N&T Talvisota Flames of War Tournament, Day One

Last weekend my gaming club organized our annual Winter tournament Talvisota (Winter War). With roughly 100 players it's the biggest event in the wintertime here with 4 game systems being played. Warhammer Fantasy, Warmachine/Hordes, Flames of War and Infinity were all played over the weekend. Originally the event also included a 40k tournament, but as the space was getting limited that has been moved over to a slightly later date.

I played in the 1900pt LW Flames of War tournament with my trusty 101st Airborne. After some no shows on the weekend there were 16 players left to battle it out over 5 games.

My list was from Nuts with the following setup:
2x Command Carbine team

2x Parachute Platoon
- Carbine command, 5x Rifle team, 3x Bazooka team, 60mm Mortar team

2x Tank Destroyer Platoon
- 4 Hellcats

Airborne Anti-tank Platoon
- 4x M1 57mm Gun

Airborne Divisional Recon Platoon
- 4x .50cal Recon Jeep

2x Glider Field Artillery Battery
- 3x M3 105mm Light Howitzer

AOP


The first game in the schedule was Free-For-All and I was paired up against one of our ETC team members who was wielding a Tiger Company from Italy with 6 Tiger's, 2 infantry platoons, 8-rads and some AA guns.

I deployed my artillery on the middle of the map blocked by the hill and put my 57mm guns on top to control the mid route. Both flanks held one Hellcat platoon and one infantry platoon.

My opponent got the first turn and immediately pushed on my left flank. This forced me to pop out my Hellcats early to try take out his exposed Tigers. After a nice lesson in hit distribution most of the hit's on the CO were transferred into the infantry platoon behind him leaving the Tiger only bailed and killing of quite a few infantry stands. Retribution was swift with the cats being wiped out fast.

I had started to move out on the right flank to put pressure on the objective there, but had to rush back left with the Hellcats there to protect what was left of the flank.

At this point I had already lost the game so started to attempt to kill of my opponents platoons to get some points. First in the firing line were the remnants of the infantry platoon that got dosed with the .50 cals from my Recon and finished off with artillery.

My Hellcats from the right flank had made it to the middle of the board, but were met by the Tigers that had now turned on a new opponent. What followed was abysmal shooting from both sides with one Tiger being bailed and one Hellcat being shot to pieces.

My infantry platoon went to take revenge on the recon only to miss their hits and be beaten back in return.

As some salvation my Hellcats finally found their mark taking out a Tiger and it's bailed out companion decided to leave the battlefield.

4-3 loss for me. I should have deployed the Hellcats close to each other. Now I wanted to play aggressive on the right flank, but my opponents fast movement to my left forced me to just start reacting to his play. Not a very good start, but nearly all other games ended 6-1 so I guess it could have been worse.

Next game was Hasty Attack and I played against a reserve player who had taken a 5-2 loss in the previous game and had brought along a minimalistic list to cut down on stuff needed to carry to the location. 5 King Tigers and some air support were going to have to attack me on a board that had some quite heavy terrain.

I deployed most of my force on the left with an infantry platoon and anti-tank spread out to defend the objective against all the King Tigers bearing down on them.

Seeing all the cats on the other side of the table I started moving my other infantry platoon that way to support while moving the Jeeps within striking distance of my objective.

With the hedgerows blocking line of sight the Tigers moved into the road trying to shoot my 57mm's, but didn't manage to kill anything. Air support showed up killing of a team, but achieving little else.

With his only option being assaulting me before my reinforcements started arriving he came over the hedgerow only to have one tank bog down, 1 bailed and 1 destroyed by defensive fire. I lost one team in the attack, but counter-attacked killing off 4 King Tigers out of 5. We decided to stop it there after about 20 minutes of play time.

6-1 win to me. The match up couldn't have been more favourable to me. Still the list had fared surprisingly well in the previous game with a 5-2 loss and it had been only a dice throw away from a victory for the King Tiger list.

The last game for day one was No Retreat and I had to play against a Finnish infantry company on terrain that had quite a bit of forest on one flank where the Finns could move easily. Luckily I got to defend and placed my artillery so it was hidden from sight. One infantry platoon went into defensive positions on the forest on my left flank while a Hellcat platoon stayed in Ambush. I placed one observer in the town with a view over most of the table and one in the forward forest on the left to prevent the Finns from doubling their movement there. I had placed my objective in front of the hill with my arty and my opponent placed the other in the forest on the left flank leaving the town mostly out of game.

