FOW free for all AAR part one

Another games club, another Flames of War game. This time I am using the 3rd US armoured division which are confident trained rather than confident veterans. I was doing my research and as the Americans have a lot of firepower they work best as trained. I guess the rational for this is to hit scores are based on your opponents skill rating so it really doesn't mater what your skill rating is. Trained armies win in shoot outs and veterans in assaults. Anyhow here is some photos of the first part of my 3rd US armoured division versus Dans fallschirmjäger army at 1300 points. The scenario is free for all. 

The set up after my first move. I started my armoured rifle platoon out of their halftracks defending the objective. 

I moved my 76mm shermans up with the recon to prevent Dan from ambushing with his cheeky panzerfaust teams which can spring an ambush from area terrain. We are not quite sure what that involves however as Dan was using buildings at one point. If anyone has any clarifications that would be great. 

  I used my command 75mm sherman to shoot smoke to reduce potential harm from Dans pathers. 

My thunderbolt got its first flight however only being strength one I had to reroll my first batch of successes of which I got 100% of my dice rolls only to get 40% on the second roll, hitting on a 2+. 

A mid game drink. Quite a tasty one. Unfortunately there are no records of Dans last turn but it involved some movement but and no successful shots. 

In round two the thunderbolt bombed Dans panther and a pak40, unfortunately the panther saved his armour save but the pak40 couldn't stand the heat!

Afraid for my tanks I moved them all tother up my left flank with recon protecting them from surprise ambushes.

I moved my mortars into position to provide covering fire and smoke. 

Success Pak40s smoked reducing the threat for my shermans in the open. 

 A view after my turn. Once again Dans next turn goes undocumented but it invoved him moving up, sprining a ambush with a panzerfaust team on my armoured mortars and like me rolling miserably scoring 0 hits, oh except that Pac 40 I blew up.

The next turn involved me advancing my shermans shooting some covering smoke, while I was at it destroyed his Pak 40 platoon and foolishly assaulted one of dans fallshirmjager platoons. 

Dan's platoon was still pined from last turn but all his troops had panzefausts and were at 100% strength. No amount of covering smoke could prepare me. He missed all his shots from the teams in the smoke but the three out managed to all hit. One 76mm sherman was destroyed and one bailed. Then in Dans turn he finished them off. 

My armoured rifle platoon did managed to destroy 2/3 of Dans armoured recon teams on the other side of the field however.  

In Dans turn he advanced and took out half my armoured mortar platoon with the rest of his panzerfaust teams. 

Then we called it a night. We are planning to finish this game in a fortnights time. I feel though we destroyed a platoon each I feel Dan is at an advantage as my platoons were more costly and he is in a good position. I guess I jumped the gun with my assault where I should of sat back moving and shooting which Americans are good at. Also I forgot to use my recon to lift gone to ground, doh'. 

For a second run with the US armoured devision I feel I did well and learn some hard mistakes I shan't make again in a hurry, namely destroying my 76mm shermans by assaulting a fully armed platoon. I am looking forward to revising the force and trying again. Plus despite everything we had a great time!

P-47 Thunderbolt

You may recall about a week ago a post about stripping my Flames of War Thunderbolt because I was unhappy with the paint job (you can read the post here). Well now I have finished my second attempt at painting her up. Throughout the paint job I felt unhappy with it as I found the model quite hard to paint. Perhaps it was because there isn't much definition making it hard to paint from dark to light or do an effective wash. I later found out that there are useful ways to do washes for such models like using a pin. However after a paint job which took to long I decided finally to call it complete. After a day the paint job grew on me but I would still say its a pretty shoddy paint job. However warts and all here it is:

The writing below the aeroplane reads DEATH FROM ABOVE which I copied from the film Apocalypse Now, a real classic. Anyhow, as mentioned above I am not 100% happy with this, more like 55% however I got sick and tired of painting it so it was time to move on and call it a day. After all it still will blow up german steel no matter how bad it looks doing it, right? 

Hell on Wheels gets its First Outing

Steve's American Armoured Company saw its first action last week.  Work commitments (otherwise known as four days of fishing in Golden Bay) have got in the way of this being posted, so my apologies for it being a little dated.  But last Wednesday Steve was able to put together a 1300 point American Armoured Company known as "Hell on Wheels".

