IABSM AAR: Storming the Starmerskaya

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This weekend coming up I’m off to Evesham for the annual Operation Market Larden event: a cornucopia of Lard now in its 12th year. I’ve been to every OML so far, and had a whale of time on every occasion.

This year I’m playing Sharp Practice in the morning and I Ain’t Been Shot Mum in the afternoon, so it was with great pleasure that I saw that Phil & Jenny Turner have been playtesting the game in preparation. Click on the picture below to see pictures of that playtest…can’t wait!

 

IABSM AAR: The September War #01: Chojnice

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Here’s a battle repot from a game of I Ain’t Been Shot Mum played in March.

It’s set on the first day of the second world war and involves advancing Germans trying to stop Polish engineers blowing a vital railway bridge so that they can bring up their armoured train.

Click on the picture below to see all:

WW2 AAR: Undaunted Normandy

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Friend Neil suggested we play a game I hadn’t encountered before: Undaunted Normandy.

Undaunted Normandy from Osprey

Published by Osprey, this is a board game where the playing surface is constructed of different tiles showing terrain that are put together in different combinations in order to represent different battlefields. Specially printed cards are then used to generate the force you will use, represented by counters on the tiles, with a significant part of the game being resource allocation. Dice are then used to determine movement and combat, with different squads (Recon, Rifle, MMG etc) having different attributes.

By adding 6mm figures and terrain, Neil had rather brilliantly converted the 2D printed tiles and counters into 3D pieces that looked more like a wargame than a board game:

From 2D to 3D: how gooD is that!

We played one of the starter scenarios involving the Germans counter-attacking an American advance. The mechanics are easy to pick up, and before long I was playing without really having to ask any questions.

As noted above, combat is determined by rolling dice, and as I have vast numbers of various-sided dice and couldn’t be bothered with passing things backwards and forwards between Neil and myself, I asked him what sort of dice were used and how many you needed. Four 8-sided dice, he replied: so off I went to my storage bucket of dice and found four eight-sided dice.

We began the game, and it was only after a few turns that I realised that it’s actually four 10-sided dice that are used in the game: it being quite hard to get a ‘10’ on an eight-sided dice when Neil said that that was what I needed to roll!

Most amusing, especially as I can now claim that that was the only reason I lost the game rather than the real reason that Neil outmanoeuvred me!

How many sides on those dice? Does the man have no shame!

I enjoyed the game: not something I would necessarily want to play all the time - my bent is for large, multi-figure, tabletop games - but I can see the appeal, and it does fit into a very small area. It’s the sort of game you could take on holiday, provided you could fit the stuff in the car!

There’s a much better review of the game here: https://www.wargamer.com/undaunted-normandy/review and I’d certainly recommend having a read and giving the game a go if you get the chance.

IABSM AAR: Where the hell have you boys been? #19: Pouppeville

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Great little battle report from Andy Cowell originally posted on the I Ain’t Been Shot Mum Facebook Group.

The AAR uses scenario #19 from the Where the hell have you been boys? pack: Clearing Exit One if you’re the Americans or, if you’re the Germans, Blocking the Exit.

Click on the picture below to see all:

IABSM AAR: Defence of Calais scenario

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Here’s a pictorial battle report from the camera of Michael Curtis and Mercian Miniatures coveing a recent Defence of Calais scenario played out using I Ain’t Been Shot Mum.

This looked to be a truly spectacular game, and the pictures are wonderful.

Click on the photo below to see all:

IABSM AAR: Normandy in Knoxville, Tennessee

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Andy Cowell ran a Normandy game of I Ain’t Been Shot Mum at a couple of events recently.

The first run-through was at a Knoxville, Tennessee fundraiser for the American Red Cross to raise money for Hurricane Helene relief as part of the Knoxville Blood Bowl League (KNOBBL).

In the game, US Airborne troops are assaulting a small village amongst the Normandy hedgerows.

Andy then ran the game again as part of the East Tennessee Miniature Wargaming games day, also in Knoxville.

The game was scaled up a bit for a larger table: a full company of Airborne with a platoon of Shermans assaulting a village crossroads held by a Germany company with PaK 38s and an 8cm mortar battery.

IABSM at The Other Partisan

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I didn’t get to The Other Partisan this year: real life getting in the way of wargaiming again!

A pity, as there look to have been many excellent games on display including those in the now usual Lard Zone.

Featured below are photographs from Michael Curtis from the I Ain’t Been Shot Mum Facebook Group of the superb 28mm Gold Beach, King Sector, 6th June 1944 game.

IABSM AAR: Somewhere in Normandy

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Here are some great pictures from a game of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum played in 20mm by Mercian Miniatures, taken from the IABSM Facebook Group.

IABSM at OML10

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My afternoon game at Operation Market Larden X was Phil & Jenny’s excellent Throw Them Back scenario for I Ain’t Been Shot Mum.

This involved a German counterattack on one of the Normandy beaches just after D-Day, with my instructions being, as one of the German players, to get a significant force “onto the sand”.

This turned out to be a cracking encounter with exciting action right from the start.

Click on the picture, below, to see all:

And thanks, as ever, to Adrian and team for organising such a great event overall.