First Snow of the Year

The first snow of the year here at Empire headquarters is on the ground. Took this snapshot of a Northeast Tribesman stalking a moose in the early morning light.  The last game of Five Men in Sicily is in the books and I am working on that blog post now. Do not fear! The men of  C Troop have been earmarked for the invasion of the Italian Peninsula even with their less than stellar performance in Sicily. As always I will follow them through their journeys.  Before I post that final battle though, I ran a solo moose hunting game in honor of the winter weather, so expect that soon!

More than Five Men in Sicily

With all of the reconnaissance and infiltration complete, I decided to try to break my home brew rules. I played through the armor column passing through the town and being ambushed by heavy German resistance. It seems that multiple loud infiltrations draws a lot of attention. 

Vehicles became bogged down in the streets and it was left to the infantry to slog through bitter house to house fighting.

It became apparent that I need to rework both my vehicle rules and my antitank launcher rules. Vehicles were given a number of actions per turn, but I found this led to either long sprints or stationary sitting while the turret rotated to aim. I will be scratching my head over that one. A German grenadier ambushed my Sherman in a tight alley with a Panzerfaust..... except the scatter die placed it at his feet and collapsed a building on him. I need to rethink using scatter die and blast radius for missed launcher shots.

On the painting table are small scale WW2 aircraft for my hex-grid based combat system. Not 54mm but I couldn't help but feature them.

Airfix Strongpoint

 Finally created a stand alone base for my Airfix Strongpoint. My terrain isn't always Lincoln Logs! I struggle for storage space, so the building comes off the base, can be dissembled, and stores relatively flat. My Airfix Desert Outpost should receive a similar treatment soon.

Five Men in Sicily part 3

July 1943,

Led an infiltration of the village again. Sgt. Cox brought along a radio to be in communication with the air support we had been assigned.  

Some enemy resistance was encountered but Sgt Cox successfully directed a Warhawk from the 9th Air Force to destroy the antitank position.