WWII Batrep - The Putot Counter Attack 1944 - The Canadians in Normandy

 

Five Rejects got together at Reject Dan's house over the weekend, (we can't meet up in Posties Shed at the moment, coz its full of all my wargaming crap!) Reject Richard posted his version of events here, yesterday around 2 hours after the game, think he's trying to outblog Lee, even though Lee wasn't even there!!!

Dan had been giving Rapid Fire Reloaded a try, as he used to play these back in the day with his late Dad, Malcolm.

He was using a scenario from this fab book above.

And here's the map and scenario......

myself and Postie played the part of the Canadians, while Richard and Steve were the Germans. We had to set up in the red area, the Germans in the blue, all we had to do was take the town!!

From the OOB, it looks like it should be easy, doesn't it?

Well for a start we didn't know what the Germans had or where they set up, so we had to go searching for them.

The battlefield

And with our deployment.......this was my first ever game of Rapid Fire and Posties second, now I must admit I've not played much WWII, so am a tad out of touch with all the terms, weapons and style of play. But that's not gonna stop us!

As we didn't know where they were, my 3 Sherman's began to trundle forward to the centre of the table. Followed by A & B companies infantry.

Our HQ, sitting looking very pretty.

Postie set up on the road on our right.

We planned to move our front Carrier as far and as quickly forward as we could, to see if we could uncover the enemy.

In the first turn we threw down some smoke, to obscure our movement, on the road above the first tank is a blank base. The German's had placed I think 8 of theses bases down, if we got within 12 inches they would be uncovered as either troops or a blank???

Forward!!!

Posties C Company Carrier surged forward and dismounted the vehicle, they're in 12 inches of the base on the road beyond???

Posties other troops moved forward, while the mortar team got ready to shoot, if we could find anything to shoot at, that is?

My infantry crossing the field.

The card wasn't a blank? It turned out to be 2 PAK 40's and a 150mm Infantry Gun!

Oh dear, Ricard's newly uncovered artillery tales a shine to one of my Sherman's!

On our left I'm moving our artillery observer into the house, to see if we an bomb something and our HQ head the same way, we need to get their mortar firing.

We're still none the wiser as to where the German's are hiding, but surly they must be in the town?

We both advance....

We don't seem to be having a lot of luck shooting?

Aha! He's a bit obscured, but Postie moves up our carrier, centre right behind the tree, to try and spot the enemy.

And gets blown up for his trouble, but at least we now know where they are. Like we thought, there's a horde hiding in the building in front of the burning carrier.

A view from the German right. Steve's Infantry and ATT gun are waiting in the orchard.

In for what for us, was a lucky shot Postie destroyed one of the German guns, so the other 2 limbered up and looked for a btter place to fire from.

I waited a turn for my infantry to catch up.

I need to keep 6 inches away from the building on the tanks right, to keep out of Panzerschreck range. 

A view of the whole table

Where do I head for?

Fire!!!!

Ricard moves his artillery into the orchard.

While his other gun is still on fire.

Hmm? I'm not liking the position of that gun. But try as we could neither me or Postie could do any damage to it.

Time to take a chance and move forward.

Postie moves his infantry up to try and shoot at the gun, but misses.

I fired as well, I couldn't hit a barn door if it was a inch from my face!!

But the German's can do no wrong.....my second Sherman goes up in flames.

oh crap, the third Sherman is destroyed the same turn. 

What we gonna do now?

The attack stalls....

I said to Dan, if my tanks was blown up and on fire in the cornfield, would the cornfield go up in flames as well.

Yes, was the answer.

It was quite clear that we were not gonna make our objective, so we beat a retreat, to live and fight again another day.

Conclusion

What an absolute disaster!!!

The Canadians lost - 8 infantry, 1 Piat team, 1 Carrier but the bitter pill, 3 Shermans!

The Germans lost - 1 PAK 40, so it was a bit of a drubbing.......

I didn't hit a thing for the whole game, my dice throwing was the worst its ever been, Posties wasn't that much better, but at least he destroyed a PAK 40 . We had plenty of opportunities to shoot but failed nearly every time, it was very frustrating I can tell you!!!. 

But what can I say about the game and the rules......well I must admit I really enjoyed both, the rules, were fairly easy to pick up, I will need a few games under my belt to understand them better and to work out how tactics work in the rules. The scenario was pretty cool too, but unachievable, because of our crap dice. If we'd have thrown average dice, it would have been a completely different game. Its crazy that the Rejects have never really got into WWII, we dabbled in micro scale 30 years ago, Lee has his 6mm Desert War and What a Tanker, but I'm looking forward to giving Rapid Fire another go soon. 

