September Game: Nuts! 1940 in Holland

This month Mark ran another Nuts! scenario with his 1940 Dutch infantry and German paratrooper figures. Basically the Dutch had two squads: a weak infantry squad and a weak light machinegun squad, guarding an airfield. The Germans had two full strength paratrooper squads attacking to sieze the corner of the airfield. The scenario is based on a real German attack on the Ypenburg airfield in the 1940 German invasion of The Netherlands. Here is a map of the actual area:

All of the Dutch infantry forces set up on the board with the Germans bringing in one squad immediately and another coming on as reinforcements. The Dutch also had an armored car that would arrive as a potential reinforcement.

Here are some pictures of the initial set up for both sides:

The Dutch defenders:

Here’s a view from the Dutch side. Visible are half of the Germans, who are about to enter the fields and low crawl their way up to the Dutch positions.

The German left half squad tried to establish a base of fire, but were met with heavy Dutch machinegun fire, which forced many to duck back (hence the duck markers). Machineguns in Nuts! are valuable for their ability to force outgunned opponents to take cover.

Once the German right side half squad made it to the buildings a series of hand grenade battles commenced. In one, a Dutch defended was killed before he could get his grenade out the window.

The struggle for the central house resulted in a series of grenades being thrown up and down the stairs, but the Germans ultimately prevailed.

At this point the second German squad arrived and assaulted the weakly defended house on the Dutch left:

The result was a Dutch grenade attack with eliminated three Germans.

Eventually the Germans took the house on the Dutch left and advanced on the Dutch center. Despite more successful Dutch grenades, the Germans took out or suppressed most of the Dutch defenders, but failed to take the airfield building.

However, things were looking bad for the Dutch as most of their infantry had been eliminated or suppressed and numbers were clearly on the side of the Germans. Then, as in the historical battle, the Dutch armored car arrived and turned the tide of the battle. Unable to destroy the armored car, the Germans pulled back and retired.

Mark provide the game room, the scenario and the figures (25mm). Here are some more pictures of his figures:

All in all we both enjoyed the game. We actually played two games. In the first we allowed the Dutch in elevated positions to fire on the Germans crawling through the field. The result was most of the first German squad were casualties on the first turn. That didn’t work well, so we restarted and decided that the Germans in the field could not be seen if crawling (prone). That worked better and gave us the game above. Once we figured out how to play the game (it had been awhile since we played Nuts!) everything worked fine and produced an enjoyable game.