FOW - Late War Yanks vs Germans

Some of Ash's very cool Yanks

I found some free time this week to return to a little Flames of War with Ashley, this time using his collection as I’ve just had a busy, messy and quite intense week at work so didn’t have the energy to think about what I’d play.

Because we’re both daft we agreed to play 4000pts with Ashley putting together both lists and randomly deciding who would play what – I got Germans which suited my mood as I got to play with Panthers!

Germans (me)

Panther CiC and 2iC, 4x Panthers, 5x PZIV J, 5x PZIV J, 3x Stug G, 3x Tiger 1E, 2x Panzergrenadiers in Half tracks, HS129 Limited Air.

Yanks (Ash)

CiC Jumbo and 2iC 76mm, 3x Sherman Platoons (jumbo, 2x 75mm, 2x 76mm), 5x M5 Stuarts, 3x Priests, 4x Self Propelled 155mm, 1x Rifle Platoon, 1x ARP, 4x M10 Tank Destroyers, Priority Air.

We took the approach for this game of “move big tanks, shoot guns, Ugghhhhhhh” as we just wanted to play with as many toys as possible. Therefore we played the Free For All mission lengthways with quite a terrain free board. Also in the interests of speed we did a simultaneous blind deployment, so basically we both just ignored each other and deployed how we wanted (which works great in friendly games). We both had two objectives in each other’s deployment zones.

Initial deployment

So on to the carnage. There was a road running diagonally through the centre of the board and a couple of buildings and wheat fields dead centre. I deployed left to right - Panthers, PZiv’s, Stug’s, PZiv’s, Tigers with the CiC & 2iC as a mobile reserve. Ash opposed me with 2 platoons of Shermans on my left supported by his artillery. His rifle platoon directly behind the buildings, then a platoon of Shermans, Stuarts and the TD security section facing off against my Tiger/PZiv tag team.

Armoured push up my right flank

Can I get my air close enough to destroy some Jumbos?

So what the heck happened? Well I started off proceedings advancing everything forward and splitting my force into two to swing round the centre of the board and threaten the objectives equally. I like to play aggressively with German armour, it just feels right. Anyway my tigers took pot-shots but didn’t hit anything, my Panthers tried the same and took out two 75mm Shermans. However it went down hill pretty quickly as I then failed to damage anything for the rest of the game whilst Ashley’s air took out 2 tigers in turn two (argh).

Yank Artillery...arghhhh

Ash pushed forward on my right flank once the Tigers were whittled down, he now felt confident that he could threaten my objective, my Panthers stuck in a long range duel on the left with the Shermans (those damn jumbo’s negating my fire quite effectively). In the centre I used my PZiv’s to threaten the right flank Shermans with side shots by rushing them through the small village. But it was not to be as I’d completely forgotten the TD’s who appeared as if by magic and pummelled the PZiv’s mercilessly from point blank range.

However he totally ignored the remaining Tiger which I pushed forward aggressively (this was now my only asset capable of pushing through to an objective). So Ash rushed his Arp towards the objective in my deployment zone and it was all down to who was faster, a Tiger 1e or an M3 halftrack……..

We called it there as it was getting late and we’d nattered a bit too long. It was fun to play with lots of toys however it was less of bloodbath than I expected with that much firepower.

We’ll have a rematch at some point!

Hedges and Trees

Like many hobbyists the world over I have a large backlog of unfinished projects sitting around gathering dust, so in the interests of clearing the decks ready for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge I thought I’d finish a few things that have been lingering. So as a nice change from painting stuff for Africa I thought I’d finish some hedges and trees. The hedges have come out quite nicely if I do say myself and are super simple to make. Some years ago I bought a coir door matt to make wheat fields with and had a few random sized strips left. Wondering on what I could do with them I thought I’d slather a bit of PVA on a scrap and sprinkle some Woodland scenic scatter on to see whether it looked any good.

And hey presto we have a hedgerow. To make these I cut my strips to roughly 15mm wide and painted PVA liberally along the top and sides. I mixed my Scatter with some dried tea leaves from used tea bags (therefore more like dust than tea leaves) and rolled the PVA covered “hedge" in it.

Hedges are a bit of problem for vehicles etc if there are no gates so I used a little balsa to make some simple gates. I intend on using these for both 28mm and 15mm however I’ve only put together gates for 15mm at the moment.


The trees are a bit of a cheat as these are just armatures and flock that Ash gave me, they’re a pain to do as I’m using PVA to glue the foliage on and it takes ages. But I can sit watching TV doing it so I’ll keep chipping away whilst watching Rick and Co running away from Zombies again!