We played "surrounded" with my Fallschirmjargers holding the middle of the table.  I was using a Bridge by Bridge list of Ersatz FJ, with Panthers in support and those rather handy panzerfaust teams that Colonel Von der Heydte comes with.  Here's some pictures:

The FJs in the centre:

The American armour lined up:

 Panthers lie in wait:

The view on the right flank:

The aftermath:

 After some initial gains, the American armour was dealt a heavy blow from the panzerfaust teams in the woods.  We muddled through the rules a little on them, but they hit a hard blow against the Shermans.  The Panthers took care of another platoon on the far side and Steve soon called it a day.  He had taken out two of the pak 40s and a number of infantry teams, but was on the brink of having most of his platoons destroyed.

It was all played in a good spirit and Steve was a good sport despite my panzerfaust guys being a little too strong it seemed...  He has plans for next time, which include a better terrain arrangement.  On that note, the eagle eyed of you will see that there are the new Battlefront buildings there - the corner store, the large house and the Bastogne Church.  All looking good on the table top.  The paint job on the church is a bit average but the others are all very good.

M3 half tracks

Finally after much procrastination I have finished my American armoured rifle platoon. A few weeks back I completed the infantry and now I have completed their rides! Without more to do here are the pictures.

I numbered these to match up with the infantry squads

Now for some close ups.

There are a few more infantry models I need to paint up and glue into place however these are good enough for now. It was a real mission painting up the armoured rifle platoon due to the share size of it but if feels great having it done. Now I am moving on to an armoured mortar platoon with M4 81mm half tracks.

I am taking these suckers out for their first spin on Wednesday with Dan. I can't wait to see how they get along, it will likely end it bullets and explosions.

Armoured rifle platoon infantry finally finished

More than a few months back I began working on my Flames of War American armoured rifle platoon. After a 6 month holiday in Europe, working on some Empire of the Dead bobbies and plenty of procrastination I have finished the infantry. Unfortunately I still have 3 half tracks to go but at least its a big step forward to completing my American Hell on Wheels company.

The different squads are separated out as you can see

Command with the M3 37mm gun which can be swapped for a bazooka team

Rifle squad number 1

Rifle squad number 2

Mortar team

Light machine gun team

I broke this guys base while painting,
now he is limping along side his partner

The backs are labelled by squad to match their half tracks

labelled halftrack 

I quite like this platoon, it is nice have such a large diversity of units in a squad, yet the riflemen with ROF 1 keeps the cost down. It felt like quite a mission painting these guys up as it is a large platoon especially when you include the half tracks, however the most important thing is they will look amazing on the table alongside the rest of the company. 

Loose Ends

Well it is almost time for take off and I thought I should tie up some loose ends.

The new Airbus and personal assistant Robbie

My wife and I are heading off to Europe for a trip through France, the UK, Italy, and Slovenia (plus a few hours in Croatia). The last few weeks have been busy with moving and working on some last minute tasks so I haven't painted a heck of a lot. However here is what I have done out of my Armoured Rifle Platoon for the Yanks.

Completed so far

Half tracks will have numbers to correspond with the teams they carry

Platoon command section

LMG team and bazooka team

I think they are looking A OK. However my bases are pretty simple, which I like. I think the flock grass has a cleaner look to static grass. When I get back I may add some extra foliage to give them a tad more intrigue.

One key loose end I have been trying to sort out is Wayland. They are in my bad books right now. Four weeks after I have ordered (as mentioned in a previous post here) and they are still trying to get my thunderbolt in stock. They said it should take 3-9 days for this to happen. Grumble. I tried to get them to split the order and send my tanks and priests separately however they flat out refused unless I paid an extra fee (it wasn't really that large to their credit).

I am not sure what to do now. Cancel my order or just the thunderbolt in fear of never getting anything or wait it out. After all I am away 6 weeks, it will probably be sitting in Dan's office (where I send my packages to) when I get home.  Anyhow any ideas on where to go from here or similar experiences? Either way both Dan and I think it is pretty annoying these places can sell you stuff, and take your money for items they don't even have! I think I will start ordering with Caliver books now because at least they don't make any promises.

Well I am off for 6 weeks now. Dan will be master and commander of the blog so keep checking for posts. Hell I may even make a post or two while I am overseas.

A Gaming Manifesto

Flames of War gaming night last night can be summed up as:

Know the feeling?

There was a bit of tension there, which I in part added to (okay was primarily responsible for).  For me, I feel that unless I am "policing" what happens in the other side's turn then I will be taken for a ride - particularly over-measuring which is my personal bug bear.

Perhaps we should leave our weapons at home when we play

The other issue that gets me is the "squidgy shot" that skims the outside of a wood, just fits between two buildings and takes out your tank or something.  I find it impossible to protect against that sort of thing and must confess I think ultimately such shots are somehow against the spirit of the game (which they are not).  I also feel that the game would slow down to a crawl if I had to measure and ask about each potential shot before moving.

