Taranaki Wars 2016 Event Report

Taranaki Wars 2016 New Plymouth, NZ, 27-28 February 2016 With Rob Shirley Over this weekend I played in two separate five round tournaments.  Saturday had 12 players, 90 minute rounds and was 750 points of Early War, with Sunday being a 20 person, 75 minutes/round, 750 point Late War event.  Taranaki Wars tends  to have a portion of the event being attended by newer or less frequent players and thus play’s 3 rounds of Free-for-All and 2 rounds of No Retreat each day. The event was sponsored by Kim Styles (left) who runs Kwel Terrain in Stratford.

Alastair Mundell always starts with matching people up on a North versus South basis, and being from amongst the Northern half of the players, I was matched to play Julian Hannam. For the past few years he has been based in Taranaki. Our connection goes back to when he was the president of the Hamilton Immortals when I first became involved in wargaming. And with the vagaries of the second day, I played this Julian in Round 2 of Sunday’s Late War event. In Round 3 I played Julian #2, and then Alastair was kind enough to arrange the third, and last of the “Julian’s” present to be my opponent in Round 4. A win, a draw and a loss were my results against Julians.

The force mix for both days was: HQ and at least one Combat Platoon, three Platoons Minimum. No Top Armour 2 vehicles allowed.

I played a confident conscript Soviet Strelkovy army from Barbarossa. It consisted of an HQ of CO, Komissar and 2IC, 8 x Unarmed Sappers and 2 AT Rifles; 1 Coy of 1 Command/Komissar and 18 Rifles (Wave Attacks – which I never used), MG Company of Command/Komissar and 4 x HMG, AT Coy of Command/Komissar and 6 45mm obr 1937 and finally an Artillery Bty of Command/Komissar, Staff and 4 x 76mm obr 1902. The Sappers and AT Rifles were attached to the Strelkovy, and it and the AT guns were those that were deployed if I was defending in the No Retreat Rounds.

My Saturday (Early War) Match-ups

Round	1	2	3	4	5
Mission	Free for All	No Retreat	Free for All	No Retreat	Free for All
My Role	Attacker	Defender	Defender	Defender	Defender
Opponent	Julian Hannam	David Wilson	Sofia Chambers	Kevin King	John Tanner
Their Army	Hungarian Infantry	Finnish Tanks	Soviet Light Tanks	German Czech Tanks	German Light Tanks
Result	5-2	4-3	6-1	6-1	5-2

Julian Hannam	David Wilson (left) and Rob	John Tanner

My High Points: Round 1: The very significant effect of the big Italian Hill Village on the hill in the centre of the table. Round 2: Driving David back over the centre line in Turn 7 and thus winning the game Round 3: HMG’s killing an SU-12 Self-propelled Gun Battery. Round 4: The desperate defence of the rear objective until the reserves arrived and the ambushing antitank guns could get across the table. Kevin’s decision to sacrifice a platoon to make me reveal the ambush in a poor location (he certainly out-generalled me in this game) Round 5: Recovering from a bad situation of my own making.

For late war, I played a confident veteran German Puma Panzerspah Company from Grey Wolf.  It consisted of a HQ of a single Puma, 2 Platoons each of 2 Pumas, a platoon of 7 teams (incl Panzerfaust upgrade) of Gepanzerte Auflarungs and an SPAT platoon of 4 Marder II’s.  This is an army type that I had not tried before, I have always avoided Mechanised Companies, and Recon based Forces.  So this was quite a learning curve.

My Sunday (Late War) Match-ups

Round	1	2	3	4	5
Mission	Free for All	No Retreat	Free for All	No Retreat	Free for All
My Role	Attacker	Defender	Defender	Attacker	Attacker
Opponent	Andrew Karl	Julian Hannam	Julian Harkness	Julian Emmett	Karl Muskee
Their Army	NZ Infantry	British Tanks	Soviet Tanks	US Parachute Infantry	Soviet Rota Razvedki
Result	1-6	6-1	3-3	3-4	5-2