The Finns started with a Pioneer and a Jääkäri platoon on my left flank and another Jääkäri platoon on my right.

Right in the beginning of the game I was able to get in two Time on Target bombardments in with one landing on the packed Pioneers and KV-1s and one landing on the Jääkäri platoon on the right. Nice start that thinned their lines fast.

At this point I forgot I had the one observer in the forward woods and he got killed by the Pioneers. Obviously my basing was close enough to the forest so that I didn't realize he was there until I had stopped my movement.

 I got my first reserves and moved up a Hellcat platoons security section on my right flank into the village to slow any attack down with .50cals. At this point my AOP got shot down by a Stuka making it a bit harder to call in arty. I managed to cause more casualties to the Jääkäri platoon on the right which buggered off the table after failing a morale test.

A platoon of BA-10s had moved into town and effectively blocked my Hellcats from being able to move to support my left flank when needed. I brought in my recon jeeps to lift their GtG and blast them off with .50 cals and artillery. I destroyed two, but the platoon still stayed on the table. Meanwhile on the left flank the situation was building up with a Pioneer platoon and a Jääkäri platoon bearing down on my position with KV-1s ready to support.

I decided it was time to start destroying more platoons and popped out one Hellcat platoon to shoot down the escaping BA-10 and the other Finnish AT platoon. I destroyed the BA-10 and the AT guns, while managing to smoke out the other AT guns on my left flank.

I did however leave my cats in sight of the Finnish artillery observers who called in arty in my position bailing out two tanks. An AA gun added insult to injury by destroying one tank. Luckily I made my morale test and the platoon stayed on the table. After remounting the tanks the platoon moved into safety to deny my opponent any points.

At this point the situation was getting desperate for the Finns who moved in to attack my position with the Pioneers who were supported by fire from the  KV's and the Jääkäri platoon. Still at this point I already had another infantry platoon coming up to support and the first one was firmly dug in. Defensive fire beat back the attacking Pioneers who failed a morale test and left the table. On my turn the other Hellcat platoon came in from Ambush and destroyed a KV-1.

In the last turn the final Jääkäri platoon made a futile effort to assault my position only to be shot up and beaten back. Next turn my opponent failed his company morale and it was all over.

 
This was a match up that I certainly didn't want to play against in the first place. FV infantry can be a pain to fight against with my list as I don't have too many stands and can't afford to lose many of them. My artillery performed well and I managed to pick off his platoons one at a time. At the same time I was able to deny his artillery any targets for most of the game and came out relatively unscathed. The Hellcats were also performing quite nicely. In the end a clear 6-1 win where I only lost one Hellcat, one Jeep, an artillery stand and one artillery command stand.

I ended the first day in second place which was quite a big surprise as this was my first Flames of War tournament. Next day didn't look so promising though as I was going to be facing a Soviet tank horde played by our ETC team captain. More to come later.

Painting Challenge entries 5 & 6: French Middle Guard and FoW objective marker

Back and rested after the tournament so it's time for blogging again. Last week I managed two entries to the challenge, though it was slightly aided by the fact that I forgot to post the Guard the previous week :)

First up 3 battalions of Middle Guard for Waterloo. The miniatures are from Victrix and the flags from GMB designs. I'm still a bit unsure whether I like the Victrix plastics or not. The detail is sometimes quite soft and the bayonets snap easily. The poses are also somewhat limited or at least could have included a bit more variety especially on the bodies and things like facial detail are over exaggerated. Still they are extremely cheap with 60 figures costing only 23 pounds and I've been buying them from sales at about 20 euros a box.

The paintjob was fairly simple with the minis basecoated blue with my airbrush and then all the details being block painted. I did add some variety by painting most of the backpacks differently and added some detail by highlighting the face as I find most people always focus first on facial features so a bit of extra effort there helps lift up the quality of the rest. After a basic paintjob I applied a dark brown wash to add shade. Final touch was painting mud by stippling two different shades of brown. It's another quick thing to do with a battalion taking maximum 15 minutes to muddy up and really lifts the impression of quality a lot higher.

