Valour & Fortitude - Chickamauga 1863

 

I am reasonably confident the infantry formations and dispositions are accurate. However the presence of the artillery on both sides at this point is conjectural, but added to the scenario to enliven matters... Breckenridge's divisional artillery (Cobb and Graves' Kentucky batteries, Mebane's Tennessee and Slocomb's Louisiana batteries, all under the command of Major Graves) presumably threw some heavy metal down range at some point during the proceedings. I have also presumed to attach half the US 4th Division's artillery to King's Brigade. 

The Union view: Beatty's Brigade and half of King's brigade are sans earthworks, but virtually the whole table is covered in woodland which gives light cover.

Breckinridge's Boys step off...

Forming into march columns the better to push deep into the gap:

The Rebel Generals, Caear, left, and Daniel, right, are not above some sharp card play to get their 'foot cavalry' really moving!

They get to the first objective with the firstest and the mostest!

Beatty's Union Brigade, at the shoulder of the gap, moves fast to stem the tide...

But regiments arrive piecemeal..

The 104th Illinois get stuck into the rebs right away, and at first things go well! The Confederates take a defeat point.

But they are soon surrounded by the surging Rebel high tide...its now our turn to have a wavering brigade and a defeat point!

Fortunately my Union partner David, on the right, takes the time...

To get King's Brigade up as a coherent formation to replace my, now decimated,  Beatty's Brigade:

And secures the centre objective. Both armies have a defeat point and hold one objective, and the other objective is covered by the Union. A minor Union victory!

Clash of Steel - Western Desert 1942?

So Clash of Steel (CoS) is a brilliant wargaming system set in an alternative Post War European timeline. Not the Western Desert 1942. So why eschew Flames of War (FoW) if we are doing a WW2 tank battle?

Well, step outside of the timeline, and CoS is essentially FoW with just tanks. So it plays much quicker, so you can have lots more tanks and still finish a game in an evening. And I'm a tank nut! This game was my attempt to bring my mates around to the same view. Peter humoured me with force lists featuring unfeasibly large numbers of tanks from his extensive collection:

It was going to be British quantity over German quality:

We set up a generic desert table. The centre dried up wadi has no tactical impact, but the escarpments at either end are impassable. The round hills are tall terrain, the irregular rocky outcrops just provided short hull down cover. Everything else is decoration.

The randomly generated scenario was The Long Run, with immediate scattered reserves. Further complications meant that the far objective would time out at end of move 5. Darren and Peter took the British hordes, I the more compact DAK force.

Despite the random nature of the terrain, it was clear to all that the centre objective, out in the open, would be costly to take, and we both raced for the flank objectives...

Hanging back from the centre...

I got to both flank objectives first, getting a good head start on victory points.

The British were playing a waiting game, bringing up their heavies so as to swamp both objectives in due course...

This allowed me to pick them off with full rate of fire, gaining even more victory points for wiped out units!

Nothing daunted, the Brits continued to jockey for my flanks...now contesting both flank objectives, slowing down my points dial...

My units largely survived the first salvo of side armour shots by dint of lucky dice...

But it couldn't last and now the Brits were getting points for wiping out my platoons!

I looked to my all powerful Mark IV Specials with their lang 75s to claw back some points, but forgot the Brits brought two platoons of equally powerful Shermans! We traded hits but now they were in sole possession of two objectives whilst I was only contesting one - the arithmetic was inexorably against me and we called the game to save my blushes from being doubled!

A fast and swirling game that really gave the feel of mid-war desert tank combat. All enjoyed the game and I think we'll being revisiting the desert soon!