Green and Unpleasant Alien

The Martians, not having the best of times in 1940's Russia; travelled back in time to 1920 and decided to invade a small group of islands to the west of the main land mass. Just how hard could it be?

Judging by the map the Aliens had been busy prior to the invasion of Great Britain, demolishing the Isles of Wight, Man, Anglesey and dumping the remains to fill in The Wash.

From Furness Wargamers from Mars

The rules consisted mainly of details on the crib sheets; separate ones for British and Martians. There was a single double sided sheet that clarified certain things, but most rule queries were adjudicated by Paul on the fly.

The main force of Martians landed in the Highlands of Scotland, with a secondary force landing near the North Wales coast. The Scots were basically on their own as 'England First' became the order of the day, leaving the Scots to make do with only what they started with and could build in the future.



The Royal Navy proved their worth hanging out at sea and sending damaging salvos into the invaders who had to venture near the Fife coast while launching assaults on both Edinburgh and Dundee. Dundee eventually succumbing to the machines with the inhabitants being turned to Jam.

The Scots and Navy combined did manage to destroy three of the smaller war-machines, but with the Martian 'Crabs' building extra factories, which in turn would produce more machines, the defenders had no chance in a war of attrition. So the Navy decided to take a risk, and sailed into the Tay Estuary to have a pop at a Crab, and hopefully slow down the Martians production. This would be a one way mission as once in the estuary the Martians could cut off the Fleets escape route, and in the end didn't quite work out as the crab managed to survive with one hit left.



The fleet did draw off a number of attackers away from the main cities and managed to last a couple of turns under death ray bombardment. Meanwhile down the coast in England a number of new fleets came of the slipways and into the North and Irish Sea.

The Martians finally got squeezed out of Wales. The RAF, flying some anachronistic craft due to lack of appropriate biplanes, managed to inflict the initial damage, and crucially helped in taking out the Martian Factory, putting a stop to any new war-machines and preventing the part built colossus war-machine from being completed. When the Tanks finally arrived they swarmed across Central and North Wales and in the next few turns removed the remaining Martians, who desperately kept rebuilding their factory only to see the unfinished structure destroyed repeatedly.

At around the same time Wales was liberated, Scotland finally fell as both the strongholds of Glasgow and Edinburgh ran out of defenders, the Martians wising up and cutting the rail links into them as well as blocking retreat routes. With Scotland gone the main force of Martians moved into the border area, poised to descend into Northern England where the Sappers had been working like mad to build the high fences that hopefully would slow the land based war-machines down.



We never did find out how effective the high fences were at stopping the invaders as the game ended before they could advance down the Pennines (out of range of the Navy guns!). The North was otherwise thinly defended as the bulk of the British Army (or English Army given the demise of the Celtic population) was stuck in Wales and away from the Rail Network.
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