Boudicca's babes and more Belgians!

Wednesday 20th January


          Our trio of Garvald visits culminated in a VBCW game with four of us fighting over a coal mine in the outskirts of Berwick.Scremerston to be precise.Bill Gilchrist,Mr Ray Neal and myself met up with Colin Jack making for an adventurous evening.

                          Bill took his usual pride of place with the socialists who had aligned themselves with Mr Ray's Anglicans.Colin and myself took the part of the B.u.F with a mission to take the mine back into proper private ownership.

                           Mr Ray's miners had holed up in the mine and were prepared to sell their coal and their lives dearly.My forces approached the mine en masse with my artillery piece for support.This gun lasted for a whole turn before the crew were decimated by Ray's gun embedded on the back of a lorry. Not bad considering I had taken about six months to build and base it for it to be wiped out within five minutes of coming on the field.

                             The fate of my civilian militia went the same way after a few turns from fire from the revolting miners.

                               By this time Colin was moving his cavalry around the side of the mine only to be caught in a crossfire between the miners and Ray's newly arrived George Washington legion.

                                   

Colin's armoured car then moved to engage the red's armoured car that was heading along the road towards the beleaguered miners but being inexperienced kept to form by continually missing its target.No such luck when the target returned fire as it hit and kept on hitting the armoured car rendering it pretty useless.

My forces were facing stalemate against the well dug in miners so Colin moved up the ubiquitous Belgians.Maybe we should have a twin town in Belgium for Garvald.Colin left the room for a moment so I changed tack with his Belgians and had them engage Ray's fellow Americans which started off okay but brought into the line of fire of Bill's armoured car.Oops!This was the beginning of the Belgian end.

Ray then moved up a machine gun team crewed by females(welcome to a Colin Jack engineered game) which began a duel with Colin's female B.u.f squad-Boudicca's babes.This duel ended after a few salvos with the babes assaulting the machine gun crew resulting in a chick fight with the babes coming out on top albeit with only one of them left standing,a bit of a hollow victory.

Ray then brought on his command squad which consisted of a neat model T Ford with twin Lewis guns.

Bill meanwhile was slowly moving up his column of battle bus and steam lorry.His column was stopped by his armoured car which was now spewing steam from its engine as a result of a well placed antitank rifle shot.At last some luck, but this wasn't to last as my naval soldiers had decided to assault the well entrenched miners but ended up being wiped out.

Colin's forces were being whittled down with his Belgians cut down to a man,his Babes(sorry-babe)at a loose end and his armoured car about to be assaulted by the red coated squad from the steam lorry.

I went for one last hurrah with a last minute assault on the mine but my men weren't up for it mainly due to a combination of fire from both the socialists and the Anglicans so it was time to call it a night and head for the hills.

A very good game which brought me back into one of my favourite games and with the added bonus of finally fielding my own figures.Hopefully they'll improve with experience.

Participants for the evening-

Tim Watson-B.u.F

Colin Jack-B.u.F

Bill Gilchrist-Anglicans(but just a tad more socialist)

Mr Ray Neal-Anglicans(with American and French help)

Figures,scenario and scenery-Colin Jack

Figures-Tim Watson

To begin the evening we were served up a very nice Coq au Vin with a glass of crushed grapes to set the scene.Not a Belgian dish in sight!

Heading for La Suisse next week so I will be posting from foreign shores.Hopefully with some nice pics.Places on the agenda are the Reichenbach falls and Piz Gloria(hopefully I'll not need to escape from it on skis).See you when I see you.