Flames of War - First battle

(click on image to enlarge)

 After a few scheduling hic-ups, Laertes and I finally had our Flames of War battle. This was simply a "training battle". We wanted to get the rules down, and didn't put much effort into strategy or tactics (well, at least I didn't!).

Fortress Europe was the book we pulled our forces from, and I detailed our army lists in this post. We played on a 4'x4' board with some hills to break LoS. We chose to play the Free-For-All mission.

Here are a couple of thoughts on the battle:

1. The US stabilizers were nice, but with the German Veteran troops, I needed 5's to hit (6's at long range).
2. Even with the extra firepower the US forces had, the German armor was tough to crack.
3. We completely ignored the objectives and slugged it out in the middle of the board.

We made a some mistakes throughout the game. Here is a summary:

1. Morale Checks.  If I shoot at your team of 3 tanks, and I destroy 1 and make 1 crew bail out, there's no morale check, because the team is not below half strength.  The number of tanks that can fight (one) equals the number of tanks that are destroyed (one).  The tank whose crew has bailed out does not count in the calculation.  If another tank was bailed out then a check would be required. 
2. Protected Ammo. The protected ammo on the Panzer IV's would have meant that they should have re-rolled every failed roll to re-mount the tank.
3. Allocating Hits. Once the hits have been allocated across the unit, THEN we start rolling saves and firepower rolls to destroy or bail out.  But we're rolling for a specific team or tank.  If a tank that is bailed out gets another bailed out result, it has to take a Motivation test or be destroyed.
4. Company Command. We probably should have had our company command "join" one of the other platoons.  They're like independent characters in Warhammer, although if you have the company commander in your unit you are then able to re-roll any failed Motivation test.  So not only would we have had 5 tanks firing as one unit, but we would have been able to re-roll the unit tests and the bail out tests.
5. Objectives. We only placed one objective (not 2) and we placed them in our own deployment zone (not the opponents)

It was fun, and we are planning to try another match, this time with more effort in defense!!

Flames of War

Two Panzer IV G tanks take on 3 confused M4 Sherman tanks

Laertes picked up Flames of War last week, and we are planning to play an introductory battle on Friday. He will be taking control of a German force and I will be fumbling my way through with a US force.

We both like big armored machines with guns, so we are opting to play tank companies. Which also works because we don't have any miniatures for Flames of War! Fortunately, I have a small collection of Axis & Allies miniatures, so they will be substituting in for the "real" models. While the A&A figures are less detailed and less historically accurate, they are apparently the same scale as FoW miniatures.

The army lists have been chosen (limited to figures on hand)-- Laertes will have 8 Panzer IV H tanks and I will be sporting 11 M4A1 Sherman tanks. The total points will ring in at 760.

German Panzerkompanie List
1 Company HQ, 190 pts
   2 Panzer IV H

1 Panzer Platoon, 285 pts
   3 Panzer IV H

1 Panzer Platoon, 285 pts
   3 Panzer IV H


US Tank Company List
1 Company HQ, 140 pts
   2 M4A1 Sherman

1 Tank Platoon, 205 pts
   3 M4A1 Sherman

1 Tank Platoon, 205 pts
   3 M4A1 Sherman

1 Tank Platoon, 205 pts
   3 M4A1 Sherman


Wish me luck... I'll need it!