Some Rapid Fire on the Eastern Front

A couple of years ago and I only had a few armies to bring along to a club night, but such has been my productivity last year in particular that I'm actually now reaching the stage that I have stuff that I feel guilty I haven't got out of the cupboard in a long time.

So it was with my WW2 Eastern Front Rapidfire armies, and so I decided I'd put on a biggish participation game for all comers at the club. I referee'd and six players pulled cards from my scenario generator deck to determine forces (in the general chaos 4 players ended up on the Russian side and 2 players on the German....). We went for 4 battalions a side. The Germans were thrilled to pick an 'Elite SS panzer battalion' of shiny Panthers as their second card- all the rest were infantry battalions. The Russians just pulled infantry battalions, but I decided to even things up a bit by giving them a battalion of T34/76s as reinforcements, and they got a couple of companies of SMG armed tank riders as their other reinforcement card.

Russians who were defending rolled a lousy '1' to determine how far in they could deploy (which under my scenario rules means only one foot in). The Germans started the game by marching on the table. We used hidden movement, and the first units to be detected were the Panther battalion just as they took a ridge halfway across the board.

Overview from the Russian left wing

The Russians didn't waste any time bringing on their reinforcements, and their tank battalion with SMG armed tank riders came on from their right flank in turn 3. Next to be spotted was a German infantry battalion marching down the road into the main town on the Russian left, and a bit of accurate mortar fire took out half a company. Ben had rushed his Russian infantry battalion to try and take a smaller village on the Russian right.

T34s advance to try and stop the Panthers sweeping through the Russians who have seized a secondary village

The main 'fireworks' of the game was in the tank battle on the Russian right. The Panthers succeeded in taking out all the T34s in three or four rounds, but most of their tanks were left heavily damaged. One of the distinguishing features of the rest of the game was the very large number of '1's rolled on the combat dice. Ben's AT gun missed several times at point blank range against the Panthers, and Simon's didn't have much more luck, at an admittedly longer range, against the Panzer battalion's HQ company. Small arms fire in general seemed to miss the mark all over the place. Rarely have so many rounds been expended for so little effect, and it looked as if the Russians in particular had gone into battle without much weapons training!

Dug in across the river, the Russians make a last minute dash to try and stop the Germans taking the town

On the Russian left, the Germans pulled off a highly effective ruse of aggressively moving a hidden movement decoy base into the main town (contrary to the rules I allow decoy counters to be moved - I can't see why they shouldn't be) where they couldn't be spotted. Diggers commanding the Russian battalion on the Russian left was clearly spooked and kept his forces dug in on the other river bank, until a couple of moves before the German infantry battalion was just about to enter the town, when he and Simon, commanding the infantry battalion holding the woods in the Russian centre line, released a few companies to try to contest the town.

German infantry are already entering the town before they can stop them

It was at this point that we ran out of time. I hadn't had time to put out all the victory point markers, so instead of adding up points, I gave a marginal victory to the Germans, who had taken control of a road exit on the right, the ridge line in the centre and were contesting control of the town, while the Russians hadn't done much more than hold the bridge and grab the secondary village.

Thanks to Mac and Diggers with helping out explain the rules to the other four players who had not played Rapid Fire before, without which I don't think we would have even got as far as we did.

Personally I think I'd have brought my Russian reinforcements on the left flank (where most of the objectives were!) not the right, but if they had, the Russians probably would not have stopped the Panzer battalion smashing though the Russian centre, which they probably would have done if they had not been loading AT shells into their guns for most of the battle, and instead put some concentrated HE fire into the Russian infantry battalions. The battalion of T34s was destroyed, but they put enough 'heavy damage' markers on the Panthers to blunt their offensive.

Catching up on 2011: Russian/French Resistence Partisans

While I'm catching up on things that I got done in 2011 but didn't get chance to photo, I've added these snaps of some Caesar figures that I completed. They come from two figure sets variously referred to as 'WW2 Resistence Fighters' and 'WW2 Partisans'. The two sets have a slightly different feel to them, but can easily be mixed to provide a bigger force. When I made up a deck of 'battalion cards' for Rapid Fire (basically a card deck with details of a battalion to be drawn at random to put together a scenario 'on the fly'), I had included a battalion of Partisans or Workers Militia for my Russian forces, without at the time having the figures, so this was a little gap to fill in. These guys are mainly drawn from the Partisan set and probably more closely resemble Russian (or Eastern European) partisans.

While these are mainly from the Resistence set, and probably look more like French Resistence Fighters. Some have armbands, which were worn instead of uniforms once the allies invaded, and they could claim at least the protection of the Geneva Convention.

This guy looks more like a Gestapo agent to me. He's from the Resistence set.

My word! Is that my regular wargaming partner 'Steve the Hat'?

Another of the less conventional poses. A prisoner destined for the Gestapo cells a summary firing squad perhaps.

This is what I have painted up so far which is plenty for a Rapid Fire battalion. I've got the same number again left to finish painting, but not in any great hurry to finish them. A couple of interesting figures that come in the Resistence set are some nuns (not pictured here). Can see that they might be handy to 'dress' a scene or for skirmish scenario (like Black Powder), and as they will fit with any period from the Dark Ages through to modern day.

As I could see that I might be using these in skirmish scenarios two, I based them on 1p coins. Not sure that was the right decision, as once again the smaller bases just don't look as good on the table top. Still it is an easy matter to put them on my larger WW2 card bases and add a bit more basing sand and scatter grass if I change my mind.

I did start dreaming up a scenario just for Partisans once - had Yugoslava in mind - German's have a numbers of train carrying various things -supplies, ammo, troops- and a number of convoys of troops and supplies to get across a board set out with mountains and mountain villages, and some patrols and maybe an armoured car or Panzer II to try and root out Partisans and there weapons caches. Partisans, possibly assisted by some British commandos, start with hidden movement-lots of blinds shepherds etc. and caches of weapons- and need to sneak around moving weapons and explosive caches from place to place and ambush convoys or sabotage or blow up trains without getting caught.

I've also seen some people have recommended using these for doing a 'Very British Civil War' in 20mm, and as it happens I've also painted up some WW1 British Infantry who might serve...