Really, I need to chill out a little and enjoy the game and allow such things to happen as part of the game.  What we need is a gaming manifesto for our group to stop things disintegrating.  Something we all buy into, so that I feel like I don't need to "police" things, and also so I don't affect the vibe by being the annoying guy.
Your thoughts on what should be added would be helpful.  Something like:

1. I will trust that the other side is playing within the rules of the game and the spirit of the game.
2. I will not over-measure.
3. I will ask on a clarification about line of sight in my own turn.  If I don't ask, then tough.
4. It is better to lose and have fun that win and be a dick.

Last night wasn't helped by the fact I hadn't played for a while and I have holes in my understanding of the rules.  Steve pointed out later that one of my platoons lost its command (it was an armoured car platoon) and couldn't have taken one of the objectives for instance.  I also get very confused about shooting through friendly teams in the same platoon (another pet hate is the need to carefully arrange teams so that they can all shoot / assault etc).

The scenario we played was not one of the usual missions either, it was a scenario from the FOW website (Recce over the Canal) that was a little confusing to say the least.

Your thoughts on this issue would be good - any additions to the manifesto would be helpful.

Hell on Wheels' and we have hit 10000!

Ok so it is a bit generic to do a post about hitting impressive sounding hits on a blog but here I am. I must admit hitting 10000 views feels like a pretty good achievement when we never expected anyone but our gaming buddies to read it (who are exactly the people who don't read it).

A blast from the past, our original header. 

Anyhow now on to the business! I got a pretty sweet trademe deal the other day with a lot of tanks and a lot of infantry. Here is what it said it included:

Included are... 
1x Armoured Cromwell Platoon 
1x M4A1 (76) Platoon 
1x Panzer IV H Platoon 
1x Jagdpanther 
1x German Panzer (not sure which type) 
1x Sherman Firefly VC 
1x German Halftrack (MG42) 
1x American Halftrack (.50cal) 
3x American Jeeps 
1x Hummel 
1x Ruined building 

There are also various American infantry (mortars, machine guns and riflemen) and German infantry (riflemen). All extra components included. 

Some undercoated black, the Firefly is semi painted but the rest are unpainted. 

Well it came with the above, not sure what I would do with it when it came. After a few chats with Dan I reluctantly decided to pass on the Panzers to him and less reluctantly the Cromwell's as I didn't have use for them for a small fee. I decided my grenadiers could do with heavier tanks than the Panzers as I already had some StuGs.

However what to do with the M4A1 76mm. After much uming and arring I think I have settled on a 2nd Armoured Division aka Hell on Wheels' from Turning Tide (I think it is being superseded by overlord). What attracted me to this company was; firstly, I like tanks, they cause a lot of damage but die hard, rather than pesky infantry who just stick around and make the game drag; secondly, the 2nd division has a cool nick name as mentioned above; thirdly, they painted their tanks with brown and black cammo patterns meaning I can make the tanks have a bit of intrigue; lastly, it means I will have an infantry company (grenadiers) and tank company.

To make this company this I will start by getting a M4A1 standard platoon and an Armoured Rifle Platoon probably off wayland unless there is a place anyone else can recommend? I will make a company with command section (2 tanks), M4A1 76mm platoon and standard M4A1 platoon, then I will have a recon platoon and Armoured Rifle platoon. Then after this the world is my oyster, perhaps some priests will be next. With the infantry, jeeps and halftracks in the auction I thought there would be enough to make a recon platoon but...

In the end it came with a whole bunch more infantry than expected. Not sure what to do with them all, there are some riflemen, SMGs, MG, HMGs, bazookas, mortars etc. I think I will still do the Recon platoon (Command Rifle team, half track, 2 rifle teams and 2 jeeps) but wondering what else I could do with these guys. He has made up some bazooka and mortar teams already, but I am not sure what these guys are supposed to be?

I think there supposed to be MG teams but the base is to small!
Pretty good work with the green stuff though. 

I am looking forward to whipping these guys up and taking them out for a spin, it will probably mean putting my grenadiers on hold for a bit however. I am already thinking of how to make them have a bit more intrigue like I did with my StuGs. I am thinking of making surf boards to put on the back of some of the tanks. Of course when they first landed in Normandy they were expecting to get some good all American surfing in. I was inspired by the film Apocolypse Now (all good war films seem to come from the Vietnam war). Not sure how to make these yet, maybe cut out a piece of plastic into the shape of a surf board then flesh it out with green stuff, any ideas?