Western Desert: 132ª Divisione corazzata "Ariete"

Back to WW2 and the Western Desert as a third force is added to our games of Armoured Storm - the Italians! All models are 3D prints from Butlers Printed Models - the high resolution resin, it is more expensive but worth it I think...

The bulk of the new force are M13/40 tanks, three platoons of five with a HQ tank.

There is also a platoon of the StuG-like Semovente da 75/18 self-propelled guns...

...and a platoon of L3/33 CC, the L3 tankette armed with Solothurn 20 mm anti-tank rifle. Not sure what use these will be against Crusaders and Matildas but more use than the twin MG basic variant!

Battlegroup NORTHAG: Setback at Sorga

Saturday saw the first game of 2026 as Andy and I went down Bristol Independent Gaming to play another game of Battlegroup NORTHAG using my 6mm miniatures. With elements of the Soviet forces pushing in to Bad Hersfeld, the Soviets looked to secure the right flank of their advance by advancing into the town of Sorga, a little to the east.

Using the same forces as the previous game (though this time we had some infantry to deploy if needed), the Soviet Forward Screen reconnoitred forward...

The US deployed a platoon of M60A3's hull down on the hill overlooking the suburbs of Sorga...

With M901s covering the left...

...and right flanks.

First blood went to the Americans as they targeted the T-64B's in the Soviet Forward Screen.

Only to see the Soviet Vanguard move up behind.

The US Vanguard also arrived, the M1s taking hull down positions next to some infantry equipped with M47 Dragon ATGMs.

Their fire devastated the Soviet Vanguard's advance!

As the smoke from burning T-64's covered the left of the battlefield, the Soviet Main Column of two T-64B companies and a BMP-2 company deployed on their right, concentrating their efforts there.

Aerial reconnaissance photos showed the daunting prospect facing the American defenders.

Their Main Column of two M60A3 platoons, a troop of two more M901s and a platoon of infantry in M113s then arrived...

The tanks moving forward to try and block the Soviet juggernaut...

Whilst the infantry APCs moved into the village outskirts to occupy the buildings.

The remnants of the Soviet Vanguard attempted to continue its advance to little effect, though they were tying down the M1s and an M901 for the time being.

The Soviets then unleashed their pre-aimed timed artillery barrage...

Which managed to pin the US FOO...

...and destroy two M113s in the infantry platoon, killing two infantry teams, and pinning the third.

For the Motherland! The two Soviet tank companies and infantry company moved forward towards the US defence line...

...which had suffered several casualties.

However the tables rapidly turned as a US artillery mission struck one of the T-64 companies, destroying two and pinning one tank.

The remaining M60 platoon move through the trees and opened fire on the shocked Soviets...

...taking out another three Soviet tanks!

With only the central tank company left in any state of effectiveness and the US moving their M1's and M60's in from the flanks to target it, I decided the Soviet advance should take a temporary break whilst some more artillery missions were called up from Division to break the resistance of the Yankee imperialists!

Another enjoyable game of Battlegroup NORTHAG, despite the losses incurred by the Vanguard I thought the Soviet Main Column would steamroller the Americans but the devastating artillery strike followed by the unerringly accurate fire from the M60s in the woods put paid to my dreams of liberating the village of Sorga from the fascist imperial oppressors!

Armoured Storm: First Clash at El Wadi Sha Wadi

Over the summer Andy and I tried out Dan Mersey's quick play WW2 tank game Armoured Storm using my collection of 6mm North Africa campaign tanks - and found it to be a huge amount of fun, with some very interesting tactical challenges.

The rules are pretty straight forward, most tanks have the same movement distances (unless Matildas which are very slow, or Crusaders which are fast on roads) and you use a D10 for hits and penetration, the challenge is with the Tactics phase when you use your Tactics Tokens (Germans have five, the British four) to chose what orders you want to employ in the turn - the key is whether you focus on what you want to do, or try and prevent the enemy from doing what they want by selecting the orders that would benefit them

There is no points system and for basic games you have a German company of three five tank platoons plus a couple of HQ tanks. The base core unit is the platoon.

Whilst the British have five three tanks platoons plus HQ tanks...

HQ tanks can operate independently - but will use up an order - or attached to a platoon for as long as you like...

The game uses 'measurement distances' so the rules can be used with different scale miniatures. 15mm miniatures use a measurement distance of 15cm, 6mm uses 5cm (I have subsequently made up some 'old school' red/white measuring sticks in 5cm bands which makes life much easier than a tape measure). This means most tanks move 10cm a turn which initially we felt was probably too slow but turned out to be perfect.

