Down on the farm

 Yesterday the Cold War Commanders convened in the village of Stone in Staffordshire. Our esteemed colleague Richard Phillips has set up a splendid gaming venue in a unit set in a converted barn, imaginatively named The Unit!

As can be seen, there's plenty of space! I'm not sure of the actual dimensions of the table, perhaps 20 foot x 6 foot. More than enough elbow room for 10 of us to fight out in comfort.

In contrast to the usual massed tank battle, the scenario saw a thin NATO forward screen of 5 roughly battalion sized commands fighting a delaying action against the advancing Soviet hordes. 5 Motor Rifle Regiments of them in fact! Our task was to stop them advancing past the Elbe Lateral Kanal, represented by the NATO table edge (apart from a section of canal on our left flank). My force consisted of the West German 3 Recce Battalion, backed up by a company of Leopard 2s, a battery of 155mm artillery and 2 BO105 attack helicopters.

Here my 2 companies of Leopard 1s move forward to take up position in the woods.

I don't have too many action shots of the game. My opponent, Ian, deployed a tank battalion on to the table as the vanguard of his main force. The rest of his troops arrived behind a shallow river. That plus Ian's ability to repeatedly roll 10s and 11s with every attempted command roll pretty much did my job for me.

In the top right of this photo, in the open valley, Ian's T72 battalion came off second best in a firefight against my Leopard 2s and BO105s.

By 4.30pm Ian had started to untangle the omnishambles of his deployment zone and advance forward. On my left flank Andy C's BAOR seemed to be holding their own against Mark J's East Germans. Further off to the left flank however Mark F's Dutch had succumbed to the increasing pressure from Richard C's red tide and the general retreat was signalled.

We managed 4 or 5 turns before pulling back so probably not enough to call it a NATO win. Still, it was a grand day of gaming and it's always a good day when I meet up with the chaps again. It was particularly nice to see Alan and Roger as this was the first time we've met up since Grimsby 2018.

I don't have long to wait until the next meet up as a group of us will be putting on a participation game at Joy of Six in Sheffield next week.

If anyone is attending then come and say hi!