Flames of War Weekend!

Well, this past weekend was another FoW sort of weekend. Rob & Tom came over on Saturday to throw down with some desert early warfare action. Rob brought his 8th army Tom brought his 8th army and his DAK. Of course I was using my DAK as well.

The first game I played was against Robs British 8th Army on the table below and we played the Free-For-All game out of the Fow main rulebook. This would be my third official game of Fow and we each had 1500 points. I made a push for the objective on the left side while Rob bulked up this side. I had thought my Panzer Platoon and I quickly routed most of the troops on the left until Rob rolled three Matilda's up to stop my tanks. Needless to say, Panzer III's had a tough time punching through the Matilda's armour. The game ended as a draw with neither one of us getting to the objectives. Was a great game and was hard fought.

My second game was against Tom's 8th army that made up a ton of Cruiser Tanks! I have to say I was a bit intimidated by his force. We once again played Free-For-All and I used the same force. Like I mentioned Tom had a ton of tanks, one infantry platoon and a artillery platoon of 25 ponders. But the thing I was afraid of was all of his tanks. Now my force included a 5 Tank Panzer platoon, 3 Full Infantry Platoons, a platoon of PaK38's, a Platoon of 2 8.8's and a platoon of 7.5cm guns along with a HQ platoon.

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Tom sent his armoured cars up to the village and also brought up his infantry while his tanks were everywhere. Now I know how the DAK troops must have felt being out gunned and out numbered in the desert!

But as in real life, I realized just what 3 Pak38's could do in a short time as seen by this picture of all the brewed up vehicles! I soon had confidence again and was feeling pretty good about the battle.

Needless to say, the DAK troops held off the British armoured attack and walked away with a slight victory under there belt. We had a great game and I learned a lot about my force. As Tom & Rob left, I felt pretty good about both games and finished up basing my troops and was itching for another game. So I waited for about 30 minutes and called Rob at his house to set up a game for Sunday at his place, it seems that the FoW bug had bitten me pretty good.

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So Sunday rolls around and I pick up my army (two small containers) and head or Robs place for the third game of Fow. We decided to try the Breakthrough scenario with Rob being the attacker. As seen by this photo, I split my force into two with all my anti armour units in one section. My infantry started the game Dug in and in foxholes. Robs job was to have all of his force break out of the upper right corner to get to the lower left corner where the two objectives were. The rest of his force would come on after turn three if he rolled well.

I had placed all my armour and anti tank units all around his deployment zone waiting for him to try to bust out.

Here is a shot with Robs force deployed at the beginning of the turn, you can see he was pretty packed in on his corner on the upper right side.

The first turn my Panzer's rolled forward to try to stop his Matilda's again and except for the Panzer IVF1, I did not do so well. It was my Pak38's that were eventually able to stop them.

The battle raged on for 6 turns before Rob was able to get his reinforcements to enter the table. By this time I had positioned on of my Infantry units on a hill overlooking where he would enter and started dumping fire down on him as the British marched on to the board.

My dug in infantry had stalled Robs attack on the north side of the board for most of the game so it all depended on the reinforcements to try to breakthrough.

Robs artillery started to fire directly onto my Panzer's and they started to drop like flies. The North side was starting to falter and Rob finally broke my dug in Infantry out after turn 7.

By this time I was starting to loose too many platoons and had to test for my Company Moral, it seems that the DAK Commander had seen enough and pulled out of the battle. This left the British reinforcements only 12" from one of the objectives, which meant Rob got the win.

All in all it was a great game, I thought for sure I had Rob on the ropes and it looked like I was going to be getting the Win, but alas it was not meant to be. This sort of game reminded me of just how a real battle can be won or lost in just a few moments. I had a blast and look forward to playing again.

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So since FoW seems to have taken me over, I would like to mention an event happening this weekend (May 22nd & 23rd) which is Shifting Sands 10 http://members.cox.net/shifting-sands/index.htm which is run by a few local Fow guys here in the valley. Rob & I are planning on going out to check this out this weekend to give us more inspiration for our FoW addictions.

TK