1/19/2020

Nuts! Blood upon the risers. Flash and thunder

Having finally lost all my wargaming buddies I am looking again to solo gaming, and more specifically to Nuts! for WWII skirmishing. So after re-reading Nuts! and its supplement Blood upon the Risers, I made a lot of bocage and walls, painted some paratroopers and re-watched Band of brothers to put me in situation.

Flash and Thunder is the first scenario of the campaign. According to the scenario there are one Flak38 battery and two PEFs (Possible Enemy Force) plus 1d3 more PEFs. I scored three more PEFs so in the end there were five in total. But in this scenario PEFs can be either enemy or allied troops.

Situation
It is approximately 1:25 am June 6th, 1944, near Neuville-au-Plain, France. The anxiety of waiting for the green light to jump whilst flying through a wall of flak has given way to the fear of being alone on the ground in the dark in nemy territory. Your parachute ruffles quietly as you quickly remove your harness and gear up.
Nearby, an antiaircraft gun fires  into the night sky, while small arms fire sounds in the distance.
With no way to tell which direction the objective lies, all there is to to is to find more paratroopers and pick a direction to head.

You begin with just your Star.

The white dice tell the Rep of the enemy PEFs and the red die the Rep of my Star. I darkened the pictures to represent night time.

I head to the closer PEF at the south but then it moves 16" away from me towards the Flak battery.

Then I decide to follow the road up north, under the cover of the hedges.

PEFs continue moving in different directions and when I close the Flak battery I finally spot one and resolve it. It turns to be three paratroopers! As it's German phase they roll In Sight Test and open fire to the crew of the Flak.

The three Germans get OD, OOF and Duck Back respectively, and one paratrooper armed with pistol is out of ammo. Small dice tell soldiers' Rep; red for Germans and green for Americans.

Then I resolve a near PEF which results to be three Germans. In the firefight one of the paratroopers gets hit but he is only stunned. The three Germans are OD thanks to the firing of the two Thompsons.

My Star keeps moving along the road and spots and kills a German scout who had taken cover in a ditch when he saw the paratroopers assaulting the Flak.

 The other three paratroopers regroup and cross the field towards the road.

My Star keeps advancing and reveals another PEF. He is in cover, so he can see them but they cannot see him in the darkness, so as no In Sight Test is triggered he can aim and fire first unmolested. Now the leader of the enemy patrol is down and then the two survivors go prone and disappear in the high grass.

He moves again and does the same with the next PEF. The other paratroopers are catching up him.

Suddenly, all the remaining German troops in the table are suppressed.

Then they start to close crawling hidden in the grass.

I think it is not worthy to fight them and wisely decide to leave the table. Game over.

The mission took eight game turns and two hours to play.
It was a tense and exiting game and I have to say that I don't remember having so much fun in a game in a long time, so long live to Nuts! and I'll see you again in two weeks.

6 comments:

  1. Sounds like a pretty good game! I've played a handful of solo WWII games using Ivans Five Men in Normandy Rules, but it sound like Nuts worked well creating uncertainty and tension.

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  2. I played both and Nuts! gives much more IMHO. Cheers,

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  3. I just started this campaign, playing this scenario twice today. Once co-op with a buddy and again solo to get a little more experience with the rules.

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    1. Did you like it? cause I had a lot of fun with this :)

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  4. Looks fun. I see your game was played several years ago. Still playing?

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    1. You can see the whole campaign played at my blog. I stopped a few months ago as I burned out a bit with THW rules after playing them so much and for so long. Cheers

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