Miniature Wargaming with Spudnick: AAR: Normandy Firefight: North African Firefight!

Friday, September 23, 2016

AAR: Normandy Firefight: North African Firefight!

It has been a moment, since my wife, Kalissa and I have picked up the Normandy Firefight rules. The great thing about this rules set is that you do not need much for it figure wise. The most complex part is dealing with percentages and keeping track of your individual figures damage and ammunition. It is not that bad of a game, considering you have individuals doing their individual actions with a nice flexibility. And there is nothing to say that you cannot shake things up a bit! Hence, we went to the desert.
I made this one desert mat earlier based on the comment that desert is fairly basic in wargaming, unless you had an oasis or a village of some sort. Though, in this game, we have a well for a kind of oasis feel, this was just to make the board even more interesting. I figure that if it is going to be two opposing scout parties of five, a drinking well for a source of water would be pretty worthy of a find to fight over. Otherwise, this board could work fine without such a feature, since there are rocks, grass, and hills.
For my wife, Kalissa, she was running her five British. This is who she had.

Sgt. Andrew Walker with his trusty Thompson Machine gun and one grenade.
Pvt. Charles Cox with an Lee-Enfield Rifle and one grenade.
Pvt. Zachary Blackborn with a Thompson and one grenade.
Pvt. Timothy Powell with a Lee-Enfield Rifle.
Pvt. Derek Robinson with a Lee-Enfield Rifle and one grenade.

As you can see, the British all have a grenade with exception of one man. You can arm them however you want. Part of the fun is making characters and seeing what one can do with their weapons. It is a card driven game, so each character is assigned an card.

I had my Germans to counter the British. Of course, it would be interesting to try out Italians with these rules. Here were my men.

Sgt. Raimond Kellerman with a MP40 and a grenade.
Pvt. Leon Fleischer with a KAR 98 Rifle.
Pvt. Dierich Keller with a MP40 and one grenade.
Pvt. Vinzenz Hoffman with a KAR 98 Rifle and two grenades.
Pvt. Max Lederman with a KAR 98 Rifle.

These was sure to be an interesting match up!

The first two turns involved get into positions worth defending. It was the third turn where the real action began. One of my riflemen took the first shot at one poor British devil on a long shot. Even though, it missed, I began to move with a theme. Anytime, I could finish a move, I would set the position of my guys in a "Kneeling" position given me a greater modifier for hits. Being "Prone" is even better than this, but it hard to manage in the rules.
Turn four had one of the Brits toss a grenade. One of the Germans did the same, since two shots of an MP40 could not hit worth anything against one guy in the open. Out of luck for both sides, the grenades did not do anything to anyone. One British guy ran into a German to bayonet him. He tried to repel the Englishmen, but got stabbed through the knee. The other MP40 fire ran out of bullets. With Hellfire, he was able to run away with only 20% damage!
On the other side, good old fashioned rifle fire took down the British Sargent in the chest. Other shots hit one poor Brit with a head shot, but he was barely alive. A luck shot got the one behind him with a prone German shot. In the end, another German grenade was thrown taking down the guy with a head wound. In short, my wife's British had a bad day. But grenades always make her smile!