Door to door. Nuts! Blood upon the Risers third scenario

Before sunrise, June 6th, 1944 - Fresville, France.
"Fresville? Damn, we are waaay too far north, smack in the middle of Jerryland".
"Still, maybe we should wipe out that Battalion HQ they told us about in the briefing before we head off..."
  
The objective in this mission is to search all buildings until I find and eliminate the command staff of the German 1058th Battalion, in less than 20 turns.
As I won the previous mission, there are no PEFs present on the table at the start of the game, but all buildings may contain German troops, and also some more may appear as reinforcements.

The first picture belongs to the second turn in which my paratroopers split in two squads, moving forward on both flanks, checking all the houses ASAP as well as looking for bundles in the field grass. The first house was empty.

The two following houses were also empty. I needed to score a 5+ on a D6 to find somebody in.

The fourth house was also empty, but two of my men found a bundle with some gammon grenades.

I kept them fast moving forward but all the houses were empty! I neither scored a seven in the activation dice so no enemy reinforcements could appear.

I looked in another field and found another bundle, but was as empty as all the houses in this damned village.

In the third field I finally found a .30 cal MG. Now I just needed to find some Jerries to shoot with it!

Turn six and still nothing. I was tempted to cheat myself and deploy some Germans, but I resisted.

On turn seven I had already checked all buildings except the last one, so I decided that the German HQ staff would be there. You can see in the picture below my three teams converging into it from three different points.

Finally! The Battalion staff, consisting of 3 officers Rep 5 with pistols, one officer Rep 4 with MP-40 and one NCO Rep 5 with MP-40.

In the following two activations Americans scored a six, so only the team in the centre with an officer Rep 6 with pistol, leading two paratroopers with M-1 Garand SA rifles, could activate.
Germans reacted and fired, but before ducking back all of them they could snap fire and kill the officer with SMG.

Two turns later, some paratroopers reached the two store house on the left and supported their comrades. In the exchange of fire one paratrooper with rifle and the German NCO with SMG died.

A second German officer went down by fire from the front house and the rest of the German ducked back, so my Star seeing the opportunity, moved from the right flank, reached the door and threw a hand grenade inside, but without effect. Then, the accompanying NCO with a Thompson entered and fired at the two surviving officers, putting them out of combat.

At the next turn all paratroopers could leave the table unmolested from two opposite exit points. The mission was successfully finished on turn 13. From all those 13 turns there was only one seven scored in the activations on each turn, which turned into German reinforcements, although no one came as they passed zero dice in the Enemy Activity Level roll, and after that scored a 2 in the reinforcement chart.

There could have been German soldiers in every house, and there could have been German reinforcements, even with tanks, a few times if the dice gods would have wanted. I expected a very hard mission to accomplish but in the end it turned into another walk in the park.

BTW, I forgot to roll three times in the American reinforcement chart for extra paratroopers at the beginning of the mission, so I played with fewer soldiers that I was supposed to.

SAGA: Goths vs. Romans

A good friend and nice person, one of those who want to have some fun and do not care about winning at all costs, visited me for a game, so we played SAGA after many months of neglecting it.

He told me he will be bringing Goths so I picked up Romans, though I do not like the Impetus thing on the battleboard, that in my opinion it only complicates things unnecessarily. We played at six points.

I forgot to take pictures until turn two, in which I declared "Barritus". First I charged in the centre with a unit of ten warriors to his twelve levies armed with bow who killed one of my mounted hearthguards on the first turn. I killed half of the unit.

Then I fired with my bows in the forest and killed one enemy hearthguard and then I charged them with my seven remaining mounted hearthguards, and killed all but one!

But he also killed most of my cavalry, so it was a mutual slaugther.

Miracously, one of my mounted hearthguard survived and could escape from retaliation, so I could keep that order die. After that, my warriors in the centre used "Plumbatae" and reduced the enemy levy to four men, and then my men fell back and formed with the rest of the army, waiting for the Goths to come at them.

