Miniature Wargames

Bolt Action – Eastern Front 1941

This weekend the local HMGS-South group played a Bolt Action game. The scenario was a meeting engagement between infantry forces.

Infantry squads advance on to the table. Each side hid a mortar team in the corner behind woods.

Machine gun and advancing infantry fire hits and pins a German squad in the upper left. German infantry occupies a two-story objective house.

Russian infantry occupies the other objective house (top). The Russian mortar causes heavy casualties to the infantry in the two-story objective house.

Assault combats eliminate one Russian and two German squads.

With most of the German infantry gone, we called this a Russian victory.

Bolt Action – Normandy June 7 1944

This weekend the local HMGS-South group played a Bolt Action game. The scenario was an advance by US troops near the Normandy coast on June 7th 1944.

Any vehicle moving off the roads risked getting bogged down.

German infantry dug in on one of the objectives.

A veteran German squad is pinned down by fire from several US units.

US troops have cleared one objective and will shortly wipe out the infantry in the second objective.

Empire – d’Erlon’s Attack

Saturday the local HMGS-South group played a Napoleonic game at the Dogs of War shop using a modified version of the Empire V rules. The scenario was based on the attack of d’Erlon’s corps at Waterloo.

Although on the table in this shot, the French on the left will enter on the first turn, after a bombardment by off-table artillery.

The crossroads, with British cavalry in reserve.

The French grand battery (off-table) has destroyed more than half of the deployed British artillery and damaged Bijlandt’s infantry.

French infantry break through the British line behind the crest. La Haie Sainte and the sandpit are under fire.

Bijlandt is gone, and French cavalry has arrived.

British cavalry ride down several French battalions that had crossed the ridge.

When we quit due to the late hour, there was a significant hole in the British line. Lots of uncommitted cavalry on both sides were poised to clash there.

Rapid Fire WWII East Front

This weekend the local HMGS-South group played a WWII east front game using the Rapid Fire rules.

The Germans were tasked with clearing a route the length of the table for a truck convoy.

Forward Russian positions are destroyed.

More Russian positions fall, but Russian tanks arrive and counterattack.

Sturmoviks finally arrive, in time to destroy some of the truck convoy.

The field is littered with abandoned and destroyed tanks.

Trieres Conversions

Decades ago I used Valiant Enterprises ‘Ramming Speed’ 1/900 scale pentakonters as 1/1200 scale aphract trieres. Since I could now use more cataphract trieres, the models are being converted by filling in the exposed benches with strips of paper. Only 40 to convert….