Games Room Update Part 3 & a Step Closer to Ticking Off an Item on My Wargaming Bucket List

 So - lots of good news on the Games Room front.  Firstly, and somewhat most importantly from the whole "Games Room" point-of-view, I now have a 10 ft x 6 ft table top.  Beautifully crafted by my Games Room go-to-guy, Lawrence, it fits perfectly on top of all my smaller storage cupboards.  Here it is in possibly not the greatest angle:

This angle better shows the cupboards underneath the table:

And finally, this shot sort-of shows the batten under the table that allows it to sit solidly on the cupboards:

Unfortunately this exercise proves I am not an engineer...  I drew a picture, with measurements for Lawrence to show him what I wanted, and I showed the battens being 6" from the table edge - allowing me to open the top drawer easily and access it contents.  Of course I failed to take into account the size of the batten, which probably added another 3 or 4 inches.  You can still pull open the drawers - it's just a bugger getting stuff out of them!

The tabletop is not moving an inch as along with the battens, the whole thing weighs a ton!

Anyway - still extremely chuffed with the tabletop.  And of course I had to try it out with the ultimate test, and an item on my wargaming bucket list.  Playing out all four maps from GDW's Third World War series.  I certainly had not planned for this... but it fits on the table top!

With plenty for all the other bits and bobs that are essential for the game.  Super satisfied with that I had to try out the maps from a couple of other recent purchases.

The map for "Red Storm: The Air War over Central Germany, 1987" fits easily.  The next one might be more of a challenge.

Here's all the maps for the latest version of Thin Red Line Games "1985: Deadly Northern Lights".  Its a monster, but fits very nicely on the table.  Again with plenty of room for the heaps of stuff that goes with this game.

One of my plans - not really a bucket list item, but a solid plan nonetheless, is to play Deadly Northern Lights, along with GDW's "Arctic Front" - seen here alone

and Strategy & Tactics Magazine's "Nordkapp"

Now I have the tabletop to do it, I just need an opponent!

Then, with the maps put back into their respective boxes/magazines, I whiled away an hour or two setting up the table for a "proper" wargame - just to see what it looked like:

Finally, the next bit of good news I had, was the arrival of my built to order Glass Display Cabinet.  Again made by Lawrence - it is a wonder to behold (in my eyes).

And did I mention he added LEDs for me!

I'm so in love with this cabinet.  Due to putting our house on the market a few years back, taking it off again, then putting it on again, selling, moving out, moving countries etc, its been about 5 years since I've been able to display my models and figures.

Now I finally have a place to do that - along with the embarrassing incentive of displaying unpainted models, will certainly push my painting along.  

Most of my "hobbytime" has to date been spent trying to put the garage in order.  Now I'm finally getting to the pointy end where all that is behind me and I'll have not excuses to keep putting off actually painting something and hopefully getting in an actual game.

Thanks

Richard

Eisenbach Gap

A few weeks ago I went down to Canberra for the Annual Wargaming Convention there: Cancon. This year I went solely as a shopper rather than playing in any tournament. I'm rather chuffed with the result - in that I managed to pick up 3 boxed wargames, some 1/72 kits and a couple of 120mm mortars for my Soviets.

One of the games I bought was Lock 'n Load's Eisenbach Gap as seen above. I managed to get it second hand and complete - as in it wasn't missing anything!



Over the weekend I got to play it for the first time in a solo game. At least this way I was guaranteed to win (and to lose...)

I've made up a dodgy AAR - I'm sure many could do it much more nicely - but alas - all my desire to do so was not matched by an appropriate computer program (or the skill to use it!)

So the board looks like this:



however the actual playing area for the first scenario is more like this:



The Soviets are attacking from west to east across the map (couldn't really work this out in my head - but hey - I was just doing what the scenario said to do). They have 10 platoons of T-72s and an HQ. The US (Team Yankee - almost straight from the book it appeared to me) had 2 M1 platoons, an ITV platoon, and Infantry platoon with a Dragon ATGM and an HQ. This shows the initial set up of the game:



The Soviet set up (the red oval) is pretty much set whereas the US could set up anywhere from around the two central hills and to the east. I placed 1 M1 platoon in the woods on the hill to the south, 1 M1 platoon in the small central village and the infantry and ITVs in the town at Eisenbach. The US HQ was in the small village with an M1 platoon. The Soviets had to take Eisenbach to win the game - anything else was a US victory.

The NATO Plan was pretty simple. Start defending forward and then withdraw to Eisenbach. The ITV with its good range would defend the town and the infantry would be the last restort.

The Soviet Plan was likewise pretty straight forward. Beyond the obvious crush the imperialists - it involved taking the northern hill quickly and while part of the force swung around to take Eisenbach from the north, the main body would deal with the tanks in the town and the other hill and then attack Eisenbach from the south.



The game started quite well for the Soviets. They got a free turn (special scenario rule) and then I drew their activation chit first, so they got another move again. This got most of them into a pretty good position behind/on the northen hill with the loss of only one platoon. At the same time they managed to knock out the M1 platoon in the central village and degrade the Team Yankee HQ.



