Falen Furball

[pierre the shy]

Last night we welcomed Paul R back to our (reasonably) regular Saturday evening gaming slot.

Currently we are playing my fictional Falen Furball scenario using Two Fat Lardies If the Lord Spares Us rules with some experimental division HQ house rules (which actually appear to work well !   )

In order to use the Pendraken figures that I have to hand its basically the Battle of Halen but with a reinforced cavalry brigade and infantry brigade from the BEF instead of the Belgian Cavalry Division and 4th Mixed Brigade.

It's August 1914 and the BEF has been deployed directly to the Belgian border facing Germany. The German 13th Cavalry Division has been ordered to seize the village of Falen and secure the only bridge over the River Gete.

So far the two leading German Cavalry brigades have managed to cross the Gete via quickly constructed pontoon bridges and have pushed back the two British wings, albeit while incurring heavy losses themselves. The storming of the bridge at Falen by the Divisional Jager battalion was achieved, but they were unceremoniously repulsed by the dismounted British cavalry holding the village itself.

With both sides expecting the imminent arrival of reinforcements the battle still has a way to go....plenty of twists still to come.

Sorry the RFC and Aviation Service have both been too busy to take any recce photos of the battle so far, but next week I'll try and arrange a sortie or two.

If anyone's interested in the divisional level command house rules we are trialing I'll post them here.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Sounds like a good little scrap!

[paulr]

It is jolly good fun and particularly welcome after over a month of no real gaming

[GrumpyOldMan]

Hello PtS

If anyone's interested in the divisional level command house rules we are trialing I'll post them here.

You can never have enough Rules, etc. Please post them here  .

And get on to those Fly Boys to get the recce photos happening.

Cheers

GrumpyOldMan

[pierre the shy]

We played the final part of the Falen Furball game last Saturday.

Everyone thought the divisional command house rules worked very effectively and that the scenario was pretty good (especially once all the British Artillery cards were included in the deck  )

The British Territorial infantry brigade arrived quite promptly and held the line around Falen village while the reinforcing German cavalry brigade was held up a bit crossing the pontoon bridge over the river Gete.

While Paul and I both eventually managed to largely destroy the British cyclist battalion and a dismounted Yeomanry Regiment respectively the cost to our own regiments was too great despite some well timed attacks.

The Jagers eventually got into the village and occupied one of the BUA's (thanks to the 60pdr batteries rolling badly and ending up firing short and disrupting their own troops defending the village) but they couldn't kick on to throw out the
remaining British defenders from the rest of the village.

So victory to the British defenders this time.....Jolly good show chaps 

P.S. Took some pics of the game but the staff at HQ have yet to find the USB cord to actually down them, but they will be forthcoming soon.

Paul has started on the remaining 1914 stuff so watch out Tommy....more footslogers are coming!     

[paulr]

The highlights for me were close assaulting a section of 18pdrs and later close assaulting and capturing a British Brigade HQ

The low light was having a half squadron of British Yeomanry, who were out numbered 3 to 1, fight for a total of 6 rounds of melee
They crippled two squadrons of German Dragoons 

A very enjoyable game and a challenging scenario which could have gone either way