Putt putt motorcycles

 This weekend was our club's annual memorial event for our late friend Nick, who we lost 8 years ago. A restricted MW Flames of War event lead me running an absurd Italian Motociclisti company you can see here: Telegraphing my Super Secret Tech again

Game 1: Valley of Death 

Clubmate Richard walked his British Rifle company into the Valley of Death (in hindsight, I needed to attack in this game and do this with motorcycles to draw obvious comparisons....) and basically shoved so much stuff up the board, I didn't have the material to stop him! 

 

My Semoventes eventually saw off his Death or Glory Valentines (they chose death over glory) but everything took too long and my force was way too small to hold off all that infantry, even once I'd managed to remove Richard's carriers and Valentines. 

 

 On the left of this photo you can see the highlight of the whole game - the remnant of my AB41 platoon which was overrun and captured by thieving British infantrymen. They had the gall to try and shoot up my Semoventes before MGing the cavalry desperately riding to the rescue! 

Game 2: Bridgehead

The second game saw me attacking around the flanks of Bob's Grenadiers. These two photos sum up the game: 

 

On my left, most of my army ran into an entrenched Assault Pioneer platoon and in the end, after six or seven turns, I had one 47mm gun on the objective held by 4 81mm mortars. A stalemate if ever...

 

 On my right, I thought I should be able to comfortably roll up 3 PaK38s and a couple of SMG teams before Bob's reinforcements arrived. When I lost an entire infantry platoon counterattacking into one gun (literally, one team at a time....) that whole thing fell apart. 

In the end, I assaulted Semovente 75s into a forest and nearly routed the defending grenadiers but on the right, I lost all my troops, including my CO, an the company broke and I lost!

Game 3: King of the Hill

My last game was against clubmate Pat, running late '43 Grenadiers.  

I deployed a bit conservatively with some of my troops, hoping to be able to send the second infantry platoon to ride to the rescue of whichever objective looked like a goer. In the end, this is what it looked like: 

I threw SO MANY dice at that building full of grenadiers and didn't kill a gosh darn one. And the assault was shot off without even trying by the time I had to do it. In the end, Semoventes into a forest again and the expending of a whole infantry platoon to pare back Pat's defences (and his utter inability to unpin his HMG platoon) squeaked me home in that forest. 

Thoughts?

This list was not great. Turns out (and no one is shocked) that 5 stand platoons on motorcycles, that don't make them meaningfully faster doesn't go well - especially once you add Passaglia Bombs and the Motorbikes, making them 9 points each! But I suspect it might still have some legs as a second formation alongside an armoured company. Being able to get some small supporting infantry and a bunch of useful things (and some HMGs, but hey) as core assets in a company could be hugely useful. 

More Thoughts

The important thing about RD is that it's a fun day out with a bunch of friends and an excuse to get together, talk a lot of stupid and remember the passing of one of the best of us and that was the day I had. Many, many laughs over some utter absurdity. 

Next Time

Some painted models of some sort and a bit of a workbench pending the arrival of some bits off a local auction site...