With the centre in trouble, the southern most M1 platoon began to withdraw to Eisenbach, while the soviets also enacted their plan by driving a couple of platoons to the northwest of Eisenbach.

The soviets (read me) then remembered that they had some artillery support so spent the next couple of turns raining arty down on the infantry in Eisenbach. This cunning sub-plan failed miserably and the infantry laughed in the face of the ineffective red artillery. Ha Ha Ha. They proved their contempt further by, along with the ITV platoon, managing to knockout the 2 T-72 platoons hiding in the woods to the Northwest.



The Soviet attack started to break down here and when a couple more T-72 platoons also tried to drive to the South they got hammered as well, while the reduced M1 platoon and the HQ traded shots with the Soviet units on the hill north of the central village.



Finally the US forces took out the remaining units in the central village and with only 2 platoons left, the Soviets decided to call it a day.

Unit of the battle:



The ITV platoon was totally awesome and did more damage than any other unit in the game.

VERDICT

Well - my bottom line is that I enjoyed myself. Its been years and years since I played a board game like this and after just 1 game, I started to realise I still loved pushing little cardbaord chits around. I'll be playing this game again.

LIKES

The grahics of this system are simply stunning. Lovely full colour counters and excellent map board. The counters can be a wee bit difficult to read - but that's me just getting old! I love the activation system and it caused some interesting swings backwards and forwards in the game.

Towards the beginning of the game when things were going well for the Soviets I couldn't see how the US side could win. I seriously thought they were going to get massarced. Later inthe game I couldn't see how the Soviets could move fromthe central area of the board without getting hammered. To me this actually felt pretty balanced - so I was happy with that.

Movement is dead easy and the combat system is pretty cool. I also generally liked the Command system.

DISLIKES

Bear in mind that this is after one game - so this may change. There are a couple of things I felt could have been explained better and I think the Player Aid card could have a lot more useful information on it.

I couldn't find anything in the Morale section that talked about the effect of loses on the force as a whole. Even as the Soviets were getting hammered they still just carried on and could theoretically have continued literally down to the last man standing. I hope I'm wrong and I have simply missed something.

CONCLUSION

I'm not the biggest fan of solitaire play - it just makes me think I'm Billy-no-mates, but it wasn't that bad in this game. Apart from having someone explain to me all the things I was doing wrong (which would have helped a great deal), and having someone else do the thinking for one of the sides, I'd be happy to play thsi again either by myself or with a mate.

And remember - ITVs rock. Have fun

Richard

GDW Cold War Madness...

When it came to gaming during my spotty-faced youth (as opposed to my spotty-faced adulthood) I was in the RPG crowd. In fact, much to my sadness now, I didn't really know any miniature wargamers. So, during the 1980's I moved from AD&D to Traveller to Twilight:2000. The I hit TW:2000 I was in my element. I absolutely loved it, and I was old enough to pretty much buy every little thing for it as it came along.

This was the start of my slid into Games Designer Workshop (GDW) madness, where I worshipped at the altar of Frank Chadwick, and tried to buy every Cold War wargame that he wrote, co-wrote, or happened to walk past the desk one day when someone else was writing a game.

So - today's post is all about Cold War Hot related GDW boxed sets.

Now I have to start with Twilight:2000



TW2000 was "my" game. If I had a choice witht he old gaming group - we played TW2000. I never really played "Last Battle" - but I'm pretty sure I owned every TW2000 book, magazine etc. I even wrote a couple of TW2000 tournament games for Macqauriecon, an annual RPG convention at my university. I'm actually still quite proud of both those games...

Anyway - moving right along. My next purchase (its a long time ago so I might have got the order slightly out of wack) was the Assault Series.



Much to my regret I never bought the Bundeswehr boxed set. Now (for whatever reason) I just about be prepared to do anything for it and the Reinforcement sets. This game is actually an excellent source for my current fixation with Cold War Hot wargaming and the info in the Briefings is now worth the price of the game alone.

Next up was the classic "The Third World War" series:



At least this time I made sure I got the complete set. Sadly I have never played these games - I never had a group of mates interested enough. But one of my many secret dreams is to have a game of this, with all the maps joined together. It's a pretty cool sight to see.

Next up was my first foray into air wargames. The Air Superiority Series.



With this set I also managed to get the "Desert Falcons" supplement, which amusingly enough ends in 1984 with some Tomcats shooting down some Libyan jets. How ex-GDW employess probably wish this could have included the Gulf wars...

Next up was the classic version (IMHO) of Harpoon:



When I first read that the naval scenarios in "Red Storm Rising" were gamed out using Larry Bond's Harpoon I was hooked. When GDW bought it out I knew I had to get it. A great game, which happily I was able to get two supplements "Battles of the Third World War" and "South Atlantic War". Again, just for the info these games and books provide - they are well worth it.

Finally, in my humble collection I give you these two:



Many an hour has been sent reading and playing these two games - particularly "Team Yankee". Once again, both these games have excellent reference material and Team Yankee is a good reference for Cold War Hot gaming.

So that's my little wander down memory lane - thanks for bearing with me and the bad photos of some of my GDW Cold War Hot boxed treasures.

Have fun,

Richard