Nuts! Patrol in Poland, 1939

I wasn't sure what I wanted to get on the table - and then would actually play - so I picked Nuts! 

 

This comes after two 'failed' games: another attempt at White Mountain, and then a WW2 company action.  So just to feel the excitement of the dice in the hand, and wanting something different than another One Hour Wargame scenario, I decided it was high time I got my 15mm WW2 Poles on the table.  I set up a 'patrol' scenario, with the Poles attempting to recce through some woods and hills and scattered farm buildings

For those, who know Nuts! Polish investment level in this sector was '2' and '4' for the Germans.  Since it has been a while since I played, I just used very generic ratings: the Polish were led by Sierzant Suszczyk (5) and consisted of him, an LMG gunner(4) and 7 riflemen(three (4), four (3).

n.b. I didn't take too many pictures here, it has been a while since I played Nuts! and I wanted to focus on recalling exactly how the rules worked.

The Polish squad stacks by an empty house.

A wider shot: the German PEFs (potential enemy forces) are on the far side of the hill, with one in the woods in the centre.

The Polish LMG team occupy the farmhouse, with a sentry left outside, while Sierzant Suszczyk leads the others into the woods (right); however, just as they have entered the wood, a German AFV (a StugIIIB) arrives in the rear of the Polish position...and proceeds to kill the sentry with machinegun fire, then demolish the house with the Polish LMG team inside it.

Meanwhile, a German MG34 team wanders into the sights of the Polish patrol...

And a particularly deadly volley of rifle fire kills two and incapacitates the other...

The patrol continues on, carrying out the rest of its mission

Avoiding the Stug, the Polish skirt back through the woods...

Well, despite the heavy Polish losses (4 killed and the squad machinegun lost!) the mission was in fact a success.  Very luckily, only one of the PEFs resolved into an actual contact with the Germans, and they walked straight into an ambush.  Obviously there was pretty much nothing the Polish could do about the StuG turning up...but that it is the beauty(?!?) of Nuts! you can be over-matched and a simple mission can get hairy very quickly.  The game actually worked fine, but I was a bit rusty with the 'flow' of the game, Nuts! goes a lot quicker if you intuitively understand which table you need to be looking at at any given moment.  It was generally fine, I really like Nuts! I have never been totally convinced by the wording of the In-Sight tests, but as long as I play it the way I like it, not much harm done...

I can't now remember who made the 15mm buildings. I think the Polish figures are Forged in Battle, the Germans were Battlefront.  The StuG...Zvezda, possibly?

Hobby Update 26 Mar 23

I am still making slow but steady progress through the lead hillock although again there has been a lot less actual gaming than I might have liked.  The old conconction of being busy with work (and just as importantly, feeling pretty lethargic when I have finished work), busy with family things and not really having easily accessible gaming spaces and gaming stuff have continued to defy my efforts.  But I have made a little progress in sorting that I hope, so I have a small stable of 'doable' games near my work space whilst everything else gets stored out of the way.

Anyway, first up is more WW2 Polish stuff: an infantry company (more-or-less), a couple of tank, tankette and armoured car platoons, and one anti-tank, artillery and anti-aircraft artillery battery.  These are a mixture of Heroics & Ros (most of the vehicles and guns) and Scotia (all the figures, plus one of the armoured car platoons and one of the tankette platoons).  Annoyingly H&R don't do any Polish gun crews for their Polish guns. Grrr.  In retrospect, I might have been better off using French WW2 gun crews than some spare Scotia Polish heavy weapons crews, they look a bit big. Oh well.

Two platoons of Polish tanks, in their rather nifty camouflage scheme.

The armoured cars and tankettes and tracked artillery tractors.

The Scotia infantry aren't as shapely as the GHQ stuff or as dynamic as Baccus or Adler or as 'correctly silhouetted' as H&R, but they are sort of okay - they are like an old-fashioned Minifig if you like, simple and easy to paint and not quite as reliant on nifty brushwork as some of the Irregular stuff.

H&R anti-tank guns (front), guns (middle) and Bofors AAA (rear)

Next up is a bit more British and German WW2 stuff: the British for early war, the Germans are a mixture.

H&R A13s (left) and A10s (right)

Ok, Panzerjaeger Is at the front, 21 Pz vehicles back-right(a 75mm anti-tank gun on a Somua chassis, a 150mm on a Lorraine and a converted French half-track carrier, I think); A StuG42 and two Hanomags with heavy weapons top-left - these are Scotia, IIRC...

The British have a few Morris armoured cars (centre) and some Beaverettes (right), the latter a common feature of 'what-if' Sealion 1940 scenarios, I am finding.

Next-up is a group of figures that I completed a little while ago, but don't think I have posted: 15mm Cold War Dutch from Battlefront:

The figures were nice enough.  I have done a couple of female head-swaps, using the Peter Pig female head pack.  They are a tiny bit small really but I think that they basically worked okay.  Finding the right colours wasn't as easy as it might have been, but blogger Jemima Fawr did some really brilliant posts on doing a Cold War Dutch Army in 15mm, highly highly recommended!

I have managed to get a figure game to the table but more of that later; otherwise I have been mainly plaing the Thirty Years' War board game Europe in Agony:

Previous experience has told me that you can't get enough 'practice runs' with a boardgame you intend on using as a campaign engine!  Also, actually playing solo and using it as a campaign engine will always require a few small changes to be made, but only familiarity with the game can help you judge the secondary effects of any changes.  But in any case, the game itself is full of interest and I have been learning a lot thinking about the challenges facing Wallenstein, Mansfeld, Tilly, Spinola et al.  Compared to the previous campaign board games I have used, it feels closest to the Gallic War in terms of how the game plays out.  Where this one is a little tricky is that the first couple of turns seem incredibly important in determining the likely flow of the game, since neither side has many troops and they start in pretty close proximity.

Hobby Update 10 Mar 23

Not much gaming recently - much to my chagrin! - and not enough hobby time either, but I have made some little bits of progress:

Some Baccus 6mm British Armour

Churchill AVRE

Stuarts

and more Stuarts!

And some Scotia stuff I think (or maybe H&R - they are so compatible, I lose track!)? Polish car, trucks and 1/2-tracked artillery tractors

And some 15mm vehicles of various types and in various states of done! A 1930s-40s Renault, a Land Rover, a Vickers VIb, a mini and another Land Rover. Manufacturers...the Renault and the Vickers might be QRF, I think.  Land Rovers and Mini by one or more of the 15mm 3D printing companies.

There are some more bits and pieces which I haven't got around to photographing yet but hopefully will do later today or over the weekend.