Cold Wars 2011 Part Three: Gnomes!

This con's GW events covered Verdun. In the Saturday afternoon session, German forces were tasked to take the trenches outside of the village.

The Germans prepare for battle.

The Germans set up with a heavy armor presence on their left, plus a few dinosaurs for good measure, the cav formed the middle, and their right was standard infantry, the witch, and a few good pirates.

The Village, just prior to deployment

The allies seemed to field an adequate force for defense. French forces occupied the trench with the bunker, the Swiss De Fooze (sp) occupied the center and the far side was a group of Sikhs with a machine gun, personally command by me. There were scores of Highlanders and Irish waiting in the village in case part of the trench line fell. One lone Gnomenizer tank sat at the break on the near side of the board.

The French. Only the faithful dog perished...

The early turns involved an all-out charge by the Germans, and lots of ineffectual special weapons fire. Mortars and machineguns might as well have been firing gumdrops. The Allied Gnomenizer tank did have some success slowing down the dinosaurs and oncoming tanks, but no serious damage. The Germans fateful error the entire game was focusing its mortars on the French bunker, never completely realizing the bunker was completely unoccupied! Only one errant shot managed to veer off and kill the French medic! Are we sure the German artillery officer's name wasn't Von Vick?

When Elephants Go Bad..

In the middle rounds, the German artillery found its mark on the Sikh War Elephant. The beserk elephant spent three rounds charging forward, mercilessly trampling a whole unit of Swiss reserves, terrorizing the Sikhs in the trench, and finally demolishing pirate catapult!

Utter Devastation on the trenches

Despite the Sikh's machine guns hitting true, the German cav survived long enough to hit the trenchline. The Sikhs had jumped out of the trench to volley fire and the bunnies barely made it to the line with the charge. It was a bloody, tragic affair for the Sikhs, but the triumphant
Bunny cav was decimated by second line troops, the one who had fallen in the trenches put out of their misery by the Irish cav.

Jurassic Cheese

Meanwhile, a unit of Swiss, under the command of a young officer, had successfully tunnelled from the rear and popped out in the middle of the German Dino assault. The Swiss Cheese Thrower fired *shooka shooka "1"* and the device exploded. The wall of molten cheese did manage to catch the T-rex, who otherwise just would not die. The cheese wall effectively cut off the French defended side, diverting the remaining Germans between the hardened De Fooz Swiss in the center and the crumlbing Sikh flank.

At the end, the Germans and the Witch reached the Sikh trench, the Swiss De Fooz had layed a swath of dairy devastatation to block the flank from getting further comprimised. As reserve Sikhs charged forward to retake the line, the game was called. The Germans had gained a foothold in the trenches, but the majority of the army fell back to reorganize with the next wave.

The most heroic of all the actions during the battle came from the Tan Swiss. Their diggers had braved significant danger to dig a long tunnel to reach the enemy. After the cheese thrower exploded, they frantically dug underneth each trapped Swiss gnome to rescue them from the Cheese Suffocation Rule. Not a single Tan Swiss perished in the incident.

Above is a picture of De Fooz's officer, riding atop a rabbit. Except for the same varnish shine my guys suffer from the entire unit was a pleasure to look at, and the young man commanding them certainly earned a field promotion.

I was only able to help set up for part two and play another hour and a half of it. The trench line shifted up towards German deployment, and a bit diagonally. The few Germans and the Witch were still in the trench, but the others were just coming on the board. The Allies regrouped in the town and decided to move out to retake the trenches. In a mirror image of the previous game the bunkered trench had significant casulaties, both T-Rex and Vampire-related.
The ride back to Wilkes-Barre was long and dark, so I had to depart, even as the going was getting good. The Sikh Elephant had gone berserk again, but this time no casualties, and I left the con with this image in the middle of the battlefield.

I think the fun was just getting started