You can read more about it on this site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Villers-Bocage
This photo shows the main town of Villers-Bocage with British vehicles parked along the side of the road each of which was worth an unknown number of points which would be collected by the German players once they knocked them out.
This photo shows the town in it's place on the much larger 20'x12' table that the game was fought over with a large pop-up section in the middle.
The lurking Tiger of Michael Wittmann played by Andy Nicolson.
All the allied players started off with a tank column like my French Shermans and came on the table at a selection of points scattered around the large table.
Apart from Wittmann and his side kick who were in Tigers the other four German players started of with groups of Panzer IV's
Angus' Irish Guards managed to get themselves into a bit of a pickle and eventually had to
pull back behind my French where we formed a tank phalanx and even Colin Jack's Canadian
got into the action.
The Canadians even went Tiger hunting in Villers-Bocage.
As if having Tigers and Panzer IV's wasn't enough the Germans started bringing on Panther's as reinforcements. This one was Barry Hilton's and didn't even manage to fire a shot as I kept playing event cards on it and Colin and myself using it as target practice.
More targets for the Krauts
Sherman target practice.
The Germans were also on target sometimes much to the surprise of my infantry who were even more surprised the next move as the US Airforce plastered them in a miss-placed bomb run which took out half my armour and most of these infantry.
The game ended up an Allied victory as they managed to blunt every German attack and even killed Wittmann, twice!!! It appears that he was the sole survivor of his tiger being blown to bits by Peter Nicolson (Andy's brother) and eventually was killed in a commandeered panzer IV by Adrian Howe.
Outstanding set
ReplyDeleteThanks Mark, it was a fun weekend to take part in.
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