All Quiet on the Martian Front

 

        Last month Tom from Texas and The Housemartin combined their massive collections of "All Quiet on the Martian Front" minis for a big game at Tom's house. This game took place in Tom's ballroom on a table eight feet wide by nearly twenty-four feet long. The scenario was the defense of Milwaukee against a Martian horde that had landed in the distant Yukon territory, and had recently been reinforced by a bunch of Martian cylinders landing just outside of Milwaukee. The invading Martian forces were intimidating in their numbers and power; the defending humans were forced to oppose this alien inundation with steam-powered tanks and a superabundance of guts (oh, and there were lots of humans)

       In an effort to keep the fighting as far away from the city as possible the human forces considered their options and decided to go with a layered forward defense, augmented by flank attacks from the east and west. The Martians decided to advance on a broad front to deploy as many as possible of their high-tech weapons right from the start. To the surprise of the invaders the humans had the assistance of a pair of dirigibles and some ultra-heavy guns to lend some weight to the soldiers fighting in the front lines. Also unbeknownst to the Martians some brave humans had volunteered to undertake a wide flanking maneuver using motorcycles and armored cars to speed their approach.

 

opening gambits, the human forward defense slows the Martians while the air force prepares to strike

the invaders cruelly pound the brave boys in the tanks and trenches with heat rays and poison gas

 

but it doesn't go all the way of the invasive slime-creatures, the big guns in town batter the Martian field-generator and the dirigibles manage to hit one of the tripods, killing it

 

 

the sheer volume of human fire allowed for damage to be inflicted on the tripods

 but casualties among the brave fighting men were horrific 

as the dirigibles retired to reload a squadron of heavy tanks rumbled into view

casualties among the brave volunteers of the front line reached near catastrophic proportions

 

 

even with the additional troops and the sacrificial heroism of the infantry the line continued to bend

the Martians paid no heed to their losses and continued to march forward

 

in one horrific turn the Martian leader fired his Sun-Lance at the row of heavy tanks, wrecking two of them, the unflinching crews of the remaining tanks held firm and continued to pummel the advancing tripods with fire knowing that they would be next to taste the lash of the demonic weapon of the invaders, the next turn these heroes perished serving the future of humanity

 

with the destruction of the heavy tank squadron there was little left aside from the poor bloody infantry, they rose to the occasion magnificently, destroying one tripod and severely damaging two others

 

the battle turned into a point-blank brutal pounding match between the rapidly shrinking human forces and the damaged, but still formidable, Martians, this was interrupted by the arrival of the first flank attack (off screen to the right) this caused the newly deployed Martian tripods (the newly-landed cylinders were generating a new tripod every two/three turns)to rush to the east to fight them, by superhuman efforts the flanking force was able to destroy one of the cylinders

 

the Martians now had something to think about, as they skittered to the east to deal with the new threat the other human flank attack arrived from the west, it quickly put-paid to the nearest Martian cylinder and destroyed the nearest tripod before moving toward the next cylinder, in full panic mode the Martians retreated in an effort to save the cylinders, they were too late as the humans attacked the remaining cylinders and the battered remains of the defenders gave chase

       A very narrow victory for the humans, aided in part by some lucky die-rolling. Thanks go out to Tom and The Housemartin for letting us play with their lovely models and particularly to Tom for setting up this lovely table and allowing us to invade his house.