This weekend I played a game of Flames of War at the Ottawa Miniatures Gamers meeting against Martin. This was the third round of games for the Stalingrad Firestorm camapaing but it was the first that I have played in.
I wasn't really super-excited to get anything new for this campaign but I did decide last weekend I would assemble and paint the 10 Plastic Soldier Company Churchills that I had bought (I think for a D-Day campaign several years ago). I airbrushed them with their base colour and added a bit of detail and shading and I think they turned out OK. I could have but some decals on them but to be honest, I really couldn't be bothered. I do have some 15mm tanks that I have put a lot of effort into but at the moment I don't really enjoy working on them relative to 28mm figures.
To round out the force -- the 10 Churchills (3 units of 3 plus HQ) cost 90 of my 100 points so I added in a Reconnaissance Platoon to take advantage of the spearhead rule and an SMG Company in case I had to hold an objective. I also had a unit of 2 IL-2 Shturmoviks as my Firestorm unit.
I set up with all the Churchills in the deployment bubble created by the Recon troops. Looking at this picture, I probably should have just forced the fight for the near objective by the bridge but I decided to try and force the Germans to spread out a bit so attacked on a broader front.
Martin had both 8.8cm AA and Marders which were the two things I feared. I had hoped that my planes would be able to at least distract the 8.8cm guns but they were no where to be seen in the first 2 turns.
The 88s and Marders took out 2 of the Churchills on the objective on the first turn and the other Churchill pushed back the infantry and mortars along the river line. A unit of 2 captured T-34s appeared but I destroyed one and the other failed its last man standing roll. I was really worried but on the second turn the Marders and 88s missed (there might have been on or 2 hits from the Marders but I made my armour saves).
My IL-2s finally came in and took out one of the 88s and then other failed its last man standing roll (my lone Churchill on the bridge kept making its roll turn after turn). The other Churchills were taking out the Mortars and 10.5cm guns (which in hindsight was not really a good use of their time). I was ignoring the Panzer IIIs as their short 5.0cm guns couldn't penetrate from the front (the could get a tie)
On the last turn all my Churchill were bailed out and I couldn't get enough back in to make my Force Morale and lost. It ended up as a 6-3 due to the German losses.
It was a very enjoyable game and I think it looked like it was going to either way throughout the game.
I am still not super enthusiastic about Flames of War V4 but I will play games when they are available. I should be free to play next month so maybe I will try and infantry force next time.
Thanks for sharing Duncan, nice succinct report. What rules would you prefer to FoW IV, possibly CD?
ReplyDeleteBrian
Thanks.
DeleteI am not sure what rules I would prefer. I think in many ways the current edition FoW is the best FoW in terms of the actual rules but I am not really a fan of how they have done the lists and the cards (and part of that as I don't play enough to keep up with everything -- and another part is the terrible e-reader that you are forced to use if you don't want a physical copy of the rules and theater books).
I think Command Decision is a good set of rules but too complicated to play only occasionally and what it does model well is the friction of the battle field and I think that often makes for a poor game (and I think that the game is what I am after at this point more than exact modelling of historical battles). If I were to move back to CD (which is pretty unlikely) I think I would go to 1/300 and put 4 tanks or an infantry platoon on a base just to make it clear that it is a higher level set of rules.
I have tried the Battlegroup rules and they seemed ok but they didn't grab me enough to pull me away from FoW
I guess ultimately at the moment WW2 gaming is not my main focus so I am not really thinking too much about what rules to use