Tank and Infantry Battle on St James Road, Battleground Show and other stuff

Keeping fairly busy this week and the hobby mojo remains pretty high. As some of you will know I was a child of the ‘Featherstone’ era and his Wargames book has significantly influenced me as a child and ever since. As my 15mm collection has grown I realised I had enough to recreate his Battle on the St James Road from his original book. 

For those not aware this is the opening shot of the battle report, airfix figures and a mix of homemade tanks. I spent many hours looking at these pictures as a child, nice to see WW2 described as modern.

But this is not an exact replay, firstly I have Americans rather than British and our ruleset of choice would be Bolt action. The table is slightly larger and I reduced the forces slightly to ensure the game didn’t last over 4 hours ! However, it is close enough for me and brings me great pleasure.

The Americans dug in on Copse Hill and around red farm.

The Germans arrive across the embankment, past the plantation, but one of their transports are hit immediately causing the occupants to jump out

Panzers advance straight towards red farm, with infantry disembarking at the base of the hill

Long range fire from the rear by the plantation

The Americans lost a Sherman early on to an advancing Panzer behind copse hill

As they break through the barbed wire the tanks duel at close range but ineffectually

American infantry reserves push forward to block the gap ?

Germans transports are hit and burning, but the Americans have been unable to knock out any of the panzers

Eventually the Germans break through to St James Road, two of the American Sherman’s are burning 

…and the infantry on Copse hill have been outflanked. Time for the Americans to pull out and a victory to the Herman Goering Panzer Grenadiers. A really fun battle with a different outcome to the original but that is no bad thing.

On to Battleground Show, busiest that I can remember, so much so that I didn’t get a chance to look at any other games, or visit the bring and buy (probably saved some money then)

The Whitstable Harbour setup in situ at the show. All the games of which I think there were six were very enjoyable creating a good amount of fun and entertainment, everybody seemed to enjoy themselves.

I managed just one close up shot during the day ! The feedback was incredibly positive and I spent a lot of time between games talking to people genuinely interested in the game, the setup and of course the U-boat. Thanks to all those who took the time to play or just catch up.

I did purchase a couple of things, mainly french heavy cavalry. Having collected a couple of free Scottish epic sprues. I pick up another for 50p. Then Leon ran a raffle and I won the pike and shotte epic Scottish Battlion box set, wow from no where I have a Scottish Covenanter army. I’ll paint a block up to see what they are like 😀

When I got home I packed away the game and was looking for a location to store the Kreigsmarine and found a space in the ‘mixed’ German box along side these. Keith I took the photo just for you 👍

A couple of bits of painting, although most of my time has been planning up and coming battles.

Passing through town I popped into the secondhand bookshop and found these two books

Aly you will be proud of me 

That’s it for now couple of games coming up and hopefully a first run out for the peninsular collection 🤞

Thanks as always

Matt 😀

British Foot Guards and Kreigsmarine

Spent a bit of time this week tidying up the harbour battle for Battleground tomorrow and checking the setup arrangements. There always seems to be a few extra bits to finish off. Anyway that is done now and ready for travelling in the morning.

1st Regiment of Foot Guards, warlord figures with some of their extra command figures from the older boxes

The Kreigsmarine squad, again Warlord figures for my show game, very characterful set.

My U boat crew, Empress figures

Thought I would share the salvaged french from the recent Lead pile donation, these are the Polish 

French

And more french nearly all are Elite miniatures although a few of the command figures are unidentified

A final shot of the game for tomorrow with the figures in place etc…

Thanks as always for checking by

Matt 😀

Battleground Show and lots of other stuff from last week 😀

It has been a busy week, 1 funeral, 1 reunion and two games so this is a mixed bag to catch up on the blog. First up a plug for the Battleground Show which is next Saturday.

For several years I have put on a small participation game, this year I wanted to make use of the recently painted Uboat as part of my Operation Sealion campaign. A few final touches to the setup are needed this week.

But here is the basic layout, the Germans are looking to capture a number of objectives around the harbour, the game itself will be very simple. Anybody at the show or in the area come over and play or just say hello 👍

Last week saw a return to Middle Earth for a battle

As a ‘pick up’ game two equal forces charged onto the table

“They have a troll” !

Warg riders face off against Gondorian infantry who form into a shield wall

After several turns of combat the ‘evil’ forces of Sauron get the better of it and the dark rider charges into finish of the Gondor scouts.

….then dash it Eomer charges in from behind rolls some lucky dice and the evil shade is despatched to the underworld fun all the same 😀

I’ve been in London for a couple of days catching up with some friends..…I found time for some research into possible future projects at the British museum ?

By chance the trip also coincided with an temporary exhibition at the British library on the history of Fantasy literature sponsored as it happens by Wayland Games

A whole mixed bag of stuff and this is just a few snaps as I walked round, above an original by Alan Lee….hard not to be inspired by his artwork

A Warhammer battle found its way into the exhibition

A first addition of the Hobbit

Links back to classical literature, here the Iliad 

and a copy of Beowulf , lots of their stuff so if you are stuck in London with an hour to spend worth a look.

Following our last SYW battle Martin and I decided to see how a non-historical SYW campaign might work, i won’t go into the details here as we are still developing the mechanics but after developing a hex based map and a exchanging a number of moves two of our armies clashed

We then played out the battle this weekend

The battlefield turned out to be rolling hills with the four villages as objectives, the Prussians are advancing across the table looking to capture the bridge in the village in the distance.

Using Honours of war we rolled for a our generals abilities and a flurry of 6’s meant pretty much all of the Austrians and two of the Prussian brigades would be hot headed and dashing. Unfortunately for the Prussians this effected them badly. Having set up anchoring their left flank in the village they were forced to charge out towards the Austrians !

Lucky they have cavalry support, across the rest of the battlefield musket fire  rings out

The Austrians decided to advance 

They focus on the Prussian  centre where a worrying gap develops ?

At the other end of the battlefield the Prussians have at least made it to the objective, must now they must hold it

This they do for several turns, but support is slow in arriving

Austrian cavalry being pushed back

But at least the Prussians can hold their line of retreat. In the end the ‘dashing’ Prussians in the objective village on the river chose to charge out, suffering badly from their foolhardy assault their brigade collapsed, this gave the Prussians no option but to withdraw and the Austrians a minor victory. A very fun battle right up to the point the Prussians charged out of their stronghold ! We are tweeting the campaign rules but planning another battle soon.

Much discussion about lead piles recently lucky I’m not counting ! Martin dropped these unwanted figures off for me to sort and accommodate into my Napoleonic project. Mainly elite miniatures, so older sculpts but I am interested to see how they paint up. Out of this pile I have managed to salvage three infantry battalions, one being a small Polish Regiment and some British light cavalry although they need horses. Several other command figures etc. they was also a Foundry battalion of french although they really are too small to use in my collection, so I’ll need to move them on. If anybody collects Foundry Napoleonics let me know.

The bag weighed a lot !

My plastics volcano has also grown this week by the kind donation of some Epic Scottish pike blogs. These were the ‘free’ sprues which came with WI magazine kindly donanted to my force by David 

And some painting, running along side my British Napoleonics which just need basing I have also painted up another unit of Late Romans. Very simple scheme and some old shield transfers which don’t look too bad from a distance.

That’s it for now, I have some more prep work planned for this week before the Battleground Show and should have some British Guards to share when I have painted the bases on them.

Thanks for checking in 👍

Matt