October Open day or Flying Fence Panels.

Our last open day of 2002 was held at the New Mill Social Centre on Sunday 27th October. The day was, to say the least, windy. I believe that in some places in the UK the wind was gusting to 90mph. I arrived at the hall slightly late, having first played a game of chase the empty milk bottles around the garden. Ian Ransome had just got there to let everyone in.

The first problem we had to contend with was the power going off shortly after we started to set up. Altogether there were five games taking place, Graham Harrison, Richard Tyson and Ken McEwan played a 25mm Darkage game. Tim Brown and Kerr Mitchel were playing 6mm Shako as was Jon and Ken Cummings. Sqiggs, Tom Barrett and Dan Millar played Heroclix. Lastly Ian Willer, Ian Ransome, Henry Scrivens and myself played a Rapid Fire game based in Burma.

The Burma game was based on the battle of Yenangyaung. The Commonwealth forces retreat was blocked when the Japanese managed to take Yenangyaung and Twingon. Ian Willer and I played the Japanese, while Ian Ransome and Henry played Burcorp (Commonwealth's Burma Corp). Ian Ransome sent a battalion of Indian forward to try and clear Twingon of my Japanese. Meanwhile Ian Willer was having different problems, on leaving Yenangyaung Burcorp engineers set fire to the oil depot, Ian's troops were trying to extinguish the blaze. I think they were using buckets of petrol instead of water judging by how rapidly the fire spread to the rest of Yenangyaung.

About this time Henry had a phone call from Sue his wife, the wind had blown down one of their fence panels.

"Not a lot I can do at the moment," said Henry, as he continued playing the game.

The Indians found it difficult to clear the road through Twingon. A Japanese aircraft, the pilot of which was very even handed, then attacked them, he dropped three bombs, one was a dud, one killed two Indian figures, and one killed two Japanese figures.

Henry returned from his fencing job and took command of some newly arrived Gurkhas. We played a few more turn and Walter left us, Ian Willer decided to phone home and discovered he had lost three fence panels to the wind.

About 1:00pm we paused for lunch, this presented me with another problem. I had brought some frozen sweet and sour chicken to eat, only problem being the power was still off and there is only an electric cooker in the hall. The problem was solved by a five minute drive to Henry's house where Sue popped it in the microwave for me.

The Indians finally managed to breakthrough at Twingon and parts of Burcorp started to escape across the river Pin Chaung. There was still a sting in the tale though. A battalion of the Burmese Independence Army had been slowly making its way through the jungle all day long, it reached the edge of the jungle next to the road Burcorp were using as an escape route just as the Divisional HQ came on the table. In the ensuing ambush the Divisional HQ lost most of its vehicles and the CO only managed to escape thanks to the intervention of a squadron of Honeys. The Gurkhas eventually drove off the BIA.

By this time it was starting to get dark and we still had no power, (the whole of the New Mill area had been off for about six and a half hours by now.) As it was getting difficult to distinguish the figures we decided to call it a day.

Once again it had been a very enjoyable game despite the weather. I think our next meeting, bearing in mind all the broken fence panels, could be in B & Q.

RWY

Quote of the Day

Made by Tim Brown when he answered his mobile phone.

"If its about fence panels I don't want to know."

Useful Links