Well yesterday I finally got round to the interwar Soviet/British game which has been set up for about 5 weeks following the last one. Set roughly around 1931 it pits the Soviet Brigade Kalinovsky (or an approximation to it) against elements of the Experimental Armoured Force with infantry support. Lionel Tarr rules again. Same terrain as the last game but with different trees and buildings. The British had 9 Vickers Mediums - 8 Mk IIs and 1 Mk III; the Independent, 6 light tanks, 2 Rolls Royce armoured cars, 2 Birch Guns, OP vehicle, about 4 battalions of infantry (which never got engaged) and half an MG battalion in Vickers Tractors and Crossley half tracks.
The Russians had an interesting mixture of AFVs - 3 T18 (or MS-1s), 3 T24, 2 T27, 1 T28 and 2 T35. 3 ACs were 1 BA27 and 2 FAI. They had a number of anti tank rifles, a similar number of infantry to the British including 2 hmg, 2 mortars and an infantry gun. Russian AFVs were mainly Fabbri diecasts from the Works and elsewhere. The T 27s are a mystery - they are metal. I had thought they were Raventhorpe but Tony denies all knowledge of them. I think maybe they were bought 10-15 years or so ago and maybe from an add in the SOTCW Journal, but i'm not sure. i could do with acquiring quite a few more.
The action was fought as an encounter along the length of the table. The British armour and the MG battalion's AT gun successfully shot up the Russian armour; the Soviet multi turrets reliably broke down; and HMG fire from the MG battalion, armoured cars and light tanks decimated two of the Russian infantry battalions. The Birch Guns had just been ranged in by their OP. At this point I stopped. If the Soviets abandoned all their heavy weapons they had just enough motor transport to lift the infantry but had no armour to cover their withdrawal from the British light armour. The alternative would be to occupy and loophole buildings on the battlefield but the British could stand off and use artillery and tank fire to reduce them. With no relieving force available the options seemed to be a very risky withdrawal or surrender.
Things I learned - fighting up the length of the table gave no room for manoeuvre by the infantry units; under the Tarr rules infantry move very slowly and are very vulnerable in action, both to casualties to enemy fire and to morale when they lose these casualties; and a little more differentiation between AFVs would help. I couldn't work out how combat would work in the rules between solely MG armed armour - armoured cars, light tanks and tankettes. Anti tank weapons were valuable but rare - I had two Soviet 37mms from SHQ still in their packets and they could have done with some proper artillery as well. I did paint up a British battalion made up from Jack;ex WW1 figures and Miltra officers for the game, and I have a rather nice Zvezda ANT 5 sesquiplane fighter kit to make. I've bought some built British aircraft - a Fury and three Demons - from ebay.
So I think any future games will try out Rompan El Fuego and possibly Operation Warboard or the Charles Grant Battle rules.
One of the reasons it took so long to getting round to playing this game was poor light for photography, so apologies for the standard of some of them but here are the pics:
02 August 2009, 06:38:00 PM