The last
month has been on the busy side, family celebrations, moving houses and still
working all but the statutory days. Is that an excuse for not doing much painting?
Not really. Part of this was because when I did get drive to do some painting I
couldn’t find my black spray-paint to undercoat some of my FOW troops. When I
did find it I lost inspiration. I needed something to motivate me so Dan and I
arranged to play a game of FOW last night. Unfortunately due to time
constraints we didn’t get to play a full game but it was nice to get back into
the swing of it again. And yes it worked, I have itchy fingers and am keen to
get back to painting my Hell on Wheels’ army.
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| The table after set up. Unfortunately all the photos are a tad blurry |
We set up
for a game of no retreat, Dan defending with his fallschirmjager and I was attacking
with his British guards. The table was something out of Lord of the Rings,
rocky cliff faces, plenty of trees and a railroad track, they had railroads in
LOTRs right? Not large amounts of terrain to hide as the defender yet not so
great for advancing troops either. Dan hid one of the objectives behind the
train station and I placed my objective out in the open. I set my troops up in
two separate groups, one coming down from the side cliffs and another from the
middle, Dan dispersed his infantry across the centre woodlands.
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| Half my troops ready for action! |
Turn 1
So turn one
began, I advanced and rattled off some machine gun rounds, luckily I killed 1
of Dans, dug in gone to ground fallschirmjager troops. What are the odds, 6 to hit,
3+ infantry save then 6+ firepower test and there was no way I was getting a 7.
Dans turn
arrived without reinforcements. Unfortunately I couldn’t get my cars, trucks
and tanks into adequate cover as Dans PaK 40s were on the cliffs opposite the
area terrain at ground level only provided concealment. Dan hitting on a 6
managed to blow up one of my tanks. He then rattled my armoured cars with
machine gun fire from his machine-gun platoon in the nearby forest and
unfortunately I failed a armour save (failing on a one) causing one to bail out
although I think I destroyed it because I didn’t like it anyway… oops. Dan also
moved his troops in the forest to the other side of the terrain.
Turn 2
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| Tanks moving in |
Big
mistake, I moved my tanks and cars up to the fringe of the area terrain within
15cm range of Dans troops and pummelled them with machine gun fire, only
killing one team yet pinning them down. Then I charged in my armoured cars for
an assault, the daimer dingo got bogged down but I under cover with Dans troops
pined he was hitting on a 6+ as his anti-tank guns only had ROF 1, no hits. I
successfully destroyed two teams and Dan failed both his motivation tests
causing the team to fall back towards the objective at the train station.
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| After the assault |
 |
| Moving towards the objective |
Dan was crestfallen however he managed to unpin his troops but failed to dig them in.
His StuGs arrived in reserved and moved up his left flank to destroy my 3ton
trucks which I had not offloaded yet. Without being in machine-gun range he had
to fire his main guns at long range and half ROF, all misses and his StuGs out
in the open for next turn! The rest of his troops did some moving and shooting
as I recall yet no hits unfortunately.
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| Dan's StuGs |
And then we
called it.
Only two
rounds in but it was a hoot. I think both Dan and I agree things were looking
more in my favour yet I think there was still hope for Dan. The terrain
probably wasn’t in his advantage either and setting his PaKs away from the
action might not have been the best. However what we both agree is that FOW is
a great game. As Dan describes it a true war game! The rules are admittedly
rather complex but they do make for a highly strategic and thematic game.
Achieving both is truly noteworthy of a great game. Now to get on with some
painting!
