Some great desert action from Tony Cane, as he and friends play the eleventh scenario from the Operation Compass scenario pack: Bardia/One.
The scenario covers one of the Australian assaults on the Italian-held town of Bardia as Compass turns from raid to army-beating campaign.
Click on the picture below to see what happens when you underestimate the opposition...
Another great battle report from the excellent blog of Sergeant Steiner.
Here, he and his friends play scenario #5M: Chemont from the Blenneville or Bust! scenario pack: involving a clash between Fallschirmjaeger and US armour.
My enjoyment comes as much from working out which BoB scenario the game is taken from as reading the report itself! Blenneville or Bust! is a pyramid campaign involving five levels, so there are thirty-one possibilities in all. There's no mention of the name of the village in the report, but only the village of Chemont has a layout like that shown in the picture below. That means it's one of #5B, #5F or #5M. Only #5M involves German Fallschirmjaegers, so scenario #5M it is!
Click on the pic below to see all:
Another great I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! AAR from Sergeant Steiner's marvellous blog, this time also supported by the comments of the Duc de Gobin, author of the epic Warfare in the Age of Cynics blog.
This time, The Sergeant and the Dice Demon, Steve, are playing one of the scenarios from the Bashnya or Bust! scenario pack for IABSM: scenario #4A Holm.
What's quite fun for me, as the author of Bashnya or Bust!, is working out which exact scenario they're playing from the photos. On this occasion, I knew it was Holm immediately (distinctive terrain!), but which one. Well the only one with that exact number of T-34/85s and that exact number of Panthers is 4A...so hopefully that's it!
Anyhow, click on the pic below to see all. Recommended...along with a quick visit to the two blogs this comes from as well. Excellent stuff.
As usual, I hope that neither of the gentleman mentioned above objects to me re-posting their text and pictures. It is genuinely intended as a way to spread awareness of both IABSM and their excellent blogs rather than anything else.
Another AAR taken from Sergeant Steiner's excellent blog.
Here, the game is taken from the Blenneville or Bust! scenario pack, specifically scenario #4G: Belle Maison.
Click on the picture below to see all:
Here's a slightly fuller battle report from the game of I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! that I played in the morning at Operation Market Larden yesterday.
Click on the picture below to see all:
One of the blogs I visit regularly is that of Sergeant Steiner. He plays a variety of different games, and always writes a good battle report.
Here's a game of I Ain't Been Shot, Mum that he played recently: a scenario set in Normandy as the Shermans hunt some StuGs.
Click on the pic below to see all:
Just written up an AAR from the game we played yesterday using scenario #45 from the second September War scenario pack: the battle of Piotrkow Trybunalski.
A big game covering the actions of 5th September 1939 as the Germans drive down from the Borowska Heights.
Each side fielded a company of infantry and tanks, with the game taking about 3½ hours.
Click on the pic below for more:
Another great battle report from Burt Minorrot's excellent Spanish-language blog Las Partidas de Burt. As I have said before, I hope he doesn't mind me reproducing it here.
Here, in a game dating back to 2014, Burt and friends fight a battle on the eastern front: a Soviet column advances against hidden German opposition.
Click on the pic for more:
A nice little battle report posted on the IABSM Facebook page by Desmondo Darkin.
Club night down at the South London Warlords, and the Germans are trying to take back to bridges from British Paras.
Click on the pic below to see all...
Vaggelis Miliarakis recently added a number of photographs of a 1/160 game of IABSM using the first Bashnya or Bust scenario to the IABSM Hellas (Greece) Facebook group.
Click on the pic below to see all:
A bit of a shameless plug, but here are some of the comments made around the web about my latest work: the Blitzkrieg in the West: Germany handbook for IABSM, published Thursday 10th May:
John Ewing:
"An awesome piece of work. The level of detail is incredible."
Charles Eckart:
"Turned on computer a couple of hours ago. Went to TFL website immediately looking for Blitz-Germany. Only time for a quick scan through: outstanding!
"IABSM was my first Lard rules (still a favorite) and all four Blitz books provide the best single sources of information for 1940 I know of. Useful in many ways, thanks for your work."
Benito Marisa:
"I have bought the four books and they [are] the best thing since sliced bread. Not a player of IABSM myself but the detail and depth of the information is so good that can be used for any other set of rules or just for reference. Excellent job, congratulations."
Desmondo Darkin:
"Looks superb"
Derek Hodge (chief proof-reader of the handbook):
"I've had a head start on the reading this as I helped Robert with the proofreading and I can say that he's put a huge amount of work into it. I had no idea that German OOBs in 1940 were so varied.
"The whole Blitzkreig in the West series is an absolutely fantastic resource for any wargamer interested in the 1940 campaign. You can use the lists in the pdfs to build OOBs at any level from company to division.
"And the lists are also useful if you're playing a platoon level game such as Chain of Command as they enable you to see exactly where all the various support options come from. This is invaluable if you're trying to build support lists limited to what was historically available to any specific infantry platoon."
