Operation Overlord

So, back on the 6th of June - which should give you some idea of my turnaround for this blog, we at the Bristol Vanguard had a game day focussing on the D-Day landings.

We had three boards, one representing the airborne landings, one the later battles in shore, and one, the landings themselves.

Normandy, where the beaches are fine...

A bridge. Pegasus not included

Meanwhile, in the future...

I, obviously, got tasked with kicking the sleeping Germans out of their billets very early in the morning, and to this end played a Seize and Hold mission from the Normandy Battles book.

I don't have many pictures of the battle itself, but it was a very close thing. I had to advance against Fearless Veteran SS occupying the only buildings on a mostly empty board, after most of my force - against the laws of probability - decided to turn up on the opposite side of the board from my pathfinder.

I moved quickly in the darkness and launched what I thought were some prudent assaults under the cover of night, quickly gaining a foothold near one of the objectives.

Setup on the right. My forces forced to attach the more heavily defended strongpoint.

On the left, a single platoon left to handle the 'weak' strongpoint, which none the less had two MG's in it.

The actions quickly ground to a halt as my troops were stopped in the open by machine gun fire, and unable to assault such heavily defended positions (even under the cover of darkness) dug in (or in one notable case, failed to, repeatedly).

My opponents heavy armour turned up and made a nuisance of itself, until wiped out by some lucky fire from my 6pdrs.

In the end, I wiped out all his support elements leaving him to fire at my dug in troops with small arms, while my artillery dropped barrage after barrage on his positions, until one objective cleared...

Seriously we must have played 30 rounds or so just trading small arms and 75mm howitzer fire...

... and the Tetrarchs rolled in for the win

Despite my uninspired victory, things went even less well for the allies on the other two tables. In the future, some British armour was junked by Panthers, and some very lost Soviets, unsupported by specialised landing equipment, and carried by the worlds worst landing craft (it took something like 3 turns for them to unstick) got machinegunned off the beachers. 

Overall a 2-1 victory for the Axis.

Everyone had fun though and the proceeds went to charity, so in the end are we not all winners?

It was especially great to have an operation specific theme event that worked so well. The organisers are to be congratulated, and indeed have been, profusely. They probably don't need any more...