Spanish and Portuguese Military History,
Wargaming, and other stuff
The North-West Europe Campaign of 1944-1945 started with the landings in Normandy and ended with Field Marshal Montgomery taking the German military surrender of all German forces in Holland, Northwest Germany and Denmark on Lüneburg Heath in Northwest Germany
Brett Simpson has kindly been sharing photos of his Crossfire kit as he builds it up. He is doing some nice scratch building for his scenery.
This time, however, Brett shared the battle report from his first Crossfire game. Called the “Assault on Chez Patrick” after the British objective or “Operation Whitehall” after the British operational code name. Most words are Brett’s.
Back in June 2012 Andrew Fisher played my scenario for Crossfire novices and published an after action report on the Crossfire Forum. I’ve reproduced it here. All words are Andrew’s.
A few folk with relatives who served in the No. 1 (Spanish) Company of the Pioneer Corps have got in touch (see Spaniards in British Service during WW2). Brian Coles has even contributed some photos of this unit. So I thought this company deserves a page of its own.
Too many of my Crossfire Scenarios are draft and not play tested. This is because this website started as my wargaming notes and everything went on it, including unfinished work no matter how vague. With the move to WordPress I don’t do that any more; I now only post finished pieces. But I still have a lot of unfinished work on the site. Time to go back, tidy them up and most importantly play test them. And I could use some help.
Ross Kearns submitted a battle report for the Allied Dee Sector. All words are Ross’s.
Chris Harrod, Joe Harrison and I played the Seestrasse Sector part of Operation Crossfire. Chris was ISIS SUNRAY, commander of the attacking Allies/Soviets and host for the day. Joe was our guest from Peterborough and took the role of SONNE GUNTHER, commander of the Axis/German defenders. I was the UMPIRE and provided the kit. Steve Spence was OFFA and Michael Stringer was NORN, the Commander-in-Chiefs of the Allies and Axis respectively – of course they were only involved in our game via an erratic radio (email) link.
The event was fantastic. An exciting battle fought as part of an inspired one day campaign. Full marks to the Nikolas Lloyd (BIG CHEESE), who was the inspired genius behind the event and the Commander-in-Chief of the umpires on the day.
Here is the scenario should you want to play the Seestrasse Sector of Operation Crossfire. It is pretty much all the work of Nikolas Lloyd – the genius architect of Operation Crossfire. I have simply collated material from various emails and put them into my scenario format. I’ll post a Battle Report shortly.
This is a 3 Round Campaign set during the Normandy Campaign of 1944 with Crossfire as the tactical rules. I threw it together because Dick Bryant was interested in how to run my Kursk 3 Round outside the Eastern Front.
Last Sunday I helped put on a Crossfire participation game at SELWG 2013. I took a few shots of the Crossfire games and of the Carlist War table just behind us.
I needed a painting for my Fallschirmjaeger in a hurry – so Roland Davis could paint some more. So I took some snaps of my existing figures. This is one of my WW2 Painting Guides.
Dick Bryant sent through a battle report for my Malmedy Scenario. In fact he has played it twice (Game1 and Game2) but has only provided some summary comments for the second game.
The Firestorm Campaigning system is from the BattleFront crew. I haven’t actually seen Firestorm Bagration – the book with the campaign system in it – but there is a fair bit publically available and it is fairly easy to fill in the gaps. I wanted to figure out whether the system would be applicable to game systems other than Flames of War, specifically Crossfire, so this page is what I could deduce about the campaign system from what I could find and filling the gaps myself.
