CanGames Ottawa 2014 - Flames of War

Evening folks,

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of heading over to one of the longest running gaming conventions in Canada.  In Ottawa, over the May long weekend, folks from near and far come to game whether it be via miniature means, board, or RP...there are plenty of great games to choose from over the entire weekend from Friday afternoon until Sunday evening.

Although I was a little delayed in registering this year for personal reasons, when all was well and good I jumped at the chance to partake in a Flames of War game on Friday night.  Why Flames of War? Well sir, it's the ruleset which introduced me to this hobby...and...well, the scenario was a DDay beach assault...as I had never tried this, I simply had to.

Be warned, I took plenty of pictures...I have endeavoured to keep them in order from deployment until game end...and I'm hoping that my transient amnesia can still keep most of the details in order.  For your gaming consumption, please enjoy the following Battle Report cum photo essay.

Cheers.

The best thing about this table was that the GM handbuilt approximately 95% of the terrain...and I know you'll agree, the board is f'ing amazing.

Looking at the beach...surf and bunkers...

 The German back half of the table...small village...

 The German front half...bunkers, trenches, and minefields, oh my!!

  

Allies lined up...as an Axis player this is a little disconcerting...still a great looking table though...

The Allied aerial view...

 

 

And it begins...the Allies had a pretty simple plan to start, get troops on the beach and deal with the German bunkers that had a great field of fire of the entire beachhead.  The German counter-plan: try to kill anything that stepped onto the beach.

  

Turn 1-2, very heavy on Allied activity, light on Axis activity...Allied tanks, bunker hunting...

Tough love...bunkers taken care of...

  

Allies, bunker getting...the first 5cm AT bunkers go up within the first turn without getting to engage any Shermans...

Approx turn 2-3, Allies keep shoring up their troop strength.  More Shermans, landing of the DD's, some Croc's, and infantry and more infantry...still very little in return fire from the Axis.  That is to say, little effective fire...the dice Gods were keeping the German rolls low for the first 5 turns...ouch!

Around turn 3-4...a quick overview shot...

Allies reaching out for the first objective which is in the bottom part of the German strongpoint between 2 Tobruk HMG pits.  The 5cm AT bunkers were taken out and the Allies quickly started putting rounds onto the Tobruk HMGs as well as mortars...fairly effective methodical taking out of nearly all bunkers...

 

FIRST BLOOD by the Germans...approx. Turn 4 and the Germans get a kill on a Sherman from either a 7.5cm or 8.8cm AT bunker...very timely as the Allies are in the process of breaching the initial trenchline and barbed wire entanglements...

 

Turn marker...turn 4 near the second objective at the outskirts of the French ville...

 

 

View from Allied off-shore ships...more troops pouring onto the beach with multiple bunkers and entrenchments burning in the distance...

Second kill...2 smoking Shermans from the AT bunkers...the 88 and the 75 are holding their own...the Tobruks...not so much so, another burning entrenchment.

Turn 5...bring on the German reinforcements...1 panzer platoon with 5 x PzIVs...big morale boost on the Geman side...

 

Next frontpage for 'Signal'...the fuhrer's favorite magazine...

Panzers coming up...mortars starting to take a beating...the AT bunkers still making shortwork of incoming Shermans...

Allied fighters...buggers coming after the panzers...

Allied assault into the rear part of the strongpoint...very quick, very bloody, very one sided...

Clearing out the minefields...

Assault you say...PzIVs have another opinion...

 

PzIVs starting to harass the mine clearing operations...

End of Turn 8...overview from the German end of the table...many burning Shermans, the main strongpoint is void of friend, more infantry advancing on the right flank.

 

The game ran out of time and IIRC was a minor German victory...the Allies did very well, finally taking out the 88 AT bunker at the bottom right of the picture.  Overall a very fun game with a challenging scenario played on a really awesome board.



Battlefront US Sherman platoon

Howdy all,

As promised in an earlier post, I am showing off a recent platoon of Battlefront US Shermans that I finished just in time to use them for a Flames of War battle at the club recently.  The battle was part of our Firestorm Caen campaign and I used them as firestorm troop stand-ins for my Canadian Tank Company. 

Anyone not familiar with the Firestorm Caen or it's idea really should check out the Flames of War website (click here).  The Caen version is a homebuilt idea from a fellow in Iceland...outstanding job.

As for the American Shermans, my goal in getting them painted up was speed...nothing fancy, just speed paint to get them ready and usable.  One thing I did want to test in this was a different weathering technique to highlight rain shower streaks...I think this showed through pretty well especially in a couple of the models.

Overall, I'm happy with the paintjob, I purposely elected not to put decals on the tanks...two reasons, #1: SPEED, #2: I googled a bunch of pics of US tanks in Normandy and found many that either did not have a full set of 'stars' or had purposely covered the markings up to further camouflage themselves from the German anti-tank gunners.

Next up: US UH-1B hogs for my Air Cav Vietnam aeroweapons platoon, perhaps a battle report from my last Firestorm Caen matchup, a figurative butt-load of pics and battle reports from the recent CanGames convention in Ottawa...and if they're done, my IDF tanks for 6 Day and Yom Kippur wars.

Take care.