AAR18: Silence of the Priests

Well, I didn't get this up as "shortly" as I expected, when writing AAR 17, but here it is, finally.  This is what happened to the Priests supporting Uwandan forces south of objective B14.

View looking south of the M7 Priests supporting

Uwanda forces south of B14.

 

As the battle south of B14 started to heat up, the battery of M7 Priests supporting the Uwandan forces found a little heat of their own.  Shortly after firing its first volley, the battery was discovered by ULF fighters, who quickly moved into position to the rear and right of the Priests.

As soon as Wakili heard the sound of the cannons, he knew his luck had changed.  After a short advance through the trees, he saw his prize and barked at his troops "Abdi, take your men and attack from their right. Go! Go!...On my signal!"

ULF fighters advance north, to the rear of the Priests.

The battery, its supporting trucks and HQ were busy supporting the battle north of them, when machinegun fire and RPGs blew up a truck and two Priests.  Chaos ensued, and in the next minute, two more trucks and three more Priests were destroyed.  Crewmen futilely tried to return fire to their rear and right, but the damage was done.  Quickly, the ULF retreated back into the woods, and the surviving Priest and command track rushed forward to get away from the attack, leaving Uwandan forces at B14 without artillery support.

The battery destroyed.

It wasn't much of a battle, in less than two minutes the battery was converted from a death machine to a dead machine.  Loses were as follows:

Uwanda
5x M7 Priest
3x truck
26x crew

ULF
1x fighter

Edit:  Forgot to mention that I had to use a couple of Sherman hulls as M7s, as I was two models short.  Been a long time since I had to do that.  Also, ULF force consisted of 28 men.

Slow Progress with African Imagi-nations

Back in November, with much enthusiasm, I rolled up the next batch of scenarios in the Uwanda-Mugabia war between my African Imagi-nations.  I worked out a list of new miniatures  that I needed to play out the scenarios.  My wife offered to order many of the figs as a Christmas gift, and I figured that I'd paint and play shortly after Christmas during the time off that I would be taking.

As I rolled through December, I realized that I was simply going to lose a week of that time off, as work was just  too busy. Christmas came, but the my wife's order didn't.  So I waited on Imagi-Africa, and made some progress on old sci-fi projects. 

After 145 days of waiting, we cancelled the Christmas order.  Meanwhile, I had altered my scenarios and list of figs to permit me to order some different stuff  from another company in February, a company that has always given me great service.  As fate would have it, after two weeks, nothing arrived.  Trying to be patient, I waited another two weeks before contacting them, and after about six weeks the order showed up, mis-marked by the post office for surface shipment only.  By the time it arrived, I was back to working crazy hours, and it took a few more days for me to inspect the package.   As it turned out, a part was missing from each of the key vehicles in the order.  I'm still waiting for the missing parts.

In addition to the new miniatures, I needed to build some new terrain for the upcoming battles; a Mugabian border checkpoint, bunkers, and 10-12 new town buildings.  About a week's worth of evenings work.  Started on this back in November too.

So here we are seven months later, and my only accomplishment is to have started on some of the bits for the border checkpoint.  Here are a few photos:

That's it, seven months work, not including the armored car and the little dude.  Here is a close-up of the watch tower.

And one of the obstacles.

The border check point still needs an immigration office, a couple of gun emplacements, some  other defensive positions, and some clutter such as "Welcome to Mugabia" signs and whatnot.  I'm thinking that I'm just going to scratch-build the missing parts of the vehicles, and once this is all done, at least I can get to playing the first battle of the next phase of the war.

The way my own personal little cloud of doom has been, I'm guessing this may take me into next Christmas.   I will do my best to post again soon with more photos and less whining.