Desert Toy Story

Knocking those snakes out of my boots! 

Back in the brisk winter vortex. The scorpions froze. As always at events, I plan on taking so many more pictures but that never happens. So here are a couple with some quick recaps. One of the locals took some of those newfangled Ipad videos of the event so I will link to those. 

 Here was my impromptu display board. Very last minute but it worked in the end. A little description. Being a big Axis and Allies player I took the idea of a map to be the base. Then deciding that having soldiers in the middle of the ocean looked funny I added some big red Indiana Jones arrows. 

This then lead to the back drop. (Excuse the artist beret) Having limited knowledge of the Western Europe propaganda from the war, I began looking into pacific such documents.

Something that began as a google search turned into a split perspective of the realities/false hoods of the war. The monstrous image and vilifying of the Japanese people through the US propaganda contrasts with the models being a representation of soldiers. Just like any other nationality.

The previously posted casualty models fit as well. While it may have something to do with just being bored with the stock models. They also are a reminded of what we are representing on the table top and the sacrifices of war.

End Artist rant. Now for the coverage. Ken Burns forgives the blurry photos, you should too.

 Tim, the organizer, had a round robin style axis vs allied match-up system. It was fun seeing theater reenactments. Game 1 saw the IJA facing off against an Aussie force deep in the jungles of New Guinea.

 It was also a night fighting scenario; which boiled down to no air support (take that Americans!) and basically a 12 inch visibility. The goal was to get models off the table edge.

 We both heavily supported opposite flanks which then turned into a foot race to get models off before the turn counter ended. This was the IJA left flank with some brutal hand to hand fighting.

 The right flank was all Aussies. with 2 squads getting off the table to the Japanese 1.

 Game 2 the IJA went up against some British paras with heavy armor support. A maximum attrition type game. Smokes went up and the Japanese began running...

 Some bad positioning of the scout tank got caught in cross fire between a howitzer and an armored car. But the fanatical Japanese were not deterred. Got some great luck in that the British artillery strike fubarred and I got to redirect onto his own troops; then that squad continued to fail command checks and proceeded to shoot they're own Lt off the table.

 Forgot to get photos of this game but this was the table. A bit of western Europe. Went up against a USA platoon. This player is the video recap links at the bottom. The Japanese kept together and swung a flank attack into 4/5 of the take and hold objectives. Again, some bad luck for the USA, but they called in a rookie pilot and I got to redirect the airstrike onto his own tank.

 Game 4 looked a bit like Belgium. This was a capture and escape with top secret documents off your own table edge. The IJA went up against another American platoon and fellow Chicago attendee. It was quite the windy day and 3 smoke barrages got dispersed off the table which led to some slow slogging threw machine gun fire to get to the objective. The Japanese got within a foot of the table edge but a double US airstrike pinned them and the time ended.

 The last game of the event was a battle in Manchuria. Russians vs Japanese. We both had a "base" and you had to destroy the enemy base. The Russians played very defensively and bunkered down in they're base. The only offensive maneuver was sending the T-34 up the road to blitz my base. My anti-tank gun destroyed the treads and it was stuck. I wasted 1 too many turns trying to assault the tank with my infantry (no sticky bombs) and were bogged down trying to use can openers on it... Ended in a draw.

The end of the day, the rising sun conquered, best overall. The fanatics special rules are the silver lining in a game whose main mechanic is putting pinning/suppressive fire on units to get them to ignore commands.

Great venue, food, and prize support.

Gathering in the Desert

Youtube video recaps.

Day 1

Day 2