Fireball Forward playtest

For the last few months I rarely have been in the mood to game.

The few times I was, I couldn't be bothered as I knew it would involve a long process starting with clearing an area in which to game (holiday clutter still hanging around), then assembling my table and then another hour to ninety minutes to set up the terrain and pull the troops.

I decided it was time for a game and I was, and still am, interested in an upcoming WW2 set called "Fireball Forward" as its the same scale as Squad Leader i.e. each unit is a squad, half squad, special weapon team (Heavy machine gun, bazooka, gun crew, et al), leader, vehicle or gun. So I built some quick multi-figure bases, as my troops are singly based. There is a Infantry only play test package on their site, which includes a simple scenario, which recreates easy company's D-Day assault on a German artillery battery, as I had played the trail scenario several times I thought I would try converting the Skirmish campaign scenario Hedgerow Hell to a FBF game. I inflated the map to fill a 4'x4' table and increased the forces, and will play it a few times to balance it.

So last Friday night I did the preliminaries i.e. clear area, build table, pull terrain and troops, with the intention of spending most of Saturday play testing. Unfortunately a broken shower head saw me spend most of the day Saturday trying to find a way to fix or replace the ball joint, which I had finally done by 3 in the afternoon. I had been running around hardware stores since 10 in the morning, so I was a bit tired and only managed to get a single playing in.

The American had 1 squad and a rifle team in one platoon and a HMG and 2 rifle teams in the other platoon. The Germans had 2 platoons of 2 squads, a platoon of 1 squad and 1 rifle team , plus 2 HMG teams.

My flaky camera was acting up again so I only got a few pictures of the last turn.

Some pictures showcasing my terrain.

  

I couldn't play Sunday, my local miniatures group had our Pontic vs. Roman grudge match.

Gallery - WW2 American Infantry

WW2 American Infantry

My U.S. infantry is from a variety of figure manufacturers, ESCI's U.S. Soldiers Big Red One set, IMEX's Korean War U.S. Army set and Caesar miniatures U.S. Army set I.

70 U.S. Riflemen

26 U.S. sub machine gunners

U.S Support weapons 4 bazookas, 2 loaders for bazookas, 1 HMG, 1 LMG, 12 B.A.R. gunners,and  1 60mm mortar team

   I like the Caesar figures, but am slightly annoyed that almost half of the figures are usually armed with SMGs, I would have preferred more riflemen. The IMEX Korean war figures fit nicely though if you look really closely you can see their uniform trousers have a huge thigh pocket, but almost invisible at arms length.