Finally! I've only owned the rules for I Ain't Been Shot Mum since Christmas, but due to far too many other things going on at the club, and far too much stuff to paint, I haven't had chance to grab someone for a game. Fortunately, Gavin and friends game on a Wednesday, and we agreed to meet up for a game last week.

We went with one of the scenarios from the rulebook - "Action At Galmanche" - basically a company of British infantry and two troops of tanks attempting to clear out a village held by a German company plus anti-tank support. Pete took the Hun, I took the British, and Gavin took the card deck and the rulebook.

Gav and Pete have played a couple of times before - the preceding two scenarios, IIRC - but this was my first time, so things were a little slow, with a fair bit of checking the rules etc. My opening artillery stonk turned out to be a bit of a dud, largely because I'd completely forgotten Pete's inherent level of caution. So I plastered the area I'd have littered with Panzerfausts, MGs and a Pak40, namely the front edge of the woods, and hit... precisely nothing, because there was precisely nothing to hit bar the FOO for his off-table mortars.

Nothing much happened until the two blue blinds (a tank troop and platoon 2) got within sight of the easternmost village, at which point a German section opened fire from one of the buildings. And something entirely realistic happened - the British section took about 6 shock, got pinned and stayed right where they were. Closely followed by my tank troop coming off blinds and having a pretty good go at pounding the building into rubble with HE - obviously in a scenario like this, the tanks are HE-and-MGs-on-tracks.

By then, Pete's FOO had made contact - I love the system IABSM uses for this. Once he asks for support, the "Support" card goes into the activation deck. Next time it turns up, he can roll to see if the fire arrives. Of course, there's friction here, since there's no guarantee the card will show up before the "Tea Break" card, simulating the battery being busy, lines being down, etc.

I'm guilty of misreading the table here, and Pete missed out on a roll first time he should have made, so when he finally got contact, he got some 105mm artillery for one round, rather than 81mm mortars.

Man, do they hurt.

Another entirely convincing result, too - the three British sections caught in it (plus two blinds) copped several shock, and pinned results (oh, and the mortar and crew were wiped out). I was very very glad that the card for that platoon came up before the Support card next turn, as all three surviving sections hightailed it for any available cover.

We managed a couple more turns after that, in which I pretty conclusively established that the woods were empty, but it was getting on for 11pm, so we called it a night.

Reaction? Love the system as much as I thought I would, and will be introducing it to the club ASAP. Huge thanks to Gav for hosting and umpiring.

Mike Whitaker