Showing posts with label Flames of war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Flames of war. Show all posts

13 May 2013

Panzerlust

Panzerlust


I stumbled across this great website on the Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset, UK.
the author/photographer is Bernard Zee:

Check out his great photos: Bovington Tank Museum



No copyright infringement intended.

7 March 2013

Games and Reality: The real Flames of War

Games and Reality: The Real Flames of War


So I am on call yesterday. Called to a rest home to certify a death at 7 pm.
(I'm a doctor by trade)

Miffed cause I'm gonna be late for Games Night at the Wargames Club.
A patient of one of my partners, don't know her from a bar of soap...

Keen to try out my new Daemon Army Book, or use my Late War Germans...

Deal with the grieving family. She had a long life, ripe old age, had been struggling with cancer for the last two years. Condolences, clinical examination, paperwork....

No religious rituals, family don't believe in that stuff ... just for simple cremation.

To fill out the death and cremation certificates I need to go through her file.


Born 1925
German name, Kiwi surname.
Born and grew up in Berlin.

Jewish Ancestry.
Father taken away by Germans and killed.
Escaped with mother and sisters, aged 15.
Married twice, 4 kids, 2 failed marriages.

Shadow of war tainted her whole life...

I'm thinking about my own son and daughters, waiting at the table for me to come home for supper.
I'm thinking what it would have felt like to have your father ripped away from you and killed simply for being who he was.

I'm thinking about the real Flames of War, and how they still burn, even 70 years later.
And how even in her death, after all these years, that echo still resounds.
No funerary rites for him, none for her...

I'm thinking of my German Ancestry, and what befell the people of Europe at the hands of the Germans.
And how I love to march my German Army across the table top.

Historical battles, Flames of War...
How that flame burns, long after the last gun had fallen silent, and the last fire had been doused.

I am not Jewish, but I am familiar with their funerary rites.

No-one is likely to say an El male rachamim or Kaddish (Prayers for the dead) for her.

So here is one, as they would have offered for her father, after he had been killed:




(This one is for victims of the holocaust, which she was, even 70 years later, still a victim...)


So I went home, had supper with my wife and children. 
It was too late to go to the wargames club.
I had decided to stay my guns for the night anyhow...

" I can see a fiery, fiery glow
  Even as the sun is sinking low
  I can see a horseman on the run
  Oh my daughter, Oh my son"
                                              Laurika Rauch, from Hot Gates (Thermopylae)




21 February 2013

Dipping my toe...FoW gaming in 20mm

 Dipping my Toe...FoW game in 20mm

Ok, so it had to happen sooner or later. Wargames are turn-based. Mostly. Period. (No pun intended)

 WWW2 (Warhammer WW2) is great fun, but I'm not all that keen on initiative/leadership  testing to see which units get to go, nominating this unit, then that...

Even Phil Yates must have come to the same conclusion when he started developing FoW.


... On the other hand I found the FoW rules we played last nightjust  a tad tedious. (Maybe its just because I have to look so many things up, and we were all noobs at it)

 It does differ substantially from Lionel Tarr and Donald Feathersone's rules that I cut my teeth on; and the Games Workshop stuff that's my main  fodder at the moment.( Just took part in a Team Championship Tournament last week.)

So back top WW2, as I've had enough of Dark Elves and Daemons for a while. But then again they have brought out some great looking models...Isn't avarice a terrible thing?


Ok, so there we went, Luc and I at the Kapiti Wargames Club, chose to random opposing sides,

 Late War: German PzGrenadiers with 2 platoons of Panthers, 
and British Armoured Squadron, with a lorryload of Shermans, a platoon of Firefly Shermans, and 4 M10 Achilles Tank destroyers.

We chose to play a simple capture and hold the objective battle, with a small farm, Pas de Douchie,  in centre of the table, with 2 roads leading to it, a ploughed field, and a forest.


Panzer Grenadiers rushing in with their Hanomags, just failing to make it to the objective before Luc's Motor Company. Think I forgot some of the German special rules, but so hey...

Time and ineptitude constrained us, but we got in a couple of rounds, Luc took the farm, and held it successfully.

Still struggling a bit with the concept of hits being based on opponents experience rather than shooter's ballistic skill. Suppose it will come with time. Thanks Michael for offering to help us next week.


LSSAH Panther on the road to Pas de Douchie






BTW: check out this great graphic site for armour I discovered: