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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Armoured push up my right flank |
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| 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).
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| 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!
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