Big Big Thanks

Just to echo the comments above, a great day out and very clever game plan to make best use of the site. Too knackered and aching to write a proper report, will pick it up tomorrow.

Cheers
Martin

Knackered!

What a blast.

Thanks to all that helped to run the game and a mahoosive to Gareth, our CO from Kentucky/Alabama/New York/Texas/London's East End.

Tin

To the Basterds, an excellent event kudos for your effort and ingenuity.

To the Brits, thank you for your hard and honest gameplay for the majority of the day.

To the rest of the 183rd, double hard bastards the lot of you and was an absolute pleasure to shoot alongside you.

Will be posting the rest of the picture tomorrow when I have more time.

So many top moments today, was awesome. well done all.

Bloody hell, I'm knackered & wasn't even playing so god only knows how you lot feel!

Thanks a lot for all the support & kind words about the first game from us Basterds. Great to see people having a good day & working well within their sections.

Thanks again all for supporting this venture, might have to look at running another one now!!

Big thanks going out to the organisers and hosts of this event, without a doubt one of the best games I've been to in years. Its a cracking site and the guys running the game sure made the most of it keeping us on the move all day without it seeming repetitive. Outstanding gameplay from all with good spirits and a bit of banter too to make it as much a laugh as it was fun to play. Well done to all that attended and it looks like your sacrifice to the weather gods was worth the price

So pleased that everybody enjoyed it , I was a bag of nerves before the game ,it was my first command role and first game on the planning team .I have virtually no voice left from all the shouting commands all day and my feet are pounded and I was not fighting like you guy's so I hate to think how knackered my Brit squad are after I ran them ragged all day .
The kit standard was great and even the people borrowing kit looked the buisness ,play was also good with no cheating reported to me so thank you all on both counts .

Awesome day, one of the best ever. The weather was perfect and the site was just amazing with some awesome backdrops. The organisers did a fantastic job and the site hosts Tony and Terry were top blokes. Best thing for us though is getting to fight the 34th!
Phil

Some great scraps with your lot Phil, and some very well defended objectives. I think I spent most of the day dead, looking up at the sky, but this was no bad thing as I seemed to get a promotion every few deaths or so.

Thanks for organising a great event....your efforts and planning really showed.

Some really intense battles , especially our defending the centre buildings....my back is black and blue from the thousands of rebounds

well after a decent sleep and a long think i concluded it was still a fab day

some very good scraps trying to force back stut and the gang back i even managed to get quite a few grenade kills and all the enemy as well , well untill the last minute of the game when i killed myself with a grenade that stuck on the roof lol

but thought the game was played at a great pace not to fast or slow, and like last time we played a ww2 game on the site its just a brill site to play on , though like last time got nettled on my arm and arse lol , by the time we got a brief spell off the lines and some R&R i was shattered and we started to devour our case of coke and eat our rations , was nice to get a breather off the front lines and chat and swap war stories we also swapped out a couple of rifles for smgs, as per normal we were rocking no support gun and we lacked a bit of oomph - and was nice to have a little time with my m3.

once back on the lines some good scraps and those in the buildings were cutting us to shreds, we had to fight hard to get forward and many times we had to regroup and push again , and then for the first time we saw the brits as well and then it was a good old scrap to take and hold the buildings just until the end.

cracking day - loved as always fighting stuts lot , seeing prides head pop up a few times and hearing lutz and trying to find him to kill

Special thanks go to coke for bringing back coke in a bottle on major release just in time for the scrap , its just so much nicer like that (takes you back to being young for us old timers) going to have to refill the crate for May and fine mysef a decent small bottle opener.

and of course Gareth who led us all day long , and constanly got us back into the fight and keeping our spirits high even when we were taking heavy losses , damm those tanks for never showing up

and ww2 stu who rolled with us to help plug a gap at the last minute when we had 3 players drop out he fitted in well and was good to have him with us , also nearly blew me up with our own bazooka proper 34th styley

and of course all those that run it , its nice to play a different style of game and it work i think with all the groups now running games its going from strength to strength having tried quite a few different types of games the ww2 lot are without any doubt the best bunch.

Its also rejuved me a bit and look forward to sorting out our weekender more now in the coming weeks as well as getting ready for Kasserine pass in a few weeks

Ok where do I start?
Big thanks to the organisers it was probably one of the best ever events I have been too. I know how difficult and time consuming it is to put on an event and you really have raised the bar. AGS have got to crank it up for Kasserine

Game play on the small site was great. The way you handled the 4 elements into 2 battles combining now and again was great.
Props were excellent particularly like the Sons of Hermans dead Germans (Herman originally dies at the Crete game )

Play was excellent by both sides along with the effort put into the Kit.

just a thought if some regional organisers could get together and put on a mega event like this, spreading the set up problems and each group bringing their own groups and stamp to the game could be a once a year event like our Modern friends do, but far more realistic. How cool would that be.

Keep it up Basterds

Well done to the organisers what a suberb day.

The day was planned really well and we didn't see a single brit until the final joint push into the buildings. As the U.S had seperate missions and objectives. The props which kept popping up were brilliant. The dead German bodies, mines, first aid station and the big German signs just added to the feel of the day. The site itself was brilliant but tough going, lots of ditches, concrete, stone and stinging nettles!

I felt the "medic" rule was used well and no one was left dead for longer than 5 minutes (unless Gareth forgot about you ) And the "regroup and reform on me" command was used well to simulate waves of men.

A big thank you to the 34th who took me under their wing as it was the first time I had done a U.S Infantry impression and was up to about 1am the night before learning how to put on my gaiters!

