A Great Book, Thanks Mum

I went down to Somerset a couple of weeks a go to see my Mum and Godfather Dick. My Mum has been a great supporter of VBCW from beginning helping with a lot of the background stuff, ideas and recipes. She is now doing WW2 cooking demo's at the Glastonbury Rural Life Museum. Mum has been reading 'Somerset V Hitler' Secret Operations in the Mendips 1939-1945. This is a great book, for those interested  both VBCW and Home Guard/ Operation Sealion. It is full of first hand accounts from both the Home Guard and the Auxiliary's.
The Auxiliary's where the British Resistance Army set-up by MI6 to attack an Invader in the rear from hidden bases. Somerset had the second biggest Auxiliary unit in the country.
The Book also has a section from the Mendip Company Home Guard War Book, telling how they would stop the German army advancing from Wells to Bristol up the A37. This could be used by a wargamer for a fact based Operation Sealion game.

Templates and Tokens

2 of the Templates and some of the Tokens

I asked Martin at Warbases to make me a set of templates for 'Went the Day Well?' out of MDF. He emailed me back to say He could do them in clear plastic and coloured acrylic.
They are great, custom made and in 7 DAYS!

An Evening Game At The Tring Club

The table, BUF attacking from top right, Frank Wilde top left, Royalists bottom left.

The weekend at Evesham was a bit of a disappointment so it was nice to put on a game for the Tring club last night. I carried on the story from the Evesham games with the BUF/ Royalists attacking the village of Badgworth. The fluff was as follows:

After 7 days of fighting the Anglian League are on the back foot and in need of a victory. The fighting is now around the village of Wedmore and the surrounding area.  Badgworth is the last hamlet controlled the Anglian League which overlooks the A38 one of the major roads though Somerset.

The Government is launching an attack from the A38 and the levels. The only problem is the on-going bad feeling between the BUF and local Royalists.

Royalists

As usual you have drawn the short store straw. Your attack is across the levels and your armoured support keeps bogging down. Your orders are to capture the T junction to the right of the village and cut it off from Wedmore.

You will not give any support to the BUF. The other militia is that of Frank Wilde, you get on well with Him and his men. You will support Frank during the battle.

BUF tank tries to run over the Anglican League Vickers HMG and gets beached.

BUF

The Royalist have been forced on you again. You have given them the hardest start point. You plan to rush the Anglican League positions and capture both T Junctions before the Royalists can get out of the rhynes. You are also being supported by Frank Wilde and his militia. You get on well with Frank and his boys. You’ll give him any support He wants.

Frank Wilde

You’re caught between a rock and a hard place. The BUF and Royalists have not made friends and you are in the middle. Thankfully you get on with both sides and they like you. You just want to get the job done and go home.

Plucky/mad Anglican League attack the tank

Anglican League

You are 1 of 2 platoon commanders in Badgworth. You need to keep hold of the village so you can try and stop any government movement up and down the A38. Your forces are short of sandbags so you have had the locals make gabions, like the old civil war.

The players were new to the Went The Day Well? rules but soon picked them up. The Royalists struggled through the rhynes and Frank did little to support the BUF. The Anglican's should have been able to take advantage of this but failed due to poor deployment. The BUF's tank made fast progress up the road, but beached itself on a hedge for 3 moves! It was then attacked by 2 members of the Anglican League.

We ran out of time just as things were getting interesting so had to call it a draw.

the rules worked well as did my house rules and everyone enjoyed the game. Rolll on the next one.

  

15mm VBCW

Boys A/T rifle with a head swop

 Well I've started some 15mm Peter Pig figures for VBCW. I've been thinking about doing some bigger battles, 28mm doesn't look right when 10 figures are trying to be a company so 15mm it is.
I'm going to use the AK47 rules as a start point and re-write them as I see fit. I've done one of the political flow charts so far.

Gun crew for the 2lbs

Lewis gunner

 Peter Pig do a great range of figures and separate heads. I'm using pack  70. WW1/2 French Alpine troop Berets (big floppy berets)  on mix of figures to make up my first unit of Anglican League.

2lbs with crew with a head swop

The 2lbs anti-tank gun has the gunner molded on so I just cut off his head and added a new one. Iwant to do this with a Warlord 28mm gun, but that will have to wait.

Some New Work

Warlord Patizan

 Having done a lot of conversion work on Empress figures I thought I'd do some on Warlord figures. I've also used some Warlord heads on Brigade Games and Musketeer figures.

After having the work done

 As you can see from this picture I changed the rifle and gave the figure a British helmet.

Painted

 I'm going to do the other figure with an ammo box instead of the stick grenade.

Brigade Games figure with Warlord Head

 I wanted to add an Officer and LMG to the BUF Auxiliary I've already done, so used Warlord Tam heads on these 3 figures.

Musketeer with Warlord Head

Musketeer with Warlord Head

Painted Figure

Painted Figure

Painted Figure

Next up will be some more Warlord Partisan conversions.

Blasts From the Past

An early table. Not much cover.

 As I seem to have about 1000 VBCW photo's i thought I'd start to put some on the blog. These are from some of the first games I played at my old house.


BUF armoured skip.

 We started with the idea of mixing Empress and Muskeeter. Most of mine where Empress with head and weapon swops.

The Bishop of Bath and Wells.

 The Bishop is nicked named 'Trigger' because I slipped when doing the conversion and cut off the end of the first finger of the right hand on the figure.

A converted Empress figure. Love this figure leather jacket and a Tommy Gun what more do you need? 

These are Muskeeter with Woodbine heads.

More Empress with a black Cat post box to make it look more like England.

 So there you go a look at some early VBCW action.

2 from Muskeeter, the building is from Brigade Games. Their site is well worth a look.
http://www.brigadegames.com/

Sorry It's Been a While

Small gate

 Sorry its been so long since I posted anything. I got sidetracked on to the Russian Civil War. If people are intrested then I'll post some photo's here.

5 Bar gate, old wall section and tree

 We now have a VBCW website http://vbcf.freeforums.org/index.php this was setup by Ook and is doing very well. Please drop in for a look round.

5 Bare gate GW hedge

These gates where made by http://www.warbases.co.uk/ at the same time as the stiles. They are stuck to tongue depressers I got from ebay.
The next big thing will be the 2 day vbcw game at Gripping Beast at the end of October. 15+ players on Saturday! The background fluff for the players ran to 5000 words in the end. The political manoeuvreing has started. I can't say to much as most of the players follow the blog.