Get the Flagship

 Mike and I played a game of Armada on the weekend. He had just painted up his dwarf fleet and I had wanted to try the Dictator which is the extra-large Basilean ship -- I turns out that his whole fleet is 25 points less than the Dictator so I added in a Tier 3 Wizard and our points were equal but it is illegal under the rules to just take one big ship. (Which it turns out does make some sense.)

 

Mike has a post on his blog here

Based on the fleets we felt the "Get the Flagship" scenario made sense. In this there is one ship that has to sail the length of the table and victory is based on whether or not it gets to the end. The flagship is restricted to battle sails only but is given a few advantages the main one being that it can make repairs and fire in the same turn 5

Mike split his fleet in 2 and the wings closed into me from either side. We exchanged a few shots at range and then  when we got close there was one turn where he did about 30 points of damage in one turn (I think this was the only turn all his ships got a broadside from every ship). The downside of attacking me from 2 sides was that I was getting to fire both broadsides and my stern chasers each turn and was sinking his small ships quite quickly

I managed to force one of his ships to sail straight for a turn with a spell which put that ship effectively out of the battle (it ended up being the sole survivor of the dwarf fleet) and then ended up being chased by the surviving dwarfs. By this point my firepower totally outclassed the dwarfs and it was pretty obvious how things would turn out.

I think if I had taken a balanced fleet it would have been a much more even fight. Despite that it was a fun game. This was the first time that we have used the magic rules and they seem reasonably balanced if a bit bland. I do feel that the dwarfs should be a bit more different (and should be more like mid 1800s ironclads rather than having such high hulls) the engine rules make them a bit more flexible than sails but they still feel similar.

I have some of Basilean small ships to paint up as well as the flyers but I think I will channel any desire to paint ships into getting some more of my US ships for Black Seas

3D Printing Resources

 

 This page is mainly for my own use to try and consolidate the various places I get my STLs from but hopefully it will be useful for other people. It will updated at much the same rate as I do the rest of the blog...

I will only list sources where I have printed something

Modern

Bob Mack -- Really detailed lots of variety, Soviets, US, British and US in Vietnam

Henry Turner -- 15mm Soviet and East German

World War 2

3d Breed -- Good variety, nice models

Ancient

3d Breed -- Romans printed well

Age of Sail

Henry Turner -- Printed Sails and one boat worked well

Aircraft

ROC Works -- Nice Planes

Science Fiction

Modiphius -- Very nice terrain

Battle of Bobruisk

 I played a Flames of War game the other night as part of the clubs's current Bagration campaign and decided to resurrect my blog to post my thoughts on the game.

I was playing against Daniel La Salle who set up the table and was fielding a Hungarian infantry force supported by a unit of Hetzers and a unit of Hungarian tanks with the German "Armoured Train" -- really infantry and some armoured cars-- as well as a German Pioneer unit. As he was out of supply his basic force was reduced.

 

I decided  that since I was attacking a city I would take as much artillery as I could so my force was based around a T-34/85 Battalion with 2 companies of 5 tanks each. I took a battery of Katyushas, one of  152mm howitzers, one of 122mm guns and a small battery of 76mm guns. For Firestorm I had a battery of SU-76 self-propelled 76mm guns plus another 3 T3/85s. To round out I took 7 OT-34/76 flame tanks -- and an armoured car with an observer

We were playing the rearguard scenario so I had 9 turns to win so I just had to be patient and not rush forward while there were still threats around (I have never been able to do this)
My tanks did well on the first few turns bashing the Hetzers and the Hungarian made tanks and not taking too much damage in return but my artillery was not all that effective -- not ranging in and not doing too much when it hit. To be fair I probably fired too much of it at the enemy armour since my tanks were doing a much better job of killing the tanks. Three 75mm ATGs appeared from ambush in the crossroads and did quite a bit of damage, I should have been more proactive in moving out of LOS from them.

Soon the Hetzers were wiped on the right flank and the other tanks were gone on the left.

At this point I should have moved some tanks up on the mortars which were damaging my artillery by this point but I figured with 2 batteries ranged in on them at this point I wouldn't need to do that

Some Hungarian infantry moved up to the hedgeline and got burned to crisp by the OT-34s -- I could have then moved them over to burn up the 75mm gus but I didn't want to disrupt my ranged in markers

The German pioneers moved up in the centre though the houses and took quite a pounding but when I moved my tanks to engage I got a bit too close the Hungarian infantry

They managed to close assault and broke my formation (since I only had 2 tank units in my base force). If I had been patient I think it would have been an easy win for me given the setup but I was to hasty and Daniel took full advantage of that. All lot of the damage my tanks took in my previous game against Mike was also done by infantry so I really need to become more aware of the real threat range of infantry.

The OT-34s are quite deadly, I would bring them out again and going with the T-34/85 worked well, I usually go with either a lot of T-34/76s or a smaller number of heavy tanks and I think the T-34/85 in the middle might be the best choice in general for the Soviets.

I am glad I tried this force and I might try something similar in the future but it is hard to rely on Russian Artillery