The Race to Bastogne:A new Mike Lambo Solitaire Game

     No sooner than I received my new Mike Lambo books on solitaire wargames, than he came out with a new one, "The Race to Bastogne".  In this book you control armor units trying to break through to the encircled American forces in Bastogne. As with his other games, the AI forces are unknown. One feature that's new is "Recon", where a reconnaissance unit can expose enemy units without coming within firing range of that unit; if you get the right roll, of course. Also, in this book Mr. Lambo put unit markers in the back so one can make their own unit counters. For me, I chose to buy new "Axis &Allies" tokens from an online store, Historic Board Games. 

New units for "The Race to Bastogne". I accidentally ordered more Shermans than needed.

My plan of attack. My Sherman on the left, Greyhound recon armored car in center, and Priest SP gun on right. Each vehicle has different uses. The Greyhound can "Recon" without getting within range of the enemy.  The small dice represent where enemy units are. On this first move the Greyhound "reconned" the red dice in front of him. The Sherman then attacked and with support from the Priest, eliminated that unit (which happened to be a Panzer IV). A good start!
While I made several mistakes moving my units forward, in the end using the Greyhound's recon ability and the Priests' fire support, I managed to pull out a victory on the last turn.  (I was going to show more of the action, but my computer and Google don't want to cooperate.)  My standing with these games are 2 wins, 7 loss, and one game called due to a power outage.

Using Mike Lambo Wargame Scenarios with Other Rules

      While playing wargames using Mike Lambo solitaire games, I started to think if the scenarios could be used with other rules.  I am thinking along the lines of a hybrid game, where using certain rules in his game would be used, but once contact with the enemy was made, different combat rules would be used. Alternatively, perhaps one Mike Lambo game could be turned into a simple campaign, where contact with the enemy would be shifted to a board, to be played out using other rules. 

    With this, I did use some of Battlescale hexes to set up the first scenario in "The Fields of Normandy". Below is a couple of shots of the setup.  I also saw on a Facebook group I follow someone using Horoscape hexes to lay out a battlefield, using different color hexes to represent different terrain features.

    All in all, if nothing else, Mr Lambo series on solitaire wargames has me playing wargames again ( 8 since I received his games) and thinking of different uses for his games.

The first scenario in. "The fields of Normandy", with the Battlescape battlefield laid out. 

In this scenario, two British infantry squads must locate and destroy an unknown German unit.  The two upper figures are where the unknown German unit is. In the game, it could be either a light or heavy machine-gun.