So well done Dan on a great days gaming, Please burn those god awful yellow dice though!

News - Both Gaming and life!

 

The move went well, a few things have gone missing though as they do, I still haven't found my electric shaver, so I've been walking round all unkempt, so I had to go old skool and buy a wet razor. That's a tenner less on figures now!!

 The pic above is my soon to be Wargaming Room, but I think my soon, is a completely different soon than Mrs R is thinking. AS you can see its still full up with unopened boxes. Now a lot of these are mine, I used to collect 45 records, back in the 80's and 90's, but when Abi, Daughter no2 was born in 1994, they all went up in the loft, now I knew I had a few, but didn't quite realise there were 46 boxes of them!!

So these need sorting out, I thinking of selling some and hiding the rest back up the new loft, but who knows???

We were waved off by Postie and Alison as we drove off, Posties not happy I'm moving away, and I will admit its gonna be strange not having my pal living next door anymore.

Postie and Alison shedding a tear!!! Yeh right!!

We're a week in after the move and its not a lot better, still got tons to do, just to try and get straight, so there's not going to be much hobby time for me, although saying that, some of the Rejects met up on our Monday paint and chat and had another go of Reject Richard's 16th Century Navel rules, he's a clever chap our Richard, he does have the knack of writing a decent set of rules, Here's a link to his write up of the game on his blog, 

My Wargaming Habit,  And a few pics from the game too.

Both stolen from Richard's blog

Lastly 4 Rejects are going round Reject Dan's house for a game of Rapid Fire, It's my first game of Rapid Fire so I'm really looking forward to it!!

A..... What I've been painting, a catch up and news

 

Its been a very busy few weeks at Casa Rousell, The Rousell clan is on the move so there's been a lot to do.

We finally have a moving date which is this coming Thursday the 3rd July, so wargaming and painting has been pushed to the back seat, apart from the markers above, which tbh were painted a few weeks ago, and I didn't get round to posting them. At Partizan me and Lee decided to buy some Warbases counters to use for Shock markers in our up and coming, Retreat from Moscow shenanigans using Sharpe Practice. Lee's done the same, but he was a tad more creative than me, putting different things on his, logs, wheels, dead and such. I went for stones, nice and easy.

Organizing moving and sorting all the crap that you've accumulated over 35 years is difficult enough, without Mrs R pre-booking a weeks holiday with her Mum, to Spain for the week before we move, (she wasn't to know that at the time though, of course) and my daughter doing the same, sunning herself in Cyprus.....again! I'd already booked the week off, when Mrs R and my Mother-in-Law, were away, I had planned a weeks worth of fun and games, but the moving date destroyed my plans. 

And, I've been looking after Prince Bodie, my Mun in laws Poodle, who thinks he's human and doesn't do a bloody thing he's told too either!!!

Me and Lee did manage to get a day in Posties shed, to work on some of the terrain we've been buying. We chose one of the hottest days of the year to work in Posties shed, I don't think I've ever been that hot, it was like working in a bloody sauna!

Lee, the tart that he is made a short video of the day that he posted the other day, on his YouTube channel. If you haven't seen it take a look. We were both very pleased with what we managed to get completed. Firstly of 7 foot x 7 foot, wargaming mat, which started out life as a 7 foot square throw from Dunholm.

To this we patted on grey paint, then two layers of white paint. When that was all dry we spayed the mat with 2 cans of GW white spray, it may well need another going over??

Before

During

After

The other major job we did was to paint up all the luvvly Last Valley river sections we purchased at Partizan in May and another lot that came n the post too! Andy does make Snowy river section already, where he just doesn't paint the gound, which was perfect for us, so we matched the ground in with how we'd based our figures. I will admit to being very pleased to how these came out. They're a perfick match!

How we bought them from The Last Valley

With a base sand added.

All the white has been painted Earth Brown

After giving the Earth brown a heavy drybrush of white, we them wacked on our snow mix.

Lastly we bought loads of sabot tree bases from those great peeps at Warbases, they come in 2's, 3's 4's and 5 trees to a base. Why do you need sabot tree bases you ask?

 There's an easy answer.......storage. Instead of having bases with a few trees on which will be a nightmare to store, we or rather (I) decided this was the way to go, all the bases can go in one box, the trees in another.

Easy!

So there you go, a very busy few weeks.......which is gonna carry on for the next few weeks after I move. 

Its going to be strange not living next to Postie, like I have for the past 35 years, it was always so easy to pop next door for a game or a cuppa.

The gate in the middle of our fence, where I will no longer go through to play a game.

Think Posties gonna nail it shut!

Well that's me for today, I have got other posts ready and raring to go, but they'll have to wait.