Posh Lard 2019

On Sunday, still a little hoarse from cheering on Liverpool's Champions League Final victory the night before, I got up early to drive down to Peterborough for the first ever Posh Lard.

What is a Posh Lard?  I'm so glad you asked.  It was a day of Too Fat Lardies games organised by Peterborough Wargames Club.  At organiser Mike Whittaker's request, I was taking my Menton 1940 game as the theme was "Invasion".

The journey down took me just shy of two hours without a rest stop and was very straightforward.

I arrived to find three tables, two of them already set up with lovely terrain - the Peterborough club's 15mm Omaha Beach game looked great as did the Gravesend club's Ste Mere Eglise in 28mm.

I managed to run the game twice, both times with two players.  In the first game, Carl played the French while Kevin led an Italian fusilieri platoon.

Carl chose to take a tripod-mounted machine-gun and a medical orderly for his support choices.

Carl admires Richard P's hotel

I'd forgotten to pack the box of Mediterranean houses so the French defensive position was dominated by Richard Phillips's marvellous hotel.  This led Kevin to choose a mortar section and observer as his first support choice.  He reckoned the French would be bound to use the hotel as the keystone of their defence and if he waited to call in a mortar barrage he could pin down a significant portion of their force therein.  Kevin bought the engineer flamethrower team with rest of his support points.

Carl and Kevin at play whilst Richard 'Stripy Blazer' Clarke
admires the Ste Mere Eglise table

The woods on the southern flank proved attractive to the Italian attackers.

The first game saw Carl deploy his MMG and one section in the hotel and Kevin call down a mortar barrage that pinned them in place.  Carl eventually built up a chain of command dice to end the Turn and so stop the barrage but by the time he'd done so Kevin had one too and so was able to keep the mortars firing.

Carl the deployed a second section and his platoon sergeant on one of the terraced hills on the north side of the table. Unfortunately this just put them into the cross-fire from the four machine-guns in the two Italian sections.

By lunchtime Carl was down to one point of Force Morale so we called it a day and went to M&S for sandwiches.

Game two featured Ian (French) and John (Italians).  I decided to pitch in and play the Blackshirt militia in the three player version of the scenario.  Given the disparity in forces, Ian had a completed CoC die at the start of the game.

This time I remembered to add the war memorial I'd made specially for this table and I added a bit more terrain to give the defending French some more deployment options.

Somewhat remarkably, both players chose the same support options as their respective predecessors had done.  Once more an Italian section deployed in the woods.  Once more the mortar observer deployed in the villa with the swimming pool.  Once more the French MMG and a section deployed in the hotel and once more the mortars targeted them.

This time, however, things were very different.  The Italian infantry deploying from the jump-off-point at the swimming pool villa took heavy casualties from the MMG and were soon bogged down.  The French kept upon withering fire on the Italian fucilieri, and my Blackshirts never had the command dice to do anything useful in taking the pressure off.  

The mortar was far less effective. With the arrival of the first spotting round, Ian pulled his troops back to the rear of the hotel, thus avoiding being trapped under the mortar barrage when it arrived.  The Italian mortars only cover a 12" square area.

In the end (about 4 o'clock) John's force morale was down to one and we called it a day.

I really enjoyed both games and I have to say both were played in a splendid spirit.

I'd highly recommend anyone who enjoys Too Fat Lardies games to give Posh Lard a try if Mike organises another one.  I'll certainly attend if family commitments allow.  I'm also looking at the Ebor Lard (near York) in September.  I'd like a chance to put on a Mexican Adventure Sharp Practice game at an event.