This After Action report (AAR) is from a local tournament here in Auckland, New Zealand. BattleCry is a well
organised conventions with mostly GW games but it also includes a few historical games and vendors and LARPers. The overall
feedback was very positive and a lot of people commented on the quality of the terrain and the armies. The venue was also very
nice but it did get a little hot (being the middle of summer here).
The tournament had 8 players and we were using the WRG 1950-2000 rules and our figures were in 6mm scale (1/300th)
scale. The theme of the competition was "Cold War Classics" with historical armies up to, and including 1979. Because of
the earlier era we dropped the points down to a N of 3000pts (this means armies were 9000pts for Encounter games) but
there were still some big armies. There were 4 rounds of competition spread over 2 days and each round was 4 hours. We
setup the tables at the beginning of the tournament and then rotated tables to save repositioning the terrain each time
(although a few pieces were shuffled around after some obvious flaws were noticed).
There was a good variety of armies (although mostly Western European) involved :-
Belgians (which somehow became Americans on day two)
British Recce with 36 Scorpions!
British armoured with early Chieftains and FV432s
Soviet Motor Rifle - T-64s and BMP1s
South African Mechanised with Oliphant 1As and Ratels
Hordes of Egyptians with T55, T62s, BTR60s
West German mechanised Infantry with lots of infantry in M113
Swedish mechanised with 20 S-Tanks and PBV302 APCs (my army).
Overall the competition went well and everyone enjoyed themselves. The lower tech armies allowed for some more interesting
lists and a bit more manuoerve on the tables as a lot of tanks struggled to hit at ranges over 2000 metres. We will run this
again next year as everyone was keen to be involved again and perhaps with a different theme.
And finally a special thanks to Dan who sent me some of his photos, as most of mine were rubbish.
Some lovely terrain by Steve with great hedge lined roads and fields. And the Timecast towns aren't too bad either with lots of extra details added such as cell towers, lamp posts and childrens play areas.
This is all my terrain and includes some new terrain and my motorway. The third picture shows the Marienborn border crossing which I completed in time for this convention. If you look closely you can see some T-64s driving through the checkpoint!
More great terrain from Steve in the form of some more towns. These are a mix of Timecast and Military Miniatures and are very nicely based on textured bases. The popular trees in the photos are K&M and the roads are resin.
A completely unhistorical game in the desert as the American forces are advancing through the town to engage with Swedish forces! In the background of the second picture you can see the lovely ferry model by Old Crow and the third picture shows the whole port with a container ship and tugs.
M60s backed up by M551 Sheridans. The Sheridans performed very well with their missiles knocking out a lot of S-Tanks in our game. You can see in the second photo various M113s driving along the coastline.
A few of closeups of the M551 Sheridans and M150 TOW vehicles. The M109s SP155mm are placed on the baseline to represent off-table artillery. The Soviet player was the only player to use on table artillery in the form of 2S1 SP122mm guns, but they hardly fired a shot and in the last game they were used in a direct fire role.
Here is the Swedish forces I used and there is a mix of vehicles including S-Tanks, TGB11 AT vehicles, Brobv941 bridgelayer (both conversions) and some PBV302s in the back in the first picture. The second photo shows the fate of most of my S-Tanks during the tournament!
The first photo shows South African Oliphants lined up on a ridge against the Egyptians. This was a brutal game with well over 50% casualties either side. The second picture shows a Ratel company driving across some lush European terrain.