Greetings from the far off land of allergies and drought.
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| What's painted to date, not including the Heavy Mortar Squad pictured way below. |
Last weekend was a 2000 point Tracks and Turrets tournament at the local Gaming con, ConQuestSac. I took a list from the Market Garden source book, British 11th Armoured - 1ic & 2ic Shermans, 3 platoons of 2 Shermans/2 Fireflys, full platoon of M10 17pdrs, a Sherman ARV and Limited Air Support.
Over all, I had a really fun day, though only won one of my three games. Here's a swift round up.
Round One had me up against Brad and a bloody horrible list with 6 Konigstigers and some AA vehicles that didn't come into play. Of course there were delayed and scattered reserves (No roll for reserves until turn 3 and on a random place on my table edge!!!) involved, so only half our forces were able to start on the table, the other half being rolled for later on. Seeing as he only had two platoons, he stuck his 1ic & 2ic Konigstigers and his platoon of.... 4 more Konigstigers (KT for short.), leaving his AA guns in reserve. I chose to place two of the Sherman platoons down and kept the third and the M10 platoon in reserve. If you haven't already guessed or are clueless as to what this situation is, I started the game facing 1800 of Brad's 2000 with only 850 points worth of my own. Trouble from the start.
He camped his 1ic and 2ic on his objective and had his platoon in position to move toward the objective in my deployment zone. I figured I'd only have a chance at all versus his 40" range and armour 15 front tanks, if I ignored the platoon of KT's and rush my whole starting force (10 tin can Shermans and fireflys) at his defended objective, hoping that come turn 3, I'd be lucky enough to have taken his objective and roll for one single platoon to come contest versus his KT platoon. Funnily enough, my rush of wee tanks rushed through and killed off his 1ic and 2ic and holding the objective. Unfortunately, what happened next was a fine example of Piss Poor Planning/Preparation on my part and I totally shot my self in the foot, losing the game.
I rolled on turn three to get a reserve platoon and lucky day of all luck days I got one! So i grab my M10's with their big Tiger killing guns hoping to shoot his big cats off the objective and look to see where they deploy. Okay, 1-2 was rolled, so my bottom left corner, not perfect, but hopefully I can maneuver well enough to get the job done. Here's where it went wrong - neither of us could figure out just how big the deployment zone was and saw mistakenly 8" from the corner. So sadly, I couldn't get close enough to the objective to contest and I was only able to kill two KT's, losing the game. Deal was, reserves actually come in on
16" from the corner..... *facepalm* O well, lesson learned. So this was a sad 1-6. (O and my planes did bugger all through the game.... You'll see a pattern here.)
Round Two was a fateful showdown versus my Flames of War mentor, Eric Riha (Often mentioned on the wwpd.net podcast.) and his American Patton list. This game was over before it started. My dice were abysmal and Patton's Spearhead moves (Everything in his line of sight get's a pre-1st turn move, like a recce team = shenanigans) had Eric's tank platoons in my grill almost turn one. By the time I was able to roll for reserves (Again on turn 3 - damn you delayed reserves!!!!), I had already lost enough in my army and was forced to have to roll (And fail) a Company Morale test and the game was done. Another 1-6, but at least this time it was both against a far superior player than I and not due to my own lack of preparation.
Round Three saw me going in tied for last place in the rankings. Seriously?! *sighs* I was to face a very fun chap called Joe, who gave me my first taste of Russian Heavy armour. (Thirteen IS-2's I think.) Funny thing is, This was my first and only game all day where I got to be the attacker, so (finally) I got to start with ALL of my platoons on the pitch! Hoo-rah!
The 1st turn saw me move all of my Shermans and M10's in and line up in wheat fields so that I got to take 10 17pdr (AT15) shots at his ugly Soviet armour. Now, odds are that this should have taken out at least 4 of the 7 tanks camped on his objective, but per the rest of the tourney, Lady Luck had other ideas. Boom and bang went all those lovely armour cracking guns and when the smoke cleared..... I'd managed to bail just one. That's it. Conceivably I could have won the game in my turn one, o well. The rest of the game though
did see my fortunes turn around somewhat for the better though and using the far better maneuverability of my own tanks versus his slow heavies, I managed to both keep his reserves at bay and keep the objective for a 4-3 win.
All in all, the tourney was super fun, if frustrating and I got to watch a lot of super cool games with a LOT of wonderfully painted heavy armour forces after my own 1st and 2nd games finished so abruptly. :) I did learn though, that armoured companies are not my thing - much prefer to play my Poor Bloody Infantry! Next tourney I plan to attend is in June, a Mid War affair and I think I'll be bringing some Kiwis from the Italy lists. Lots and lots of stuff to bog Nazi armour down with.
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| This is my Hawker Typhoon, fully painted with markings and all. I'm too cheap to buy decals tho, so I freehanded the markings instead. The "F" is taken from the Battlefront "How to Paint a Typhoon" webpage, the DE... well, are my initials. :) |
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All of my Shermans are painted now. Just need to add weathering and markings, but for tabletop play, they are good enough.
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Since my original tournament in February, I've managed to get my good mate Densmol interested in Flames of War. He's a big Nazi Tigers fan and so has amassed an impressive collection of heavy Nazi armour in a short amount of time. He went to the above written about tourney as well (His 1st) and almost took the 1st prize! It's good to finally have a mate who's into miniature gaming and that is as enthusiastic as I am, and also who's up for playing on a regular basis too.
We got a game in last night where he played his same list he took to the tournament versus a Canadian infantry company I hastily put together - 2000 points. I won, though it was touch and go for a bit there. Here's some pics:
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My boys camped the Nazi objective on the hill early on. Stupid Sherman's hid in the woods bottom right almost the whole game....
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| On the other end of the table, Otto Carius and his best pal burnt to a cinder as my M10's, Infantry and WASP carriers advanced on the other Nazi objective. Please note the scary Elefant heavy assault guns! o_0 |
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| Right before I managed to contest his objective right side of the pic and rush my WASPS to camp my own in the mid right for the win. |
This game gave me the opportunity to bring out and show off my completely finished 6pdr platoon;
and my newly touched up and rebased Heavy Mortar platoon, that were a horror when I bought them off of Ebay and now look decent enough for tabletop I think.
I'll close out with a few pics with different views of the Typhoon and latest painted Shermans. Cheers if you kept reading this far down! :)
*"Where's the 40K stuff gone?!" I hear you ask? Well, I've not forgotten, nor abandoned my other projects, merely set them aside to get myself enough painted Brits so I can play multiple lists in Flames of War. Watch this space though as I can feel the Grim Dark creative juices a-flowing!*
