James and I have had a few games of Square Bashing now and despite the clunky move sequence that takes a few turns to get into they do give quite a good game.
On Thursday we were invited to the Burton and District club to participate in their big Square Bashing game run by Simon which would be a pastiche of the Anglo-French attack at Third Battle of Artois in the autumn of 1915.
A good long table was setup that was the usual six rows deep but a massive 24 columns wide, each player controlling a six column frontage but allowed to stray two columns either side.
Neither James nor myself have any 15mm WWI troops but Ray had kindly prepared a force of roughly 500pts each for us from his own collection of Germans. I was paired up against a chum from my old Sealed Knot days, Richard Bason, it would be his baptism of fire with Square Bashing, I was hoping not to forget too many of the rules!
The Germans were defending a trench line and we each had a MG in a forward position, the scenario rules meant we were pretty beaten up to start with and I had loads of troops in the reserves pool. The bunker and two positions on the trench-line were each allied players objective.
Richard came on in strength and was assaulting the machine-gun bunker in the first phase although the machine-gun was damaged I did repulse them with heavy casualties.
The game developed and Richard was concentrating his force against my machine-gun bunker and the left flank of my line. Although causing heavy losses among the British the bunker eventually fell. On my left I was able to reinforce the line and hold off attacks against all comers for the duration of the game.
Things were not going so well on my left, the French had ejected the Germans from the trenches and were rolling them up, could I hold the British off while that flank was stabilized? Emboldened by their capture of the bunker and not to be out-done by the prowess of the French on their right the British attacked again. Again my left held, as did my right, but the depleted troops in the trench-line behind the bunker succumbed and the British captured that.
A German counter offensive was unable to eject them and at the end of the game the British had a tenuous toe-hold in my centre.
A great evenings gaming with excellent company. Simon has done a report on the BAD Wargamers blog. I cannot claim any credit for any of the terrain and figures on this one, please direct any compliments to the chaps at Burton on Trent.
