First Wargame in the northern hemishpere!!!

     Having moved a fairly long way for university, I faced a rather tricky problem - how to find, play, and supply a wargame on a suitcase load of figures.
    Luckily one of my friends made the fatal mistake of saying 'I'd be happy to try it out'... No sooner had the words left his mouth than I was preparing miniatures, planning potential rule sets and looking into some cheap scenery.
   A long anticipated trip to Salute solved a lot of problems, I managed to pick up a copy of the well reviewed 'Iron Cross' rule book - recommended by its lack of historical complexity that may have bamboozled my fledgling opponents. It also fitted nicely with my (space saving) 15mm WW2 Normandy models.
   Terrain was a bit of a poser, if you have seen the previous posts you will see that I spent quite a bit of time building up a good collection, with a good deal of time and resources sunk into the terrain boards. To my surprise (and ironic/despairing laughter) I was able to throw together some fantastic terrain with very little.

    The board consisted of green fabric thrown over some magazine hills. Trees and hedges/bocage consisted of some hastily sourced reindeer moss and some twigs from the nearest tree I could find. By happy accident I had bought some rather large MDF bases at salute and voila!

   The game went down really well, I was really impressed by the Iron Cross rules, by turn two three complete beginners had started strategising and needed very little help to play.
   I threw them a rough scenario of some British trying to push up the center of the board, with some Germans sent to intercept and stop them.

    The Brits, having made some good progress to begin with got stuck on the wrong end of a very lucky Panzer III/Panzer IV combo, and the game really did reward good tactical choices in a way that felt satisfying. My previous experience of WW2 gaming had been the Battlegroup rules (primarily Kursk/Overlord) and I had my doubts about a ruleset that allowed a Panzer IV to move at the same rate as a T-34. I think that to an extent this reflects Battlegroup's status as a Historical wargame, wheras Iron Cross is a Historical Wargame, which implies a different focus for the rules and a different attraction to the players.

    Even as an umpire I thoroughly enjoyed the game, and really appreciated how well it worked for newcomers. I reckon it will get several more runs in the near-mid future.