FALL-IN! Rattenkrieg, and an Update!

Greetings all,
Apologies for my enforced absence.  It's been too long since my last post with a scant few wargaming things to talk about UNTIL NOW!

The HMGS fall wargaming convention "Fall In" was held yesterday and Dave F and I attended.

While no SOUND OFFICERS CALL T-Shirts (this time) we did manage to each play a different WWII game and mend a table in "Wally's Basement" which is the flea market area and make a killing in the vendor area.  (thanks Dave - I owe you half of the cost of the table still).

Yours truly with my stuff on the left, Dave's stuff on the right.

I am happy to report that I sold literally everything I brought (even if some were for a dollar lol) and made 130 bucks off my rules and plastic WWII stuff I brought.  Interestingly, the things I thought would sell quickly, didn't, and the things I thought would languish on the table, left almost immediately.  The armourfast kits were literally all scarfed up by 2 to 3 people.  (5 bucks a piece for each kit).

While at the convention, I played in a WWII Rapid Fire game entitled "Rattenkrieg" or rat's war in Stalingrad, while Dave played a Battlegroup: Tobruk game.  The Rapid Fire game was a ton of fun and was part of a campaign that was put on by a group in Maryland who developed special Stalingrad rules for Rapid Fire with players fighting on a 5 x 4 table (yes with Rapid Fire!) fighting to literally control city blocks with battalions of infantry.  It was pretty awesome.

These guys planned to play a 2 day campaign over the course of the weekend.  I played in the Saturday push.  5 hours of gaming fun and carnage.

BG Tobruk Game that Dave would play in being set up.

The Rapid Fire game was fun, albeit a little tedious with constantly counting infantry.  Soviet infantry were mostly hidden and I had no idea where they were until I closed on a building location and then they popped out in company strength.  What a mess.  The game literally came down to a MASSIVE barrage against Pavlov's House with a full battalion opening fire and the 150cm Assault Guns blowing the sh*t out of them, then storming the place.  Came down to 1 Soviet figure left (a squad?) on turn 6 still alive in the house after all that combat and they won.  But we did push the frontline trace up and captured the first immediate block to our front.  Moving on Pavlov's house was me getting greedy and trying to support the attack up the center.

2 German Battalions moving out to capture the city center!

Soviet resistance is brutal!  

Gorgeous terrain!

German "elite" battalion with flamethrowers

Pavlov's House stands menacing.

AT Gun would serve me very well.

Ambush!

Anti Tank Gun!

All of the smoke mission FAILED.  The 1st Battalion advances under literally no smoke cover.

German breakthrough on the right!

Soviets reinforcing their block.

Spotters for the 120mm Mortars.  White snow camo.

Pavlov's house was a stronghold.

The final, apocalyptic advance against the house

My second battalion captured the final portion of the center block!  At least the D2 objectives were captured.

I'm just going to leave this right here...

So all in all lots of fun at FALL IN yesterday.  Some updates for you all - I plan on cleaning up all of my BATTLEGROUP: REFORGER Modern Battlegroup materials and re-releasing them for everyone's use as well as playing them more.  In absence of the "real thing" I figured there's no harm in enabling the Battlegroup Modern creative juices to flow!  I hope everyone has a great week.  I'll have to review all of my loot I picked up at FALL IN in another post.