By Steve Cast
Thanks to all of you who turned up on Saturday and I’m glad you enjoyed the game.
As Dave rightly guessed, but luckily didn’t spill the beans, the scenario was based on the “Kelly’s Hero’s” minefield scene, something I’ve been meaning to do for some time having watched the film some months ago. I thought it would make a nice refreshing change from the usual WWII games that we normally do and one where the players were made to think how to get out of a tight spot.
On the whole the game went very much like the film but unfortunately “Clint Eastwood” played by Mark was killed in the shoot out with the Germans with a film extra being killed on the minefield, but that was going to happen anyway because one of the actors was killed by a mine in the film.
Knowing that the players wouldn’t stick to the Umpires crafted and finely honed plot I added in a film extra called Pierre the onion seller. Pierre was an unidentified marker and he was there to get the umpire out of any holes that I might find myself in.
Whilst the team were making their way inch by inch across the mine field Pierre was on his way to market and on his “joyeux voyage au village” was completely bewildered to see soldiers crawling through what he knew to be a Bosch minefield! Stopping to take a look he was successfully identified by all of the players and with an “Oh la la” he cycled off into the distance.
The point at which I had kittens was when the players all started talking about bringing their troops up to the retaining wall in the field and setting up in wait for any Bosch. If this had happened it would have totally scuppered the plot so I brought Pierre onto the table again.
“Oh la la” he says to Phil and Dave frantically waving his arms in the air “Le bosch descend la route dans trois camions et une voiture” Phil asks me “Which one of our team knows French?”. “No one” says I. With a very French shrug of his shoulders Phil decided to wait for the Bosch anyway.
“Oh la la” thinks I “this isn’t working, sacred Blur”, so I sent Pierre to see Mark and Nigel.
“Oh la la Le bosch descend la route dans trios camions et une voiture” Pierre says again but this time pointing in the General direction of “Le Bosch” whilst also making a “Broom, Broom” noise. Mark cops on and asks, using his fingers, “How many broom broom?” “Trios” repeats Pierre also using his fingers. “and from which direction” says Mark this time using his arms. Pierre frantically points in the direction of “Le Bosch”.
Thankfully this spurred Mark and Nigel into action and they began to send their men towards the dry stone wall. In the mean time Phil was still by the retaining wall and was trying to look down the road to see if he could see “le Bosch” but I said to him that he would need to get to higher ground in order to see any distance. In the film the retaining wall is depicted as crumbling and falling apart with very little protection and by mentioning this to Phil he and Dave eventually moved up to the dry stone wall on the hill where they had a good view of the “terrain” off table. Meanwhile Mark and a film extra with a 30 cal. browning were still at the edge of the minefield and hadn’t made any move to cross it.
It was now the turn of the box heads to appear but before they came on table I said to the players that stealth was needed and it was not necessarily a good idea to shoot it out with them. I did this to give the germs a chance to deploy and not get shot to bits whilst they sat in their trucks like they were in the film.
As in the film the German officer, Hauptmann “Can so anysing!”, looked around with his binoculars to see what was going on. Identifying Mark, the 30 cal, both of who were playing possum, and the dead film extra he became very puzzled and ordered a team of 3 to go and investigate the dead bloke whilst he told the rest of his men to get out of the trucks and deploy. Still very puzzled he ordered his team of 3 to start taking pot shots at the dead bloke whilst the others shot at Mark. This goaded the players into a fire fight, which was what I was looking for, and a jolly good one was to be had by all. As in the film the Germs were given a sound thrashing and apart from poor old Mark and the already dead bloke there were no other casualties.
So a victory for the players. Two dead blokes minus 20 points but two recovered sets of dog tags plus 20 points.
The minefield
So, how did the minefield work? This was not, as some players had suspected, a random number picked out of the Umpires head but worked like this. If the players moved their figures at 1” a go they were always going to be safe. If they rolled a 1 on the turn that the figure moved then the figure would find a mine but find it safely and would then be able to dig it up and put it to one side. If rolling anything more than a 1 it was surmised that because they were moving so slowly they wouldn’t trigger any mines that they may have crawled over and missed.
However, if they moved more than 1”, which happened on more than one occasion, there would be a chance that they could detonate a mine no matter what they rolled on the dice.
The dice roll was there to add some trepidation and anxiety to the situation!
This is how it worked So there you have it.
Now for some pictures and no naughty ones this time.
4 = Major injury - Cannot be moved and loses 4DAV endurance points
5 or 6 = Killed
Roll a D6 to find the extent of its injuries.
Roll 1D4 and cross reference the score with the figures movement to find the Percentage chance of it being Injured
And here's the actual scene from the film....
