Battle of Neumarkt

Last Saturday we convened at Tony’s for a re-fight of the Battle of Neumarkt using his C&CN variant Ramekin rules. Tony has already posted on the game here so I'll just get straight to my own photos that hopefully captured the flavour of the day.

The Bavarians deployed in and around the town. These are all
figures from Tony's collection and very smart they look too.

Most of the Austrians were S-Range Minifigs from Goya's
collection. They were backed up with a few Hinton Hunt units
from Nigel and myself.

A look at the Bavarians from the Austrian perspective.

It was quite a crush trying to fit in the French reserves as they
poured over the bridge behind the town.

The French infantry were all from Tony's collection.

I love that church model!

Bessieres arrives to take personal control of the field. The
figure is the Hinton Hunt one from my own collection. I bought
this figure from Tony via eBay many years ago (long before I
first met him) so it was nice to be able to bring him to visit his
old home - the paint-work is Tony's.

A general view along the entire field, despite the number of
units in play there is still a lot of empty space on the 10' x 5'
table.

The Bavarians were soon well supported by French infantry.

The situation at the end of play from the Franco-Bavarian side
of the table. In the end weight of numbers told and the
Austrians had a creditable win.

This was the biggest game we have tried so far (we had over 20 Austrian infantry units) and I think we learnt a bit in the process about how to handle such large forces, Tony touches on the issues around the deployment of reserves in his blog-post.

Thanks to Tony for all his efforts in designing the scenario and preparing the terrain, it was another enjoyable game played in great company.

Beaufighter Boys (Off Topic #26)

This book Beaufighter Boys by Graham Pitchfork has just been released by Grub Street Books. The author has compiled tales of Beaufighter crews illustrating the roles and theatres of war in which the aircraft was employed during WW2. The text is illustrated with plenty of black and white photos, many of which have never been published before.

Originally researched a few years ago but not completed until now, most of the accounts are written by the participants themselves or as a result of interviews with them. Sadly, the majority of these Beaufighter veterans have now passed away but their stories should appeal to anyone with an interest in the air war in WW2.

My father WO Dennis Spencer DFC is featured in chapter 22 of the book where he describes the techniques used to navigate at low level across the Burmese jungle, deep behind enemy lines (the extract is from his memoir Looking Backwards over Burma).