PBI Playtesting

I travelled down to Weymouth on Friday for a day of playtesting PBI3. The journey was hampered by bank holiday traffic and it took me 6 hours instead of the usual 4, but it gave me plenty of time to listen to The Bleeding Land by Giles Kritian on Audible. 

As usual Martin put me up and after a delicious meal cooked by Julie we moved upto the Peter Pig workshop to play a game in the evening. The below picture shows Rob Roriston who played Panzer Grenadiers all mounted in half tracks up against my Russian infantry company supported by 3 T34's Rob made a big push against my objective to the left of the picture and eventually took it using a flamethrower to kill my bases in the bunker. Rob won in the end, but not by much.

Once the game was finished we cleared away and I was bedded down in the workshop. I reckoned I was in the company of around 50,000 Peter Pig figures. I was in Piggie heaven!

The remaining pictures are from the Saturday which saw about 12 of us playing with Martin floating around as rules official. Fred Cartwright was there too who has done sterling work on the armour side of the rules. The Weymouth Levellers club have been playtesting this new version of PBI for over 12 months and I think Martin is getting to the position where he is happy with how they are playing. I think he would like to get them out around October but sometime before Christmas may be more realistic.

The new PBI is a streamlined version of the previous incarnation. It still represents a company action with some support which might be a couple of tanks or guns. I didn't play PBI2 much to be honest as WW2 isn't a main interest of mine, but I am really enjoying this version and have made a few purchases to get my own armies upto strength. I have late war German and US companies plus a Russian force that will do for any period of the war. I wont go into any detail of how the rules have changed; that is for Martin to reveal when he is ready, but I can say that if the rules were released as they are tomorrow I would buy and play them.

Ade and hopefully Keith are coming over on Wednesday for a game of Men of Company B, Vietnam action in country close to the Cambodian border. A suitable soundtrack is being compiled. 

More soon...