The Roaring Northerners are Dave Stewart, John Hill and Iain Robertson; a loose affiliation of tabletop wargamers and figure painters who inhabit the frozen and somewhat soggy wastelands of west central Scotland. Shadowy and secretive, they stoically quest to reduce the scale of the lead mountain that threatens to engulf them all, and perhaps even find the time for the occasional game...
....This is their story

Monday 18 May 2015

Battle Report- NATO Central Front, Northern Germany, 1986



A rather belated update of a game from a few(!) weeks ago, Force on Force Cold War...

After a dismal first showing several months ago (admittedly with only one BAOR section each), Dave and I decided to have another bash at the Force on Force Cold War rules up at the East Kilbride Warlords club, this time with a proper force on each side. I had command of the stalwart BAOR on the defensive, while Dave held the reins of the WarPac juggernaut, in the shape of his Czechoslovak Motor Rifles.

What followed was a far more entertaining game than last time round (still interrupted with copious amounts of book-checking and sucking of teeth and muttering, but definitely less than last time!). We probably skipped over more rules and game mechanics than we intended, and over simplified much, but this time it definitely seemed to flow better, even if we did do a lot in the wrong order and forget to do half of the things we should have done. Who knows, maybe at some point we’ll get a proper game in, and actually use all the bells and whistles properly?! (Who are we kidding…)

Anyway, on with the pictures of shiny toys. Transport yourself to northern Germany, it’s 1986, Active Edge has been called and the balloon is well and truly skybound at a fearsome rate of knots.  We join the Queen’s Own Atholl Rangers on the Forward Edge of Battle, anxiously awaiting what is about to tear out from the eastern forests…


Central to the Czech armoured onslaught was Dave’s newly painted T-72, which promptly drew all sorts of MILAN and Charlie G fire, and thus quickly succumbed to the first rule of miniature wargaming…


Callsign 211, apparently in some confusion as to what way they should be facing…



A Section move forward, covered by some Yeomanry types…



… while B Section and a MILAN team anchor the opposite flank
 

A Blowpipe team pressed into service in the surface to surface role. We counted it as a Charlie G, similarly, Dave’s lone SA-7 operator became an RPG-7.


Plan A did not end well for the Yeomanry…


The T-72 proves rather more effective as cover than it did as an unstoppable dealer of high-explosive death…


…while Callsign 213 manoeuvre through the woods




And then there were 3…




Platoon HQ, not doing a great deal.


Tank action!


Peekaboo!



As for the result, after a hard fought slog, the BAOR managed to grind the WarPac advance to a standstill mid-table, buying time for a NATO regroup further west, and allowing the orderly withdrawal of forward elements. Or something like that.

What did we learn? 1. Dave needs more BMPs 2. Charlie Gs > MILAN, you, your mum and your dog. Czechs rolling on D6s struggle to match BAOR on D8s; either they need heavily reinforcing (we should have let the casualties re-spawn at the table edge) or the die qualities need adjusting. All in all though, good fun and certainly made more sense this time round!

Cheers
Iain

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