Lard Magazine 2020 is out!

 

 

As usual just before Christmas, TooFatLardies has just released today its Annual Lard Magazine. This is HUGE 180 tome of scnearios, special rules, army lists, etc, covering a broad range of rules sets from this publisher, as well as some other very useful wargaming-related materials. 

 

 

At an unbeatable price of GPB5.5 (equivalent to 1 pint of beer in the UK and around three beers if you live in Spain), you cannot miss it.

 

 

TooFatLardies Xmas Special Out!

When do you know that Christmas is around the corner' When TooFatLardies issues its bi-annual Special magazine. This year is even better for two reasons: you have 126 pages of content and (more important) includes our Spanish Civil War campaign for Chain of Command!!... and all this stuff at the princely sum of 6 bucks!!

Jokes aside, the issue this year is spectacular, with wide variety of articles covering most of the popular TFL rule sets (CoC, IABSM, Dux, Sharp Practice). And some important headline news: the main project for 2015 is a Coc ultra-modern covering the most recent conflicts in the War Against Terrorism. Clearly not a favourite period of mine at all... but I also said the same about Vietnam, until Charlie Don't Surf convinced me about the contrary.

Among the articles, two very interesting variants:  WWI  with Chain of Command; and cowboys vs Indians with Sharp Practice

See the full content below:

TFL Summer Special Available

Probably you know already (I've been travelling these days, so I'm arriving late to the party) but the biannual TFL Special (summer issue) is now available to buy at the unbeatable price of GBP 6!!

This year's content is one of the best I've seen and if you (like me) are a CoC fan, it is calling you loud indeed:

•  Introduction. Nick says hello.

• Westwind. A complete Chain of Command mini-campaign set in East Prussia 1945
   
• Seven Spears. A truly magical conversion for using Samurai with Dux Britanniarum.
   
• Do Some Dinging C Company. A Charlie Don’t Surf scenario from Operation Colorado in 1966.
   
• Robin Hood’s Black Gold Home Guard versus Fallschirmjager mini campaign for Chain of Command based on original defence plans for Nottinghamshire.
   
• The Siege of Augusta. A multi-player scenario for Sharp Practice in the American War of Independence.
   
• Big CoC in Africa. A fantastic report of a post-colonial Africa adaptation for Chain of Command which has been impressing the Australian show circuit.
   
• Carribean Broadsides. A squadron action for Kiss Me Hardy.
   

Closing with the Enemy: Book review

Michael Doubler: Closing With the Enemy: How Gis Fought the War in Europe 1941-45, University Press of Kansas (1994)

I got interested in this book after reading a review in one of the blogs I regularly follow (unfortunately cannot remember who did it: if you happen to read this, please stand up to give you the full credit).

As it can be inferred from the title, this book deals with the tactical approach of the US Army in the European campaign, mostly focused  around the battalion and company organisational levels, although making frequent deep dives into smaller unit actions.

The author attempts to dispel  the popular belief that US won the war thanks to overwhelming material and human resource, fighting along the lines provided by the field manuals and allergic to introduce any tactical innovation in the way of conducting the operations.

“Totally the opposite” writes Col. Michael Doubler. He founds an army that tore into pieces the tactical notions learnt in the training camp as soon as the first GI put his feet in North Africa, marking the beginning of its involvement in the European Theatre of Operations (ETO). He also describes an army not only geared to innovation as requested by the tactical situation at each moment, but who also spread the tactical lessons learned with gusto and high efficiency across all levels of the army organisation, having produced in the 10 months running to VE day a staggering 1.500 documents of tactical value.

Italians in Russia: The Forgotten Army

Fellow blogger and wargamer Chris Stoesen from Wargamer's Odds and Ends has publised a few days ago a scenario book called "In the Name of Roma" covering in 30 scenarios and 6 campaigns the trip to hell of the 80º Infantry Roma Regiment of the Pasubio Division, part of the Italian Corps in Russia (CSIR).

