Friday Night Game - WWII 20mm using Iron Cross

 As promised, four of us met at Julian's after work for a reprise of this ruleset that we previously played a couple of times maybe two years ago. Here is a quick run down on how the rules work, found on the web:

"The core of the rules rests on its activation system. Each player gets command tokens (CTs) at a rate of  one per unit, plus two more if the commander is still active. You spend these by activating individual units; you can activate the same unit more than once, and interrupt the opposing player, so the initiative flows between the two sides. Once all the CTs are gone, you reset for a new turn. First the downsides. It isn’t intuitive and takes getting used to. Just what is this process of CTs representing? You move some units several times and leave others untouched. Coordinated multiple unit actions are hard. A second issue is that it is serial; you move one unit at a time. Never mind, what it does do is produce a very absorbing game which involves both sides throughout.  It is this aspect that drives the rules’ popularity. Otherwise the rules proved quite easy to pick up."

I would agree with most of this - which is why I re used it verbatim!

Firstly, every time I have turned into the road that leads to Julian's house, I have been struck by what a stunning view it is - so I finally parked (silver CX5 on the left) and took a picture!  Julian lives in the adjacent street - left turn just in front of my parked car.

Right, on to the game! It was a scratch scenario based very loosely on the Falaise Gap in 1944. How "loosely" was pointed out to us by Rick when he arrived, as he had spent quite a bit of time in the area in 1997 and said it looks nothing like this!

Anyway, the two German forces, commanded by Rick and Julian, had to extricate themselves by crossing the table lengthwise, whilst fighting off the British (me) and Americans (Chris) Each player had three AFV's and the Allies had a towed AT gun each. We also had four groups of 5 infantrymen plus HMG, mortar and PIAT. The total Command Tokens (CT's) was 22 for the Allies and 18 for the Germans.

My British Infantry - so called 20mm by Valiant Miniatures - they are really nice hard plastic figures that I enjoyed painting, but they are not 20mm!

Armourfast Cromwell tank and the various support weapons

Ricks Puma led the way, moving at high speed down the road before veering to the left, towards my force.(yellow marker indicates one CT used)

One part of these rules I like is that the non active player can attempt to interrupt - by rolling a three or better I think. Chris interrupted Ricks move and took a long range shot with one of his three Shermans

This is somewhat later in the game (I obviously didn't take as many pics as usual!) when I had deployed my 6lb AT gun in a wood ahead of the advancing Germans

Chris had taken out the Puma - Julian could not easily locate his box of smoke so we just tipped destroyed vehicles onto their side! Meanwhile, Rick moved up his Panther and Mk IV

Another of Chris's Shermans moves up

Ricks Mk IV had lined up a shot on one of my Cromwells - with a front armour of 13 and the Mk IV gun value of 9, he only needed to roll 5 on a D10 to hit - he rolled 5....BUT then we realised because his tank had moved, he needed a 6 - phew. In reply, my gun 8 Cromwell fired at his front armour 14 MK IV, needing a 6 on D10 - result above. Then, I rolled D6 for effect - guess what a 6 means.....!

A knocked out Mark IV, that's what! Additionally, any German unit within 6" had to take a morale marker (red)

Meanwhile, over in Julian and Chris's area of combat, Julian rolled forward with the almost unbeatable Panther, blazing away at a standard Sherman. The Sherman attempted to interrupt, but failed, adding a CT. The Panther fired, hit,  rolled a 2 for effect and caused two morale hits. Julian played another CT, passed the activation test, and the exact same sequence occurred. The Sherman now had one CT and 4 morale points - one more morale and it would be gone burger! Of course, Julian gave it a go. With nothing to lose, Chris once again attempted to interrupt, needing a 6 - he got it! He then fired, needing an 9 or 10 on a D10 - he got a 9! Then, he rolled a 6 for the effect and the mighty Panther was a smoking wreck....oh, how we laughed!

The heroic Sherman

General view of the game as it came to a close - the Germans had hardly managed to get off their base line and were a LONG wat from escaping the Allied envelopment

Two of Ricks AFVs burn merrily whilst the Panther had been hit in the flank by one of my Cromwell's and had maximum morale points on it. In the background, some of Ricks infantry had also taken a pasting from my infantry in the adjacent woods

Chris, meanwhile, had taken out Julian's Mark IV!

A couple of close ups of the Valiant (in both meanings of the description) British infantry

After a couple of years, it took us a few moves to get back into the swing of the rules, but they are pretty simple to get to grips with. I quite like the CT's and it was fun to use a bit of strategy, where Chris and I would use one or two CT than hand initiative back to the Germans, forcing them to use theirs up. As we had 6 more overall, this meant we often had several moves that they could not react to at the end of the turn! I think on the last move, because the Germans had lost about 6 CT due to the destruction of most of their armour, they ran out and between us Chris and I still had 14 CT''s left - I know I had 8!

We all agreed the 20mm figures and vehicles looked great and Chris has been inspired to look at getting a force of AB 20mm figures from Eureka in Oz, which is where most of Julian's force came from. I have one box each of Valiant Germans and Brits, as well as Plastic Soldier Co Russians (because Valiant didn't make them, for some reason) I also have a few tanks and vehicles, and Julian has considerably more, so we certainly have all we need, although I might get a pair of Armourfast Sherman Fireflies to try and balance up the armour a bit (having said that, we did fine in this game with standard 75mm Shermans and Cromwells!)

Lots of fun and I am sure we will be playing these rules again soon!