of the entertainment benefits of the exercise.

One Hour Wargames: Scenario 12 An Unfortunate Oversight

I wanted to get back into gaming after a short hiatus and thought a good way to do this would be using OHW. For this I would try out a stripped down version of the rules that I'd felt had been over engineered with modifications I'd used previously.

With one exception - I couldn't resist trying out some simple morale rules based on unit rating, casualties and commanders. These worked out pretty well and injected just the right amount of friction without slowing the game down. Obviously open to further modification as I playtest these they provide a solid add-on that I'm inclined to keep.

I chose the scenario randomly with a D20 roll and the sides with a D6 from the lists. I went for a Napoleonic lineup as these are the models I have to hand just now while I'm going through a house reorganisation. French v Russians in 1812 with two splendid brigades ranged against each other.

The French were tasked with a daunting prospect of capturing the village and the hill. By using the ford they were supposed to get an advantage in circumventing the river and opening up the right flank to assault. That was the plan, however, their assault was stalled by tenacious Russian resistance.

The final position saw the French down to one remaining battalion while the Russians retained four functioning units and a shredded elite battalion of grenadiers still willing to use the bayonet on the invaders.

The cat reflected on the Russian tactics while I was checking my counter inventory for Third Reich after I packed the OHW game away.