So, what? Well, I've been following with growing interest Chris' progress of the booklet through his blogs posts but on Saturday night I had the opportunity to start reading the 200+ pages of the final work... and could not stop until finished. I was confronted by one of the most fascinating and dramatic  war stories that I've read since a long time ago: from the story of the first killed in action to the desperate fights in December 1941 surrounded by overwhelming Russian forces.

The background of the Italian involvement in the Eastern Front is the desire of Moussilini to have a share in the spoils of a sure victory against the Soviet Union in 1941. Without regards for the lack of training, supplies or material to sustain a likely long campaign, he organised and sent  a corps of over 59,000 men along with other allies of the German Army. Note that at its height there were close to 235,000 Italians fighting in the Eastern Front, of which over 65,000 were reported killed (including prisiones in Soviet camps) and many more thousands were reported MIAs.

Resume Normal Programming

End of the summer hiatus and back to normal (or at least trying to!).

On balance a very relaxing holiday with an unexpected nice 1-day tour to the medieval walled city of Avila, lots of reading (mainly Spanish Civil War related), some interesting gastronomic findings (of which more at a later post) and some good progress in my painting plans:

• 4 x '42-43 Hanomags, 
• 1 x 250 command vehicle, 
• 1 late-war Skfz 234 (all 1/72 scale) for IABSM 
• And a Vietnamese HMG team in 28mm for Vietnam.
• All this in addition to some more tracks (curves and crossings) for my road project.

No photos?  Unfortunately not, as I left the camera at the holidays place but plans to pick it up this weekend.

Other wargaming related news: I received my tablet version of Chain of Command on Thursday last week and the full bundle (hardcopy book + resin jump-off points + game tokens) were waiting for me at home yesterday on my arrival.

If the tablet version was excellent, I must say that the hardcopy version broke all my expectations! The edition is wonderful with very high quality paper, excellent photos along the book and a mnost elegant layout. I've already booked a first introductory game in my club for tomorrow afternoon, so expect an AAR over the next days. 

Future projects? More Chain of Command and IABSM playing and painting short term and working my way through some lists to adapt CoC to play the Spanish Civil War. The secondary sources that I've been reading these days and some history books provided very useful information to play scenarios about the first few months of the conflict  known as the "war of the columns". Again, stay tunned for future posts on this issue.
  

Battle for Werth - Germany September 1944 (An IABSM AAR)

After a relatively long wargaming break, the Hell's Highway article in the last TFL Summer Special worked  miracles, waking my appetite to play this campaign with IABSM, the WWII company-sized rules of the TooFatLardies factory. An email exchange with my pal Alex at Club Dragón on Thursday and we were set to do some warming exercises with a small encounter scenario, taking place in Germany in September 1944, before attacking the campaign.

Location: Germany 1944
US forces have broken the Sigfried Line and penetrated West Prussia in the Eschweiler-Weisweiler area; all German available forces are sent to try stopping the gap. The German commander Werth and mission is to maintain control of two small villages (Werth and Scherpeensel) with a   hastily collected group of infantry forces supported by some armour and AT guns operating in the area.  

TooFatLardies Special is Out

An early-bird issue this time, TooFatLadies released yesterday its biannual publication Special. I can agree on the "special" but hardly on the "summer" in the title, as the bloody winter has decided to stay for much more longer than usual in Spain (still below 20ºC!!).

And what do you get? Well for 6 bucks (less than a breakfast at Starbucks in the UK) a total 130 pages of really good and high-quality content (see below) for your games with the TFL rule sets,

Two articles that I read last night were outstanding: a campaign with the British XXX Corps in the race to Arnhem (suitable for IABSM)  and a wonderful analysis of the British tactics in the last year of the Great War (for Mud & Blood).

The detailed index is as follows:

German Platoon Command Vehicle

I did not have anything specific planned for Christmas on the wargaming side, but the campaign of Vyazma or Bust has triggered my appetite to paint some more early war German vehicles and figures to reinforce my troops. These are the last additions, a Platoon command vehicle SdKfz 251/10...

 

... with a Pak 36 on top. This is an old Esci model that has been lying around since the early 80s. The kit is generally OK except for the tracks.

I aslo made some progress with a flamethrower stand, that will be attached to a combat pioneer unit in the near future, and tank-hunting team 

 I need now to work on the bases for the ATG team and the Hanomag. I also need to find a nice command figure to ride on the half track. Im the meantime I continue with the painful rebasing work (... the wargamer's curse)

German Late War Squad

I finally made up my mind and have decided to reorganise my 20mm minis, to play with I Ain't Been Shot Mum.  This has involved some planning as I had plenty of early and late war Germans based for Blitzkrieg Commander in 6 x 3 cm bases with 3 minis each. As IABSM uses a 1:1 scale ratio, each platoon has 3 x 8-men squads plus an officer (Big Man) and also you need to keep an accounting of casualties, I had first to resolve how to base them.


After much consideration I decided the following:

Vyazma or Bust Campaign # 5 - Yelna 2nd Day

The fifth game of the Vyazma or Bust campaign was played today. The  fourth game  (attack to Yelna) ended in a deadlock, but we finally arrived to a compromise  to play a second day in the city with the Germans starting now deployed in a narrow bridgehead in the west on the city. 

The OOBs were modified to take into consideration the casualties of the first day and the scarcity of reinforcements available to both sides. I also added a new feature: the inclusion of movement thorugh the sewage network... unfortunately the Russian unit assigned with the mission to make a surpirse attack in the German rearguard got lost in the undergorund maze.

Vyazma or Bust Campaign: In Search of a Compromise

Following my request of help after theVyazma or Bust last game  draw, the majority of the opinions are inclined to give the victory to the Soviet side. However, the TFL Big Man himself (Richard Clarke) suggested in the Yahoo Group the possibility of a refight assuming as a strating point the maxium penetration line of the Germans in the previous.

I find this soultion to be a fair one, at least fairer than proclaiming the Russians straight winners when th truth is that the main objective was celarly disputed. A second chance for both sides to show their war(gaming) capabilities.  I'm planning to work this scenario as the second day in the battle, following a ceasefire after dusk. Now I'm working on the new OOBs to take into consideration the casualties of the previous game and also the possibility of reinforcements sent through the night by the German and Russian HQs respectively.

And I have another surprise in hand for the players, inspired by an article published in  recent TFL Special... but this is a secret that I will unveil after the next game, scheduled for Sunday December 9th  (ha, ha, ha!!).  
 

Vyazma or Bust Campaign # 4 - Yelna and Help Needed

Last Sunday we played the fourth scenario of the Vyzma or Bust campaign, the early WWII eastern theatre companion book to I Ain't Been Shot Mum. The game so far has seen different turns of fortune, with the Germans losing the initiative after failing in their first attack on  Izdeshkovo and being defeated again in their retreat from Belyj, but stopping the Red Army advance in the defensive battle around the river crossing near Pochinok.

On Sunday, a German counterattack took place aiming to control a key crossroad at the city of Yelna, that would open the gate to reconqueing Smolensk. The oucome of the battle was... well you can help to decide by casting your vote, leaving a comment at the end of this battle report.

The Yelna scenario was an urban combat battle and at least on paper promised to be as bloody as the epic Stalingrad struggle was, with armour shooting buildings at short range and the grenade and the spade being the favourite combat weapons of the rival enemies.

Russian Commanders looking concerned about the coming battle...

Battle for Neuville - An IABSM Battle Report

The past weekend we took a rest from the eastern front and moved our forces to the beaches of Normany in June 1944. We played this time "Battle for Neuville" from the IABSM companion book Where the Hell Have You been Boys?, a collection of 21 scenarios of the battles around Omaha and Utah beaches in Normandy.  And those were not the only news this week end: the remarkable one was that I finally played a game, after several weeks acting as umpire... so last Sunday "I was happy as a dog with twin tails", as the say goes in Spain, commanding a German kampfguppe.

