IABSM AAR: For the Honour of France

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June 1941. A most unlikely conflict has broken out between two former Allies. Vichy French airfields in the Levant have been used by the Lufwaffe to support an uprising in Iraq, and Britain has decided that enough is enough. A task force has been assembled to move north into the Lebanon and Syria to take control of the area for the Free French and safeguard British oil supplies. Unexpectedly Vichy forces resist strongly, fighting for the honour of France.

That’s the introduction to the game of IABSM that Bevan and I played on Sunday evening. An unusual game featuring Australians versus French in the desert.

Click on the (big) picture, below, to see all:

 

LCVPs for the Pacific Theatre

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Regular readers will know that I recently painted up a company of Landing Vehicle, Tanks  (or Amtracks) as part of an attempt to satisfy a friend's craving for a bit of War in the Pacific action. Planning the game, I realised that I only had three Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP) to accompany the Amtracks into action, but had a box of another three buried somewhere in the lead mountain.  

I still had a whole week to go before the game (it was today:  cracking game, AAR on here tomorrow or Monday) so thought I could just about get them done in time. I'd already painted three, so another three should be relatively simple.

Well, yes, in theory, but I had, of course, forgotten that Battlefront aren't interested in the Pacific War any more, so have let the molds go to wrack and ruin whilst they concentrate on Team Yankee. Never have I seen do much flash on so few models in a box set...and whilst I can clean them up in an hour or so, it was still an hour of painting time wasted. 

Worse, one of the strips of infantry was missing: a real pain as there was no way I could get a replacement in time.

I know Battlefront are great and all that, and a huge part of my collection comes from them, but it's things like the above that make you just go "grrrrrr" and do everything you can to support their competition.

Anyhow, I cleaned up the figures, substituted spare truck-passenger figures for the missing strip (see if you can spot them!) and got the little craft done in time.

Lovely models but, please Battlefront, if you're going to go all "the Hobby" on us, get your basic quality control right first!

Amtracks for IABSM

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Last time I asked one of my regular gaming group what he fancied playing next time we got together, he said that he'd very much like to do an amphibious assault in the Pacific. That, at the time, was a bit of a "no can do, amigo", so we ended up getting as close to it as I could with the Gela game that you can read about here.

The request, however, stuck with me. I had Americans, I had Japanese...all I needed was an island and some of the specialist landing equipment that the Marines used.

As is so often the case, that great supermarket that is Salute provided all. I picked up a beachfront gaming mat and, at incredibly cheap prices, the Gator's Amtracks boxset and a box of another three American landing craft. With the promised game looming (next week) it was time to build and paint up the Amtracks.

When I first opened the box set, I was, to put it blankly, deeply impressed. The box contains seven hulls, and fourteen top decks, allowing you to build either the LVT A(1) version with the Stuart turret (37mm gun) or the LVT A(4) version with the HWC M8 turret (75mm gun)...with the two top decks being interchangeable meaning that you could field one to seven of each vehicle in any particular game. Now that, I thought, is a well thought out, good value offering: jolly well done Battlefront.

I still think that, but unfortunately have to give Battlefront full marks for the intention but a much, much lower score for the execution :(

Now I'm not a brilliant modeler, but I can build most 15mm kits, and can even drill and pin large walkers together so that they stand up unassisted. I have built a thousand tanks, quite a few buildings, a handful of aircraft, loads of sci-fi stuff...you name it...and I've built kits based on resin, metal, plastic, wood...you get the picture.

Could I get the top decks of these Amtracks to fit into the hulls? Could I bollocks, if you'll excuse the expression.

They just don't bloody fit. 

As I don't have some kind of rotary grinder thing (how careless of me!) I had to file and carve, and carve and file, and eventually just goddamn-well hammer the decks into place, with resultant cracked hulls, damaged tracks etc.

They just don't bloody fit, I say again!

I ended up abandoning my happy thoughts of having fourteen decks interchangeable on seven hulls, and knock together a platoon of three A(1)s, a platoon of three A(4)s and a command A(1). No interchanging: all firmly hammered/glued/green-stuffed into place.

Okay, so they look good, and I still have seven cracking vehicles, but I haven't got what I was offered, and I'm miffed. Anyway, buy at your own peril, and here's my finished tanks:

Oh, and the box doesn't come with any decals either: I had to find them all from spares...but I'm just being narky now!

IABSM Facebook Group

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For those of you who haven't spotted it yet, there's now a Facebook group devoted to I Ain't Been Shot, Mum. 

The group already has 200 members, so promises to be a good place to swap info, ask rules questions etc.

Click here to go there!

As an example of the sort of content that's on there, Paul Beccas has posted a short video report of his first game of IABSM, which you can also watch below...

It's also quite a good site on which to place mini-AAR, such as Sigur Skwarl's four pictures from his first game of IABSM, using the first scenario from the rulebook:

IABSM AAR: The Initiation of Dashwood-Brown

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The TFL Specials are a great source of inspiration and scenarios. Here, Charles Eckart plays through Mike Brian's scenario from the 2005 Summer Special: The Initiation of Dashwood-Brown.

It's Normandy, 1944. Suave ladies-man Captain Royston Dashwood-Brown and his men of 6th Dorsetshire Regiment are about to get their first taste of action on the battlefields of France.

Click on the map, below, to see how they did...

OML5: The After Action Report

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My chosen scenario for Operation Market Larden 2017 (the TFL games day held in Evesham each year) was scenario #06 from the Poland 1939 supplement, The September War: Wegierska Gorka.

Taking place between 2nd and 3rd September 1939, the battle for Węgierską Górką, or the “Hungarian Height”, took place near the Polish-Slovak border and was fought between Polish mountain troops and German infantry. The Polish position included a number of anti-tank bunkers overlooking the valley below, and was therefore of significant strategic importance.

Here are the two AARs from the day: one game in the morning, one game in the afternoon. Click on the pic for all. My thanks to Noddy, Ty, Bob and Vlad for making it a great day's gaming.

IABSM AAR: The Dunkirk Perimeter Given the Luther Treatment!

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Back in January 2015 I put together a quick game for the lads from Benson featuring a fictional action on the Dunkirk perimeter. Set, obviously, in 1940, some plucky British defenders attempt to hold back the German tide. Click here to see that AAR. 

Mark Luther read that battle report, and put on his own version of the game. Click on the picture below to see how it turned out:

IABSM AAR: Bashnya or Bust #5M: Near Bashnya

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Here's a cracking AAR from the Norseygamer blog: scenario #5M: Near Bashnya from the Bashnya or Bust! scenario pack.

The Germans have their backs against the wall: well, Bashnya's walls to be exact. Here they attempt to stop the Soviet advance one last time.

Click on the pic below to see all:

Another Modern AAR: Chetequera

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As people seemed to like yesterday's modern AAR, taken from Mark Kinsey's excellent blog Daddy's Little Men, here's another in the same vein.

This time, we go further back in time to Historicon 2010, where Mark and friends are running a game based on the battle of Chetequera: part of Operation Reindeer, which began on 4 May 1978, and was South Africa's second major military operation in Angola, carried out under the Apartheid regime. This phase of the South African operation consisted of an assault by 2 South African Infantry Battalion on two South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) base complexes, Chetequera and Dombondola, near to the then-South West Africa/Angola border.

Click on the pic below to see all: