Its been too long since my last post, time to try and get back on track.

January 2018

My first taste of Iron Cross
A Desert war game put on at the club (Manchester area Wargames)

I took the British and Bob the German. Really enjoyed my first game and have since bought the rules and a couple of my own armies, but more another day.

All figures are 1/72 (20mm) of various makes.

British won the day by seizing the most buildings.

On the same night my son Mark started his DofE Silver Skills by playing/painting 40k

Some pics of his games against his assessor and the club president.

And finally for January we played a game of Check Your 6, this was another one of sets of rules and figures purchased a while ago. Played a participation game at Triples 2011, the game was Vietnam war and you got a model of what you shot down. I downed a B-52 but that was a big too big to give away. I got the rules and some planes from same show. 7 years later we had a game.

Wargame Shows - Phalanx 2017
June, St.Helens

I organized the demo for our club this year so decided on the War 1812 in America.

This is a conflict I've always wanted to do and gave me an excuse to collect and paint the figures.

The battle I choose was a small one from the Niagara campaign ans was featured in Wargames Illustrated.

Battle of Cryslers farm was the battle - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Crysler%27s_Farm

There was only about 8 units a side, with the Americans suffering all day with poor command rolls, whilst the British had the dice on their side.

The battle went well and looked good on the day, with a overwhelming British victory.

Iron Cross
I have been introduced to Iron Cross, a good set of WW2 large-ish scale rules.

It is simple to learn be subtleties in the command structure make it hard to master.
Command tokens are given out 1 per unit, but 1 unit can use multiple. It is harder to activate a unit the more command tokens are allocated to it. Also as morale counters are gained from enemy activity, it gets harder to use units. The  tokens can also be used by non active units to react to enemy movement and shooting, but this is harder to do an dalso burns your counters.

Command starts with initiative player, but he can "pass" the activation to the other player any time. This can be crucial as a good tactic can be to get the opponent to use all their tokens and leave a player a free move to activate with out reaction.

Game 1 - WW2 Allies v Germans in the Ardennes, winter 1944.

4 BUA to be captured, ended in a draw.

Game 2 - Vietnam, Australians v NVA

Lee a member at our club has been tinkering with Iron Cross and adapting to different periods, first being the Vietnam war.

The Aussies hekd a village and were expecting reinforcements. The NVA were about to attack.

My command were tasked with taking the village and neither NVA force could cross thr river until there opponents were routed.

My mortars and MG's proved effective as did the Jack with the Aussies first attempt at A/T fire. However with tanks reinforcements the NVA were soon into the village and had 50% by the end, not enough for a win, 1 more turn would have claimed the empty buildings and the depleted units in the occupied ones.

One the other side, Steve with the NVA against Bob ambushed them allies and the big untouchable tank of Bob's hid behind an ambulance, Eventually the relief column was routed and by the end NVA were pouring over the bridge

Campaign Game

24th April 2017 saw another campaign game.
This time I was asked to command the Spanish.

In this battle I wish I'd read the objectives properly. We were tasked with holding ALL buildings, however i assumed we had to hold the town and stop the French from crossing the river.

All the Spanish had to do to win the game was stay in the buildings, so we lost the game.

Battle was good, and the Spanish held up quite well.

Deployment -

The main Spanish deployment was around the town including across the river, with cavalry protecting the flanks.
The French also concentrated in the centre with some flanking forces looking for fords, which they found and poured across.

These flanking force overwhelmed the Spanish and along with the centre attacks the Spanish were defeated.