How did I fare? That's for the last part of this post... and then you can leave your thoughts and comments about my performance.

Vyazma or Bust Campaign # 3 - Pochinok

The third game of the Vyazma or Bust WWII east front IABSM campaign was played today in our club. After two consecutive victories, a reversal of fortune for the Russians who lost in their attempt to control the road towards Pochinok, the gate to regain control of Smolensk. Should the Russians have won this game, the campaign would have concluded today... the battle continues!

Vyazma or Bust Campaign # 2 - Belyj

This is the battle report of the second scenario of  Vyazma or Bust, an Eastern Front campaign played with I Ain't Been Shot Mum from TooFatLardies. The first scenario saw a defeat of the German forces in the attempt to break the lock in the Smolensk area which would have opened the door to a blitz into Moscow.

The reaction of the Red Army to this unexpected victory was a hasty counterattack with all the available infantry and armoured forces that have left isolated important pockets of German troops. This second game, around the small village of Belyj, is a classic encounter between a Russian column moving north to contact and destroy the enemy and a German kampfgruppe trying to break the encirclement and returning to its own lines.

Vyazma or Bust Campaign # 1 - Izdeshkovo

1st November  (All Saints Day) is a holiday in Spain, the day I finally put the ball rolling of the Vyzma of Bust campaign in the club, played with the TooFatLardies IIWW company size rules I Ain't Been Shot Mum. This was my first live-fire test with IABSM (although I've been thoroughly reading the rules over the past months), acting as umpire to a group of 5 players also new to the rules.

The similaties of IABSM to Charlie Don't Surf had its pros and its cons, as I missed  some differences in detail innitially (for example killed and shock results). But generally speaking the game went smoother than my initial expectations, also helped by the support of the rest of players.

Bleneville or Bust - IABSM Normandy Scenario Book

New announcement in the TooFatLardies Yahoo Group this midday: a new scenario book called "Blenneville or Bust" by fellow Lardie developer Robert Avery  (a nice chap who I happened to meet in April at Salute). I bought my copy tonight and got a monster 300 pages electronic book (pdf) with 31 individual scenarios for IABSM, interlinked in a campaign format, involving US, British and German forces just after the D-Day landings at Normandy. Fromthe introduction:

The campaign described is fictional, both in terms of setting and the units involved, as what I have attempted to create is a generic Normandy campaign that allows either a series of linked games to be played, or provides a collection of one-off battles for players who do not have time to create their own scenarios (....) There are thirty-one individual scenarios in this booklet laid out in pyramid format to five levels: scenario 1 leads to either 2A or 2B, which lead to 3A/3B and 3C/3D respectively, and so on until 5A through to 5P.

Battle for Liberation Published

A good kick-start for my Easter Holidays (extending from Thursday to Sunday here in Madrid), TooFatLardies has just released the first handbook of its IABSM company-sized WWII wargames rules called the "Battle for Liberation", covering the main armies of the Western Front from 1943 to the end of the war.

The book has a beautiful lay-out and is highly informative, including all the necessary information to compose the key forces for a game (companies and armoured platoons), attached support elements, very useful advice to build the card deck for each nationality and some interesting historical background. Being a shameless fan of the TFL factory I cannot recommend more both the rules and this first handbook, although the latter may be of great assistance too for other non-TFL mainstream WWII rule-sets (...and at GBP10, a fraction of the price usually charged for their supplements).

Taking the bull by the horns

The title of this post probably will mean nothing to English readers as it is a remarkable Spanish expression (coger el toro por los cuernos) used when you take the a firm decision on any matter. A few posts back, I talked about my intention this year to play IABSM but with a twist: focused in the Spanish Civil War.