The field of battle

For our display game for the 2011 to 2012 season, we designed Operation Aster, which we based around an action during the Rhine crossing of March 1945. The rules we used were to be Flames of War, a set that has both opponents and supporters but which has the immense advantage of allowing a game to be played to a conclusion over a limited period. Operation Aster gave the chance of showing off a good number of models, figures and terrain and had the advantage that we had available to us a set of terrain boards that could easily be reworked to a good approximation of the historical terrain over which the battle was fought.

The Canadian start line

Historically, Aster took place after 2nd British Army had forced the crossing of the Rhine in Operation Plunder. The Germans, always masters of defence in depth, fell back from the river bank but pinned the Commonwealth forces against the river behind a secondary waterway formed by the old course of the Rhine. In 51st Highland Division’s area on the left of the line, the only way past this was through a relatively narrow gap at the north in which the village of Beinen acted as a stopper. The village was garrisoned by Panzergrenadiers, supported by armour and anti-tank guns and well equipped with machine guns. The approaches were over flat, open fields and the first attacks by the Argylls were repulsed with heavy losses. Finally, the North Nova Scotia Highlanders from 9 Canadian Brigade, the Divisional reserve, were sent in with support from armour, Wasp flame throwers, and Achilles self-propelled anti-tank guns. After a long fight they managed to capture the village and open the bottleneck for the advancing Army. Although the North Novas had seen considerable action since they landed in France, the fighting in Beinen was so severe that their regimental historian described it as their baptism of fire.

Dug in Fallschirmjager await the onslaught

For our game, we took a set of terrain boards that had been purpose designed for an earlier show game and have since been amended several times for display games – including the Age of Arthur game featured on the frontispiece of the club site. Most recently, they had served as an undefined spot on the Anglo-Scottish marches for our Border Reivers game. This gave us a waterway in the opposite corners of the board and we needed only to narrow down one of them to have a reasonable approximation of the scenery around Beinen. The road system approaching the village was provided by a simple application of model railway road and the village itself, and some nearby houses and farm areas by suitable commercial building models, based and with the bases numbered in order to identify the right places for them without confusion or delay when we were setting up the game at shows. The general landscape was flocked with some field areas with hedges as boundary markers (this was not strictly accurate as the field boundaries seem to have been wire, but gave a little more character to the visual appeal of the game.

Canadian infantry advancing under their smoke screen approach the town and outlying defences

For the figures and models, we sought to use the same manufacturer so far as was possible, mostly QRF, though some of the Germans and some of the Allied armour was Battlefront as QRF did not manufacture DD Shermans which took part in the assault. All the figures were painted by the same club member and all the bases were flocked using the same flock as the major area of the terrain boards

British Archers arrive to give AT firepower

As casualties mount the spotter sees that the German first aid post is busy

The Canadian aid post is also hard at work as the wounded from the attack start to filter back

Our display board