My friend smashed his cavalry againt the Romans in the centre and lost them all but one. He also charged with his still untouched unit of warrios to mine on the hill, and lost most of his men. As we were running out of time we decided to stop here and concede victory to Romans.

 

All in all a pleasant morning that we expect to repeat soon, but this time playing Saxons vs Britons.

Hello, Operator? - Nuts! Blood upon the Risers 2nd scenario

Before dawn, June 6th, 1944 - Le Val, France.

"Hey Sarge, this here farmer says he can guide us to where there's a military telephone exchange. He says there are some soldiers billeted nearby, but they are still asleep. I bet if we knock that place out we can put a pretty big kink in the Kraut's call tree!"

My objective is to destroy the equipment within the telephone exchange (the long house on the left of the picture below) within 12 turns and escape off any table edge except along the road to Fresville, passed the long house.
There are two PEFs on the table marked with white dice. The half track is a proxy of a truck.

I rolled 2+1 times in the reinforcement table for destroying the Flak in the previous encounter and I got 1 officer with pistol, two NCOs with Thompson and carbine respectively and four soldiers with only two rifles. To this I added the three parachutists and my Star from the previous encounter.

I split them in three groups and fast moved towards the objective.

The ones are the back are without rifles and searching the high grass for any bundles. The group in the middle took the road whereas the one at the bottom struggled to cross the bocage.

Closing to the objective.

They found a bundle, but it only contained magazines for carbines and rifles but no weapons! So they only have one carbine and a few grenades.

The group in the road getting closer but stopping to wait for the others before being spotted by the enemy.

Once the rest caught up, they moved forward and resolved the PEF. It was half squad and they all fired first, but missed all their shots! 

The Airborne returned fire killing two of them and making another one ducked back and retrieved his leader who was seriously wounded.

In the next turn they advanced again and stunned the remaining Kraut first, and then capped him.

I left two men to guard the road for incoming PEFs from the houses.

The rest took the phone exchange without opposition.

The ones searching for weapons stayed hidden waiting for the other PEF to move in the open. When they finally did it after hearing the gunfire, they were caught in the open. My NCO killed their leader with his carbine and then the rest of the squad duck backed to the bocage from where they had come, but one of them could not cross it and got stuck on the wrong side.

In my turn I threw a grenade, killing the one outside and suppressing again the rest behind the bocage.

Then, seeing that another PEF from a nearby house was closing, I decided to leave the table.

The rest of my forces, after spending one turn shooting the equipment within the telephone exchange, also left the area.

My Star remained with one NCO for one more turn to try to find another bundle in the high grass but there was nothing.

I never scored a seven in the activations and German reinforcements did not appear immediately after the gunfire, so I had the opportunity to finish the scenario in six turns. It was a walk in the park.

1/72 IMEX Easy Company.

I have painted some reinforcements for Blood upon the Risers ongoing campaign for Nuts! from Two Hour Games.

They are all IMEX 1/72 hard plastic figures with sharp details and dynamic poses, except the AT gun that is from S-Models.

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.

Happy New Year!

Getting ready for the new year I have finished this unit of barbarians for Oathmark.
As the other first half, I just base-coloured, dipped and gave one light to them, for a fast rank-and-file tabletop level unit.

And now I'm off for the beach to swim and sunbathe, and get rid off this little hangover. 

May you all have a good and prosperous happy new year! 

 

Oggi, tunnel dweller, and some skinny neighbours

This post is to show my latest painted Dwarf who is joining Sven's group in the next episode, plus some enemies.

The Dwarf is from BTD and sculpted by Kevin Adams and the skeletons from Foundry.

I love these Dwarfs so full of character.

I went for a quick and easy painting in black and bone. After that, I splashed some diluted pigment on them to get that brown touch on bones.

Happy Christmas to you all, fellow wargamers!!!