Club Arnhem game

[swiftnick]

Some of the paras painted for me by LAF member Matt. He managed to get them done fantastically fast to take part in an Arnhem game last weekend.


About 6 weeks ago the Thule gamers decided to do an Arnhem Rapid Fire game. Not the best Idea at short notice. Our club only has 4 historical gamers and only 3 of them really do any painting. But after a flurry of painting ,borrowing and Ebaying we were ready to go. We used the OOB from the RF Arnhem book and set up table covering the landing sites,Oosterbeek and Arnhem. We were lucky enough to be able to borrow a classroom from a local school.

[Matthew83]

Good to see the wandering fellows again, can't wait for the game report.

Cheers

Matt

[swiftnick]

For the first day deployment for the allies were as the RF book. The Germans started off with a dispersed battalion in Oosterbeek and what seemed to be a few guys and a Kubelwagen in Arnhem itself. The British reinforcement was preordained. But as one of the players is a bit of an Arnhem expert we varied German reinforcement using chance cards and dice rolls.

Paras forming up for the march into Arnhem.

The battle went well at first for the allies with the end of day one seeing 1 and 2 para well and truly ensconced in Arnhem. The Germans had infiltrated the buildings on one side of the bridge ramp however and were able to prevent the capture of the bridge itself.

Yours truly conferring with Sean the umpire and Young John a fantasy gamer roped into command 1 para brigade.

[swiftnick]

Day 2 started with the second lift carrying the remainder of 1st airborne. The allies now held most of Arnhem apart from a few houses to the East of the Bridge Ramp. Pressure was building round the landing grounds and from the North as the German build up started to make its presence felt. A dash over the bridge by armoured cars and half tracks was met by a hail of piat fire. The AFVs were knocked out just off the bridge ramp but the supporting infantry were able to reinforce the Germans holding out there. More German reinforcements arrived from The North East and assaulted the town literally using human wave tactics. 1 para and its attached antitank battery were destroyed and the brigade HQ captured. Although still a large  force the remaining paras in town were almost surrounded and had lost most of their heavy weapons. They also could not call in 75mm fire as the OPs had been captured.
The time was now 1700. As we had to tidy up the allow the classroom to be used on Monday morning. We decided on one final turn. It was all or nothing for the Paras. They stormed out of their positions and charged the German held buildings in close assault. If they could inflict enough casualties on the Germans they would force a morale check causing the withdrawal of the battalion guarding the bridge. Unfortunately anticipating this the Germans had reserved fire and were able to inflict enough casualties on the paras to blunt their attack. So after 2 days of gaming the Germans still held the bridge.

[Golgotha]

I think thats a bar too far... 

[Marine0846]

Good looking game.
Hats off to you guys for putting on a large game on a short time frame.
Like what you guys did.

[Matthew83]

Great stuff, looks like a lot of fun.

Thanks for sharing.

Matt

[swiftnick]

No thanks to you for painting all those paras at short notice. Otherwise 1st Para brigade would have been bare plastic.
Also a big thanks to Disco Dave for sending 2 battalions of Germans up from Edinburgh.
The British players were Chris and Pat Brown and Young John.
Myself and Old John took the Germans while Sean was the umpire.
A couple of dissapointments were that the company sized movement trays I bought didn't arrive in time. My fault I ordered them far too late. And that a lot of the German kit bought for the game never made it too the battlefied as we ran out of time.