More Airfix Battles

 I played Airfix Battles all day today and thoroughly enjoyed it. Once again I used models from my 15mm Flames of War collection which is a bit limited in regards to matching up with the unit cards in the box. 

 I had to use StuG IIIs instead of Panzer IVs and I am short of halftracks and heavy weapons too. I could of course use the counters in the box but I'm not too keen on the infantry counters. 

Here are some pics from Scenario7 PUSH DOWN THE ROAD TO ST LO! / DEFEND THE ROUTE TO ST LO

I used some Flames of War building templates as they are bigger and have more presence on the board.

A Sherman gets itself in position to cover one of the objectives, it was KO'd in the following turns.

A Tiger tank rolls up the road to engage the Shermans but eventually gets outmanoeuvred and destroyed.

There are two objectives on the road to be captured in this scenario.

Which card to choose?, the game gives you plenty of dilemmas.

I like the Interrupt cards which can spoil a good plan.

The Yanks take one objective.

And the tanks drive the Germans from the other objective on the last turn.

An entertaining game, the Germans were struggling after their panzer commander was killed which reduced their hand of order cards drastically, a lesson learned!.

I could fancy playing this with my 1/72nd toys, I could maybe ditch the grid and measure four inches per square. I think I'll have to give it a go.

Airfix Battles

 I managed to get myself a copy of Airfix Battles for a good price and it arrived today.

My permanent games table has a game of Warmaster set up ready to go so I opened the box on the kitchen table and couldn't resist a quickie.

I grabbed some of my Flames of War stuff and some hit/casualty markers and got straight into it.

The 15mm stuff fits the map squares better than 1/72nd scale but I have a board marked with 100mm squares and plan to use that when I get used to the rules.

Below are a few shots of todays action. I had to clear the game away and go for my second Covid jab so I didn't get long with it.

I will play the game of Warmaster tonight and free up the table for more Airfix Battles tomorrow.

It's DBA Jim, but not as we know it.

Many years ago I was a big fan of DBA, I built up several armies and played using 24 elements per side with some rule changes to facilitate the larger armies.

With my old first edition rulebook tatty and worn I decided to upgrade when the latest edition was published a couple of years ago. I didn't really get on with it however, I adapted it to squares to make it less fiddly here but still struggled to find any enthusiasm for it.

Today I had a bit of a brainwave and decided to draw up a new gridded board. I gave it big 100mm squares so that I could fit units inside and treat the grid square as the element base.

I could only fit 12 squares by 9 onto my 4x3 foot board but it is enough to deploy and manoeuvre 12 element armies like so...

 Gauls on the left and Camillan Romans on the right.

 The rules.

 I gridded the board with small brown crosses to make the grid less obvious.

  View from the Roman lines.

 Some of the hairy Gauls.

The battle gets underway.

And the infantry come to blows quickly due to the shallow board.

The warbands in the second row count as support for the first row.

 A bit of a scrap on the flank. The Roman Generals element was destroyed soon after with a 6-1 roll.

 Some of the Gauls breakthrough while the others get pushed back.

It's down to the Triarii. Who repel the warriors smartly.

But the Hastati and Princeps break and the battle is lost for the Romans.

Not bad, I will play some more of this. I can also use the gridded board to play Hordes of the things without rebasing anything as long as I can fit them in the square.

I may invest in Simon Millers To the Strongest rules which would suit the grid and my collection.

I wonder what else I could use this board for, any ideas are very welcome.