Andrew Karl	Julian Harkness

My High Points: Round 1: Finding out that rushing forward because of your Recon abilities, and thus baiting a trap where Andrew responded was good, failing all 4 Marder shots two turns in a row was bad.  Round 2: Facing Kangaroos and Jalopys for the first time – a shock. Round 3: By withdrawing after I had suffered Marder losses, Julian forced an armoured advance in close and, riding my luck, I hid the surviving Marders in a wood, which was within 4” of the objective, and he had to close to the wood edge to see them. Then the counter fire frontally, coupled with flank shooting from the mobile Pumas, followed by an Infantry assault out of a building finished off the six T-34s that were contesting that deep objective. And then the high speed counter-strike for the diagonally opposite objective, killing Julian’s AAMG’s on the way through. We timed out. Round 4: This one was back on the central hill/Italian village table, except this time we went across the table from the “side-edges” of yesterday – that is a feature of playing on 4'x4' tables. I thought, "Hmmm, a one chance in three of Julian getting reserves; I have a good chance of shooting up his Para Pl which only had one team contesting the objective. Hey, let’s go for it." All five Pumas did the Recon move up the hill road to still be out of sight. My turn, rush down the hill road and being behind the hedge let strip. One casualty. My Marders had got on to the road and the infantry in half-tracks were pressing left on the far side of the hill. On came three Shermans from reserve, right behind all of my Pumas – damn! Three of Julian’s 57s came out of ambush facing the Pumas and the other covered my infantry route.  BANG! Only one Puma dead, and two bailed, and passed the Stay on Test. In the next two turns, we spent lots of time shooting at one another, with me moving the Marders to shoot at the Shermans and the infantry getting deep into a wood. Total effect was I killed a 57mm gun. His second reserves of MG’s arrived and I killed half of them. He destroyed the Pumas completely. In return my Marders left one bailed Sherman left; the half-tracks killed the MG’s, and the Shermans stayed on. And then my infantry assaulted from behind the gun shields. I killed the 57’s, and he needed a test on his Paras, which he passed. My test on my infantry was a fail. He still had two busted platoons left; I had one platoon left and no CO. A defender win, in a really back-and-forth match. Round 5: Karl and I played this match in the same direction as the one I played yesterday. Karl couldn’t hit a thing, and my CO on the left knocked out a Razvedski Platoon with six MG shots, then his plane killed me. Meanwhile the Pumas were having fun shooting up his mortars, who had failed to dig in, and the Marders knocked out the Decoy StuG and the CO and second Pumas dealt to his Company Commander and other Razvedski Platoon. I spent a lot of time hill-hugging and avoiding the Decoy Panther.

Lance Knighton strikes a pose.	Cameron King

Keith Smith	Glen Horsman	David Dobbs

And another Taranaki Wars was over. Two and a half hours drive, unpack the terrain and put the toys away, and it was time to start planning a force to use at NatCon in Dunedin at Easter. ~ Rob.

Taranaki Wars Early War Results

Place	Player	Points	Nation
1	Rob Shirley	26	Soviet
2=	Sofia Chambers	23	Soviet	Won dice-off for 2nd Place Prize
2=	Lance Knighton	23	Germany
4	David Wilson	20	Slovakia
5	Cameron King	18	Poland
6=	Glen Horsman	17	Poland
6=	Kevin King	17	Germany
8	Dougal Hannam	16	Japan
9	Alastair Mundell	15	NZ
10	Julian Harkness	14	Soviet
11	Kim Styles	13	NZ
12	David Hobbs	12	Germany
13	Julian Hannam	11	Hungary

Taranak Wars Late War Results

Place	Player	Points	Nation
1	Julian Harkness	25	Soviet
2=	Sofia Chambers	22	Soviet	Won dice off for 2nd Place Prize
2=	David Hobbs	22	Germany	Won dice off for 3rd Place Prize
2=	Lance Knighton	22	Germany
5	Peter Thompson	21	USA
6	Kevin Demchy	20	Germany
7	Julian Emmett	19	USA
8	Rob Shirley	18	Germany
9=	Kevin King	17	Germany
9=	Kim Styles	17	Germany
9=	Andrew Karl	17	NZ
9=	Adam Bevins	17	Germany
13=	Karl Muskee	15	Soviet
13=	Sean Cowan	15	Soviet
15	Kevin Trevathon	14	UK
16=	Cameron King	12	USA
16=	Glen Horsman	12	Germany
18	Dougal Hannam	10	Germany
19=	Julian Hannam	8	NZ
19=	Savvas Rigas	8	Germany