Nick Skinner (co-author of IABSM):
"More superb work from Mr Avery. Can't recommend it highly enough. Even if you do not game IABSM the unit information is astounding."
Blitzkrieg in the West: Germany is the fourth in my series of early war handbooks for I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum. The handbook is a massive 185 pages long (over double the size of either the French, BEF or Low Countries books) and covers the whole of the German army that invaded France and the Low Countries on 10th May 1940, seventy-eight years ago today.
The book begins with the humble infantry: not one, homogenous, grey-clad mass, but actually eleven different types of infantry division, each with their own set of core and support troops.
Next, after a quick look at the infantry that doesn't fit into the above (e.g. the Gebirgsjaeger), the book moves on to the ten panzer divisions: with each panzer division given its own section and set of lists. There are, for example, five different lists that relate to 9th Panzer Division alone.
After the Panzertruppen, the book covers the cavalry, the SS and the army level support troops (that's where you'll find the StuGs!) before finishing off with the Fallschirmjaegers and Air Landing troops that dropped into Belgium and the Netherlands. Finally, we have the usual ratings and armoury sections, and a note on air support.
Although designed for IABSM, Blitzkrieg in the West: Germany contains a vast amount of information useful to gamers of other systems, and is really a must-buy for anyone interested in the early war period.
Available now from the TooFatLardies website, we've kept the price at £8.40: the same as the other three handbooks, despite its much larger pagination. That should make the set of four books - France, the BEF, the Low Countries, Germany - absolutely affordable for all.
First time IABSM player Thomas Sloan decided to start with scenario #2B; Sorok from the Bashnya or Bust! scenario pack.
An advance party of Germans have to clear some Soviets out of the path of their advancing column. Find out whether they do by clicking on the pic, below:
Just to give my latest handbook for I Ain't Been Shot, Mum a little pre-publicity, I got the cover through from Rich today.
The handbook will be available from the TooFatLardies website on May 10th (next Thursday) and weighs in at over 180 pages!
The good news is that despite its huge size (over twice as big as the other handbooks in the series) we're not making it more expensive than the other books: it will be the same price as the French, the BEF and the Dutch/Belgians.
The handbook will cover the German army that invaded France and the Low Countries in May 1940. It will contain lists for each of the ten different types of infantry division, each of the ten different Panzer Divisions, the cavalry, the SS, the Fallies, the army troops...you name it, it's in there!
A great after action report from Iain Fuller from his excellent Tracks and Threads blog.
A new wargaming shed is christened as Iain and friends lead a force of Canadians against the Germans in Normandy.
Click on the pic below to read all:
Tony Cane has been working his way through the Operation Compass scenario pack for I Ain't Been Shot, Mum. His last post featured the tank battle at Mechili, this one covers the Australian attack on the Italian aerodrome at Siret el Chrieba.
Here, the Australians are faced by a huge expanse of open ground (“flat as a table and devoid of cover” as the official history puts it) dotted with the occasional hanger or building. Their target is to take the hangar and buildings on the other side of the open ground.
Click on the picture below to see how they do...
Loving the aircraft hanger and the dust-covered Blinds!
James Mantos posted a few photos of his latest game of I Ain't Been Shot, Mum onto the IABSM Facebook page.
It's action on the eastern front: click on the pic below to see all:
You can also check out James' blog here.
Ton Cane and friends recently fought the Mechili scenario from the Operation Compass pack using 10mm miniatures.
The game is a tank-vs-tank battle, with the Italians actually attacking for a change.
Click on the picture below to see how the game went:
It's been far too long since we saw one of Mark Luther's amazing 6mm IABSM after action reports...but I'm pleased to be able to say that the drought is over.
Mark played one of my scenarios - Wave Goodbye - taken from the 2011 TFL Summer Special: a French armor counterattack is hitting the flank of a German panzer column in an area east of the Ardennes in May 1940.
Click on the pic below to see all:
A very quick battle report from James Manto, taken from the IABSM Facebook Group.
Here, James gets a chance to get all his lovely new Soviet stuff onto the tabletop for the first time.
Click on the pic below to see all.
Vis Lardica is a website devoted to wargaming and military history, with a special emphasis on the company-sized rulesets produced by the TooFatLardies: I Ain't Been Shot Mum (WW2); Charlie Don't Surf (Vietnam); and Quadrant 13 (science fiction). There’s also a lot of content devoted to To The Strongest (Ancients/Medievals) and For King & Parliament (17th Century).
Welcome to Vis Lardica, a not-for-profit website mostly dedicated to the company-sized wargaming rules produced by the TooFatLardies, but encompassing my other gaming interests as well.
If you need to contact me, you can do so at:
vislardica@gmail.com
If you have enjoyed visiting this site, please add a link to it on your own wargaming blog: www.vislardica.com.
