Virtual Lard

Appropriate tea mug for the day, reinforced with a second cup in a thermos.

On Twitter I am connected to a lot of Lardies around the world. In the UK, the Lard community have been organizing successful Lardy Games Days over the last few years, which the rest of us have only been able to enjoy vicariously. With Covid restrictions everywhere, one of the Lardies, Jeremy, started putting them on line as Virtual Lard. I heard the buzz with VL3, tried to register for a game in VL4, but it was booked up by the time I remembered. So this time I set a reminder on my phone, got myself up to speed with game choices and how to register etc. and had my 6 choices sent in within 5 minutes of registration opening at 1800 hrs GMT (or 1300 and the middle of my work day my time!).

My screen view

Being 5 hours behind the UK, I wasn’t going to sign up for a morning session game. I got my 3rd choice, a Chain of Command game in the afternoon slot using rule variants for WW1 and run by Alex, who is a WW1 battlefield archaeologist. Alex has the Storm of Steel Wargaming YouTube channel and blog. So a 0930 start time for me, and this being what should have been Hot Lead weekend, I even had my traditional Hot Lead headache, but a hot shower and 3 mugs of tea saw me right.

Thanks to Alex for sending me these pictures.

Alex’s set up for the game

Stokes mortar barrage pins the Germans

Broken Germans fleeing through the barrage

British bring their two tanks up, which looked more threatening than they were actually effective

The game was based upon the British attack through Bourlon Wood during the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. The Germans were played by Trevor in Nebraska, while Peter in Cornwall and I ran the British, all hosted on Alex’s table in Yorkshire.

Peter and I tried pushing up through the woods on the right of the ruined building, which was a hunting lodge that Alex actually excavated a few years ago. Our rifle grenade section in the ruins did good work knocking out a Spandau team, but anyone trying to push past the woods to engage the German trenches got hammered. Our Lewis gun section almost routed off table and our Bomber section evaporated. We got our tanks up, without either breaking down, were able to bring our guns to bear on the trenches and then brought in a barrage from some Stokes mortars. We pushed our rifle section up beside the tanks to charge in as soon as the barrage lifted.

Sensing that he was going to be whittled away, Trevor charged out with two sections, lead by his Leutnant and armed with bundle grenades to destroy the tanks. British Force Morale was at 3, so any set back would probably end the game for us. A vicious hand to hand fight developed, but snatching victory from the iron jaws of defeat, I rolled 8 kills to his 4, breaking the charge and his two sections. German Force Morale plummeted from 5 to 0! A narrow British victory.

Last weekend I also helped Brian playtest his game for VL5. His game was Coastal Patrol, featuring E-Boats and MGBs (Motor Gun Boat, like a PT boat, but British) in the Channel. I had 4 E-Boats trying to slip past British patrols guarding the D-Day convoys on the night of 6-7 June. It was dark, and confusing and bloody! Brian turned the lights out and used LEDs and tea lights to mark gunfire and flaming ships for some real fog of war. Turns out the Allies had a destroyer, which flayed my boats with 5″ shells! Burning, taking on water and with a dead engine my boat was doomed, but I had enough helm to turn it to launch torpedoes! On the other side one of my other boats fired a fusillade of 20mm cannon shells at the massive destroyer that was tearing us apart and one of my paltry 3 hits killed the captain, so the destroyer lost orders for 3 turns, causing her to sail into the torpedoes. My other boat was soon blown up by one of the British MGBs. But even though I lost, by only getting one boat off table to harass the invasion, I got my revenge from a watery grave as my torpedoes blew up the destroyer in the last turn and a captainless MGB drove into it’s flaming wreck.

My screen. One of Keith’s boats, still under blind is firing as shown by the LEDs

My boats top left both firing at the destroyer, also lit up with gunflashes.

One of my boats on the right is exploding

BOOM! The destroyer takes a torpedo amidships, sinking her.

So some quality virtual gaming with the new computer and webcam rig. Plus I played a couple of things I’ve never played before, with some people I’ve never played with before in different parts of the world, and I got much more comfortable with virtual games in general.

Not as good as Hot Lead, but not bad either.

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Autor: James / Rabbits In My Basement

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