Getting ready for Arnhem

Next month is our club's open day and I am planning on running a demonstration World War II game with fellow club member Michael Stringer. We have decided on the battle of Arnhem. We will be using our WWII rules of choice for company level battles , Arty Conliffe's Crossfire rules. These rules are very simple but provide an excellent simulation of this level of combat. Over the years we have added a few house rules but the robustness of the rules allows these minor modifications. The game will be played in 15mm scale.

We plan to focus on the first day of the battle with the landing of the 1st Airborne division and their battles towards the bridge. There are quite a few "What ifs?" to explore on the first day of the battle and the game should be quite fluid. We plan on the use of dummy markers to represent hidden movement as well as hidden deployment. It should prove to be a fascinating scenario.

Now when it comes to WWII I am fascinated by airborne operations and Arnhem is the pick of the bunch in my opinion. My particular favourite of airborne operations is glider borne forces so for Arnhem that means Horsa Gliders!

I had a 15mm glider sitting in a box for the past year or so waiting for its turn to be painted and now was the time. The model is from a small Aussie company called Battlefield Accessories which I think has now closed down. The model itself was pretty poor. To be fair the mould was very old so the casting required a huge amount of sanding and filling with milliput to get the model in a fit state to paint but I think after it was painted it has come up quite well.

I have also ordered some more gliders from a US company called Arnaments in Miniature. Their Horsas look fantastic, a lot better than this glider so I may end up selling this glider after the game as it will probably not match the AIM gliders. The AIM gliders look a lot more accurate models. AIM also make a Hamilcar glider so I had to order one of those too! So for the display game I will have 4 Horsa and 1 Hamilcar. I'll post pictures of them when they are done.

Bye for now.