Flames of War

Well, I found myself at the one place I said I wouldn't be. I played in a FOW tournament this past Saturday. All in all it wasn't so bad. It was three rounds with an Eastern Front mid-war theme. All the tables were set up to represent actual battle fields from the war. This made for some interesting tables. I played my Grenadier Company with the following line up (1735pts):

HQ w/ two panzerfausts and a pupchen
priority air support
3x full grenadier platoons w/panzerfausts
Assault platoon w/ one heavy squad
PaK40 platoon w/ 2 sections
Infantry gun platoon upgraded to 150mm
full Nebelwerfer platoon

My first game was on the winter table, the Encounter scenario. This was great for infantry, not so much for armor. My opponent was Lou and it was a really fun game. Lou hasn't played in a long while and that gave me an edge on him. He did kill off a platoon, so I ended up with a 5-2 win.

This is turn two. I killed one tank with my PaK40s one with my Nebelwerfers and two with air support. It went down hill from here. Of course Lou was a real trooper and laughed everything off.


My infantry advances across the river. Lou only had some anti-tank rifles in the woods and his CIC was there. It all got shot to hell and at the beginning of his next turn he was unable to take the company morale test, ending the game.
My second game, Fighting Withdrawal, was against Rich's Cossack company on the open steppes. It should have favored his cossacks but his dice completely abandoned him and unpinned, dug in and gone to ground grenadiers are a nightmare. These games are usually very close. Rich is a much better player than I am and when I win it is usually because of things beyond his control. This side of the table didn't see a lot of action.

Rich concentrated his cossacks on this side of the table. If he could have hit me with his Katushas he may have been able to pull it off. Rich has the worst luck with these guns. If it was only an occasional thing I'd say it was just the dice. This happens in EVERY game. He will roll ones and twos to range in and on the rare occasion he does range in he'll roll ones and twos to kill. It's really freaky. In any event these cossacks got slaughtered... glue everywhere kind of slaughtered. I won 6-1.

My last game was on a table completely covered with woods and forest. We used the "across the Volga" special rule. I played Allen, who is a better player than me too, and his Russian horde. This is just the right side of the table from my side. That's one platoon, with flamethrowers attached. It got ugly fast...

This is the left side of the table. His other platoon. They had flamethrowers too. I hate flamethrowers. I never had a chance. He came in on both sides at the same time. My guns were deployed wrong and offered no support and then there were burning bodies everywhere. I think Allen did me in after four turns. It's all kind of a flamey blur....
I bitched and moaned about not wanting to play, but it was actually a really fun day. These are a great group of guys to game with and I always have fun playing them. Everyone should be so lucky to have a group like this one.

Regards, Bill
PS Did I mention I hate flamethrowers?