The only down side for me was a personal problem, as the bloody bazooka I brought along was a bit of a flop. First round went about 12 feet infront of me. With the shouts of "Short round" being spread along the line but luckily it didn't go off. The second went off quite a distance into a rock rubble pile and blew up just how I wanted it! This acted as a signal for the attack which we put in which we paid a heavy price for. The third round went again quite far but the shell clipped a peice of terrain and seperated into 2 without exploding. After that I went to re-gas the TAG shell and it wouldn't hold any gas Have to wait to the CNC metal ones come out which can handle 400 PSI me thinks.

Summing up great day, would 100% go to a game done by the same organisers! (When's the next one?? )

Thanks all for the kind comments and more importantly thanks everyone for attending and bringing a great attitude to help the event succeed

The comments and support we received on the day have inspired the Basterds to put on another event next year and hopefully you will all come back as it is always a pleasure to fight alongside/against such fine people.

Tony's site is fantastic and many people commented on how much they liked it, however it is small for a WW2 game and causes some problems in forming and running a gameplan so compromises have to be made. We felt the game was too shooty and it would have been nice to do a bit more scouting and non shooting activities. Also the need to keep to scripted and timetabled gameplan sometimes meant we pushed people a bit too hard. But thanks everyone for stoically bearing with us, on a larger site for next year hopefully we can correct these things

Again thanks to everyone for their support and thanks to Tony and his crew for use of his wonderful site

See you all next year

Got lost had a puncture eventually got there, what a great event, the site was great, the size just right for me, now knackered,oh I loved the buildings, great preparation, thanks to all the organisers and those that attended,it made my day after crappy time getting there, cheers fellers,so you all in May

What a day! Got in knackered last night and was too lazy to write anything up but a day later and I'm still grinning from ear to ear. I've said this to most of the organisers already but the day really was superbly run, managing to keep the two fights separate on a site of that size is no mean feat but we didn't see or hear anything from either the Americans or the Panzer Grenadiers before the large encounters took place. Hats off to my fellow Volks Grenadiers, our zug must have had the lion's share of the divison's veterans because when you guys dug your heels in it felt like we were totally immovable. That being said the Tommies fought excellently and there was some impressive marksmanship on their part, in particular, whoever it was sniping with the Lee-Enfield certainly earned his badge, he offed me behind the MG a number of times! Thanks to Andy who did a sterling job acting as Loader/spotter on the MG and took over each time I caught a BB with my head.
Big, big, massive thanks to Tony who not only helped the Basterds organise the day let me loose with his brand new MG42 after my rifle died in the morning, one hell of a piece of kit, and we had a great time with it. Sorry about the scratches!

P.S: Well done to Gareth, who managed to wear a steel helmet all day like a big boy

I also wanted to quickly thank everyone for such a great day.
Special thanks to my Volksgrenadier squad that put up with me as their commander. My German commands and attempt of proper Heer discipline were endured with a grin.
My sub squad leaders Muttley and Gordon did a great job of helping me trying to run some effective defence/attack.

Thanks again for your support!!!

It's what comes of having a small neck, mate! Weighs me down, but I'm learning to cope.

First of all a huge thank you to Tony who was an outstanding host. RIFT is a superb site and if anyone lives near it... GO! It'd be a regular skirmish site for me if I lived close to it.

Was well pleased with how it turned out in the end. Tim had written an awesome scenario, but I think all of us organising were made up over how smooth it went in the end. There was a bit more shooting than we would have liked; as Tim said the next one will have a more varied structure to it, but it did feel like breaking the Siegfried Line!

You as players all deserve huge credit. You got into the spirit of it. As the American C.O, I was really fortunate in having a load of good mates with me... though there were a fair few Judas's whose names have been taken who went over to the Brits. Cough. Ed. Cough. Jay. Cough. Jimbo. Cough. Wattsy. Cough. How could you?

Stut and his lads are always a great group to play against; you know you're getting a tough, hard fight. They mounted a series of solid defensive actions and a good counter attack at the rubble. Gave the 334th a run for its money. Next game, on a bigger site with no holds barred on manoeuvring, it'll be tough as nails. Huge props, lads.

Just a massive thanks to everyone for coming. Hopefully you all had fun and hopefully... and I think I can say this fairly safely... see you at the next one we put on.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Fantastic game, huge thanks to everybody involved for pulling off such an ambitious event. Just as I thought the novelty of using a bolt action had finally worn off along comes a game like this... still not stopped smiling!

Also huge thanks to the organizers for doing such a great job, the atmosphere was great and attention to detail with 'set dressing' really made a difference.

I'll look forward to the next one!

I think the posts to date have covered all the main points, as said in my original one, a very impressive plan to make the best use of small site. Knowing what can so easily happen with game organisation, I'm amazed it 'survived contact with the enemy'. Dadio commented that people got pushed a bit hard to make it happen, well, that is just war really, and we had plenty of opportunity to lie down dead on the ground You will occasionally get shooty bits, but I don't think it was excessive, and there are limits to the scouting etc you can do on a small site and I thought the section COs did a good job of managing the flow of people in and out. The German counterattacks were very scary and I was glad the Germans got the chance to attack a few times and not just be targets all day.

I had a few equipment failures, the Bren packed up after about 50 rounds and when I got it home and took it to bits I found a stone had made its way into the BB hopper! Not sure how that happened, but hopefully it is OK again now. The No. 4 was fine but I felt a bit outgunned by the afternoon and swapped to the Sten. The ammo limits worked well, SMGs blazed through 200 rounds in no time. My biggest casualties were my poor ammo boots, at least a dozen hobnails fell out, as did six of the screws holding the toe plates on. I suspect the soles had dried out over winter and as the ground was so dry at the game they didn't get wet on the day either. Repairs will be underway after several coats of dubbin to breath a bit of life back into the soles.

Anyway, thanks for a great day out. Now it is on to Kasserine!

Cheers
Martin