Firing is up to ten measurement distances (so 50cm in 6mm) and you need to roll equal to or higher on a D10 (a ten always hitting, a one always missing) to the range band with the usual modifiers for AFV size, rages is hull down, if you have chosen the Good Shooting tactic). If you hit you then see if your shot has penetrated the armour comparing your Penetration factor at the range you are shooting to the armour rating. If it is equal to or high you roll a D10 on the Penetrating Shot table for the effect, if it is lower on the Non-Penetrating Shot table.

You are more likely to knock out an enemy tank with a Penetrating Shot, but a Non-Penetrating Shot can Damage an enemy tank and two of those will knock it out - the Recover tactic allows you to repair damaged tanks which is useful to prevent your opponent finishing them off but it takes one of your valuable order tokens which you could have been using for firing at the enemy - choices!

So for our first game we played a straight forward encounter in the desert with both sides advancing towards each other...

The Crusaders had the better of things to start with, the PzIII's struggling to penetrate the Crusader frontal armour at longer ranges.

The Crusader's were more effective...

Having damaged a couple of Crusaders (meaning they were unable to fire until repaired) the Germans pushed forward to close the firing ranges to a more effective one for them.

One platoon of Crusaders pushed towards the German flank...

Brewing up one of the PzIII's.

However the Germans overloaded the British right, sweeping one platoon behind the line of Crusaders...

...destroying one of the Crusader platoons. The loss of a platoon sees you lose a Tactic Token which impacts your ability to get your remaining tanks to do things. With larger platoons than the British this gives the Germans an advantage which reflects their superior tactical ability in the Desert War.

The British did manage to recover slightly...

And rushed a platoon from their left flank to the centre.

But were not quite able to wipe out an enemy tank platoon to inflict a Tactic Token loss on the Germans.

The reinforcing platoon rushing towards the centre...

Unfortunately left its flank exposed to a third advancing PzIII platoon...

And with the Germans having the advantage of an additional Tactic Token over the British, the end result was inevitable!

With the PzIII's pushing forward it was clear that the 8th Army had suffered another setback in the desert...

The end of the game seeing several burning Crusaders scattered across the battlefield!

All in all Armoured Storm is a great little game. It is not a fully blown combined arms WW2 game, but does not pretend to be (although there are rules in the Western Desert and Eastern Front books to include the likes of airstrikes, infantry, AT guns, minefields etc). It would be unfair however to label it a beer and pretzels game as the Tactics Board gives it a nuance that most simple games don't have.

If you have a collection of tanks in any scale from 15mm to 6mm I'd recommend picking up a copy of Armoured Storm and getting them on the table for a fun evening

Chain of Command: Verteidigung des Obstgartens

Having a look through the hundreds of photos of games played in 2025 I came across this 15mm Chain of Command Normandy '44 game played last February...

With Phil and Jenny providing th figures and terrain it looked as wonderful as usual.

The British were tasked with evicting the Germans from the Norman farmhouse, basing one section in the farmhouse, one in the neighbouring building and the third in the orchard to prevent any outflanking.

The problem that now created from a game point of view was that the British player was aware that there were Germans in position to prevent a flank attack, despite the fact the battlefield was covered in hedges and trees (I appreciate I could have held off deploying them, but the game mechanisms may well have resulted in my not being able to subsequently activate and deploy them leaving the flank undefended). I find the inability to deploy hidden units, as you can in I Ain't Been Shot Mum with blinds, is frustrating.

This was evidenced by the British player advancing a section up to but just outside visibility range of the supposed hidden Germans that in real life he would not have know were there (or not) without scouting.

To reinforce the ludicrousness the British deployed their mortars...

...and dropped smoke in front of the Germans they didn't know were there!

The British then brought up a Sherman, which they kept well back from any potential panzerfaust ambush points...

Having a big bag of cotton wool, they then dropped even more smoke on the battlefield! :-)

The British then pushed a section up on the German left...

Suppressing the defenders in the house...

But coming a cropper against a dynamic German counter-attack by the section who had been twiddling their thumbs on the right (again not sure whether real troops would leave an occupied position to run blindly down a road towards the sound of gunfire but...)

Meanwhile in the centre the second German section opened up on the British creeping through the orchard...

A brief firefight occurring with minimal casualties on both sides.

At this point we called it a day, the British were unlikely to be able to dislodge the Germans and no one fancied not moving and just rolling dice for the next hour when the pub beckoned...

As you might have gathered as lovely as the game looked, it wasn't a particularly inspiring game in itself and somewhat reflected my experience with Chain of Command in 2025. Everyone tells me it is a great set of rules but most of the games were not a lot of fun to play.