My second entry was a Flames of War objective marker from Kerr & King. No figures on it though so no points for me from this. However I needed it for the tournament and it was a nice little appetizer before my next larger paint job so doesn't really matter. Not the best quality resin, but luckily small air bubbles etc. don't really matter in a subject like this so clean up was a breeze. Basecoated dark brown and then drybrushed with various different colours trying to leave the paintjob on things like the brick wall different shade in different areas. As a final touch I added some chipping with a sponge.

I'm back ahead of schedule with 658 points now all together. 342 to go until my target of 1000. As with all plans my original plans of painting have changed with my whims and things like the Chimera have been skipped. I won't be able to finish my Great Spined Dragon in time for the "Hot" challenge either, but I have a feeling we'll still be seeing him done during the challenge anyways.

Painting and tournament preparation

I'm back painting after a small hiatus due to the addition of a new furry member to our family. Jekku is a Novascotian duck tolling retriever who will hopefully someday become my hunting companion on duck and grouse hunts. It's still a long way off and currently he just concentrates on sleeping and mischief like most puppies do. At the moment his living up to his name which is prank or trick in finnish, but it's also the shortened slang name for the lovely German drink Jägermeister. Hopefully he'll transition to the latter when he grows older :) No big disasters yet, but he did already manage to open one cabinet where I kept prepped minis, luckily I got there in time to save the minis from a horrible death and the little dog from some epic stomach cramps.

I did finish the Middle Guard last week already, but forgot to post them to the challenge... So they will be coming out this Friday. In addition to them I actually have a second entry lined up in the form of a Flames of War objective marker! I'll be participating in a tournament this weekend and decided I don't want to use the plastic markers I have so I quickly painted up this marker to accompany the one I already finished earlier. At the moment the wash is drying, but when that is done it's time for a  varnish and some static grass to finish it off. I also started on some remaining Early War Germans with two AT gun platoons and an IG platoon. In preparation for the tournament I've also been fixing a few models that have taken some abuse from falling etc. Pretty darn annoying stuff as it's really hard to match the paint shade when covering up areas that have been glued back together.

I'm already slacking on my New Years plan of not buying more than I paint as we organized a group order to Perry Miniatures at my club. They arrived at my doorstep today in four boxes. Six and a half kilograms of lead and plastic. Quite a hefty order. But at least now I have everything I was still missing for my Waterloo project except for a few artillery pieces.

Winter War Campaign continues

All quiet on the painting front lately, but I did manage to squeeze in another Winter War game last week. This was originally planned to be played during Christmas holidays, but due to scheduling problems we only got around to it last week.

The scenario was based on a historical battle where a Soviet unit was lost during a night march and bumped into a Finnish unit guarding a crossroads in the rear.

The starting position saw a Finnish LMG squad and an anti-tank gun defending the crossroads, while two Soviet platoons were arriving along the two roads leading to the crossroads. Would Finnish reinforcements arrive in time or will the Soviets overrun the defences.

 The first turn saw some of my reinforcements arrive on the Soviet flank shooting up a truck and killing off a couple of Soviet soldiers. In return the Soviets proceeded to deal a heavy blow to both squads taking out over half of them with some very lucky dice rolling.

On turn three it started to become light enough for troops to see clearly and at this point the Finnish anti-tank gun started to make short work off the Soviet T-26s on the open in the roads. In return my newly arrived machine-gun team got wiped out in another round of  splendid dice rolling.

Meanwhile on the other flank a Veteran Finnish ski squad arrived eager to revenge their comrades. However my dice rolling continued as usual with only a few casualties caused on the Soviets while once again over half the squad got wiped out in return fire.

Things are looking pretty desperate as the Soviets shoot through the single rifle squad at the crossroads in another show of marksmanship. No reserves in sight so it's pretty much over for the Finns.

 

As a desperate last ditch effort the few remaining Skiing riflemen attack the closest Soviet unit and promptly wipe them out. In return the Soviets attempt to counter-attack only to be killed and driven off the table.

A very solid win for the Soviets. I played a bit too rashly with the Finns being quite confident that shooting with 4+ or 5+ and killing with 3+ would be enough to take down enough Soviets while usually being hit with a 6+ or 7+ and being killed with 4+ or 5+ should have kept me quite safe. It was not to be as I was usually only able to take down a couple of Soviets while many times the return fire from a single Soviet squad would easily wipe out half a squad I had. Skilled dice rolling (or nicely weighed dice :) ) with consistent rolls of 6s all around really made me suffer. If Inexperienced units can start causing damage early in the game they can be really strong as most other armies can't afford to lose many units.