The above photo is the starting point of our game last night-we actually had two games with the same theme,of sinking the Bismark!
The Hood and the Bismark are models I bought from "Atlas Editions" for £1.99 each,the Spitfires and Stuka's are made by a company called "Tootsie Toys" and are 1.75 inches long,quite hard to come by and very collectable-the "bombers" are cheap plastic toys which I found lying around in a box,but which fitted the bill nicely-the other two players are just a couple of old guys who come along to my house every now and then!!!!
I have combined the two game's photographs,just to show the games and the way they were played-we had a good laugh,and the Bismark was sunk-twice!!
This is the task force,commanded by Brian and Paul,my forces,of Bismark,3 Stuka's and a submarine,were off the board but marked on a map.
First "blood" to the Luftwaffe! a Spitfire goes down in a trail of smoke!!
Surprise,Surprise!!-Paul has sailed the Hood (in a pre-set course) right into my trap-my submarine makes its appearance and looses its torpedoes-However very little damage was caused to the hull,but the rudder was damaged-hurrah.
Paul fired his depth charges at the sub. and caused it to evade,never to be seen again!!
In the background you can see a massive "dog-fight" going on.
The Bismark has been found,lurking in a Fjord,and with no Luftwaffe protection(Brian has shot them all down!!) a pincer movement,involving the Manchester(?) bomber and the Hudson(?) torpedo plane is about to "DO" for the German battleship-game number one is over!
For the second game,I decided to go on the offensive,and attacked the British force.This shot shows the Bismark giving the Hood a "broadside",unfortunately,Hood fired back and caused an awful lot more damage to my deck and guns,than I had caused it-woe is me!!
Astute readers will have noticed in the background,that each Spitfire has a Giant figure behind it!!-these are figures of famous WW2 aces,including Douglas Bader,Jonnie Johnston etc-just to add a personal touch-I felt really bad when I shot poor old Bader down!!
Brian's submarine has "popped" up and fired his torpedoes into the Bismark at very close range!! thus sealing the fate of the ship-again!!
We all enjoyed this foray into WW2,and will try it out again,it was exciting and fun,but most of all the rules were easily and quickly picked up by both Paul and Brian-hurrah!!
Roll on Thursday,back to "figure" wargaming,don't know what yet.
Excellent stuff! Those bombers are a real find, I've never seen the like on ebay.
ReplyDeleteHi Doug,thanks for comment-I have been told that one is a"Manchester" and the other is a "Hudson"-they were completely black,so I had to re-paint them.
Deletecheers,johnc(william)