Ebor Lard 2025

I drove up to North Yorkshire on Saturday for this year's Ebor Lard. It's one of my favourite wargames events of the the year and I was disappointed to miss it last year due to a family holiday.

In the morning I played in Johno Rollinson's lovely-looking Western Desert game.

The outskirts of Bardia. The Australians were expected from the road 
at top left of the picture.

Using the Chain of Command 2 rules, this was a platoon-a-side affair depicting the first action of the 15th Australian Division. The Diggers (commanded by Steve Porter and Ian Hammond) were pushing into Italian-held Bardia and were tasked with capturing a supply dump before its owners (Jason South and I) could blow it up!

The Supply dump occupied the triangular compound in the picture above.

Jason and I chose a 47mm AT gun (in case the Aussies brought tanks), a roadblock, and a couple of lengths of barbed wire. We also got two free entrenchments but we ended up deploying them stupidly and they were of little use during the game.

The roadblock is between the two houses near the 
damaged truck, the barbed wire beyond at the base
of the hill.

The Patrol Phase was over very quickly, somewhat to the surprise of both sides. We ended up with a skewed battle with the Australians' centre of mass way over on the Italian left.

Italian Jump-off-Points in red, Australian in blue

The game kicked off with the Australian players rolling three sixes thus ending the Turn and with it their pre-game bombardment. However, things went well for them from that point onwards. Despite a hastily deployed Italian anti-tank gun...

... their carrier section were able to rush forward and lock down the  Italian JoP beside the roadblock  before killing the gun crew at close range.

The Diggers surged forward over the next few phases.

Reduced to two, poorly placed, JoPs the Italians were in no position to put together a defensive line with interlocking fire. We managed to get an attached Afrika Korps section into the front of our position and decided that much of the Italian platoon should concentrate on setting the explosive charges.

One Italian squad moved up on the right, though.

Italian squads are huge and frequently
difficult to manage

2" mortar smoke reduced casualties on both sides and an Australian close assault was beaten off by the Germans.

Two Italian light machine-gun teams managed to occupy a building that gave them limited ability to enfilade the road in front of the German position but they lost their corporal putting the defenders' Force Morale down to dangerous levels.

In the end the Italians got their charges set and started the Final Countdown mechanism. With phases running out they were in the process of bugging out when an Aussie lieutenant made a dash into the compound to try and cut the wires to the explosives. 

He needed to score an 8 or higher on his movement dice but rolled seven! The retreating Afrika Korps men tried to drag him out of the compounds gateway as they passed but were unsuccessful.

Johno declared the game a marginal Italian victory but to be honest I think their Force Morale would have reached zero had the casualties for Germans caught in the blast been correctly assessed.

This was a fabulous game played in a great spirit (both sides pointing out things their opponents had missed), that both sides thought they'd lost at several points, and that went down to the last die roll of the last Phase. Terrific stuff!

I tried to capture some shots of all the other games:

David Hunter's Of Gongolfin and the Ruin of Maerbad,
Midgard Heroic Battles rules

Joe Bilton's Normandie '44
Chain of Command 2

Matt Slade's 1066 And All That (Hastings),
Midgard Heroic Battles

Ian Hemingway's What a Scaver,
What a Cowboy variant

Charley Walker's The Nelson Touch,
Kiss Me Hardy 2

John Savage's Tet à Tet, Vietnam variant Chain of Command 2

I'll share more pics in a future post but now on with the afternoon game.

This was Malcolm Bowe's Yom Kippur '73 game using the What a Tanker game system. I'd played WaT a couple of times previously and found that it worked OK but wasn't something I'd rush back to. The experience of the afternoon did nothing to enhance my opinion of the rules.

Malcolm's 10-12mm scale models were nicely painted and the use of dummy tank markers to disguise the enemy until actually acquired was interesting.

The MDF tank "dashboards" worked well and the terrain was convincingly Sinai-like.

Ultimately though, for me, the game failed. Let me express this in terms of the Simulation-Game-Narrative triangle.

As a simulation of Cold War era tank combat I couldn't buy it, particularly as on several occasions tanks were able to drive right up in front of an opponent, circle around behind them, and then shoot them a close range in the rear armour! This might be just believable among the hedgerows of Normandy but in the flat plains of Sinai it was simply ludicrous.

As a game, ideally testing opponents' skill and rewarding astute and informed play, it also failed. Apart from the complete inability to defend against the unrealistic tactics described above, the Israelis' only defence against the Saggers was to hope for improbably good luck. 

A further thought on mature reflection: the game was set on only the second day of the war so the Saggers were a new factor and making them impossible to defend against might just be realistic. 

Finally as a narrative, I found the game unengaging. Because the above factors made progress across the table of only marginal value and because the automatic replacement of casualties with new tanks meant there was little progress towards achievement of aims, the game devolved into a series of largely unconnected, mechanistic interactions.

I'm genuinely sorry to be so brutal in my assessment. Maybe it was just me; the other players seemed to enjoy it despite agreeing that the game bore little resemblance to reality.

I want to give some thought as to how WaT might be used to simulate modern warfare on the open plains of Sinai. Certainly some kind of overwatch/interruption mechanism is essential. 

As I understand it, once the initial shock had worn off, Israeli tank commanders adopted a number of measures to respond to Sagger ATGWs including popping smoke, reversing into their own dust cloud and having friends on overwatch to fire at and hopefully suppress the missile controller. Maybe something could be added to the scenario to reflect these factors.

-o0o-

On to happier matters. The whole event went off in the friendliest of manners and the evening social, with steak dinners at a pop-up restaurant on a local beef farm, was definitely the best of any Lardy Day I've attended. Well done John Savage for a stellar job of organisation despite some challenges in the months prior!