Late War British in the Caldron

I got a chance to play my friend Keith in a game of Flames of War a couple of weeks ago. We decided to play at an existing LGS that moved to a new location. Village Games in Champlin, MN is a great store with a lot of gaming area, the only draw back is that they don't carry any historical miniatures anymore.

We decided to play a late war game and rolled up the Caldron mission.  This mission is a little wonky, I think the games played in this mission are usually fun but I feel the defender is at a big disadvantage.

Keith played his trained Irish Guard with Tank Destroyers, anti tank guns, 8 25 pounders, mortars, and universal  carriers in support.  I had a Panzer IV panzer company with Aukalungs, Stug G's, 2 8 rads, and some Nebelwerfers in Support.

 

I started off deploying almost all of my force in the right back quarter of the table, hiding what I could for Keith's first turn. I had a great bottom of the first by destroying the whole platoon of tank destroyers leaving only his anti tank guns as a real threat to my tanks until he brought  in some reserves to distract me from my goal.

Keith tried to take out what he could with his artillery and anti tank guns but didn't have much luck.  I slowly chipped off all of the guns as I advanced on the objectives. I turned a few of the tanks around to wait for the reserves to come on from my rear.

 

I moved on to the objective and started to sweep  his flank to take out the rest of his guns. My infantry came on over on the far side of the table.

 

 

 

Keith is planning out his next move.

 

 

His Shermans in reserve come on the board and take out my  nebs and a small unit of Panzer IV's in the same turn.  He just got his 2 units to make this a close game no matter what the out come.

 

 

I had too much fire power waiting for the Shermans and shot them up pretty good. He tried a desperation assault on the objective but that didn't work out as planned and I ended up winning a 4-3 game.

 

 

 

It is always a great time playing Keith everyone of battles are hard fought and fun to play.   I hope to play him again soon.

 

 

 



Flames of War AAR U.S 7 th Armored ARC v. Jagtiger Company with Carius

I finally manged to get a game of Flames of War in with my friend Jason Paulus last week.  I brought my armored rifles from the 7th Amored Div. featured in the Blood, Guts and Glory book. My army consited of 2 units of ARP 2 units of Shermans each had a Jumbo 2 79 M4A3 and 1 plain Sherman, a recon platoon, and 2 units of 3 M7 Priests.Jason loves his big cats and brought a List from Remagen.  He had Carius in a Jagtiger, 2 other Jagtigers, 2 Jagpanthers, 3 gun 105 battery and a unit of infantry loaded iwth panzer fausts.

A shot of the table we played on.

WE rolled up Surrounded on the scenario table.  It wasn't the best scenarios for Jasons army since he always defends and didn't allow for his range advantge with his Jagtigers.  He had to setup first and he kept the Jagpanther platoon in immediate ambush.

I deployed 1 unit of Priests with the 2 observer tanks, my recon and 1 unit of ARP at one end and the rest at the other so I could try to take advantage of trying to stay away from Carius since he doesn't suffer any penalties for shooting at long range or concealment.

I had first turn I moved both units of tanks up and both units of ARP.  I ended up killing on Jagtiger and a wirblewind and nothing else. my first turn.  Jason hit me a lot with everything but couldn't roll a fire power roll for anything any bailed 2 tanks and his wirblewind killed one halftrack and one infantry stand.

His Guns and infantry protected the objestives.

on the second turn I moved up my tanks again to shoot at the jagtiger hidden behind the corner building and and they accomplished their mission by destroying that tank.  My oberver tanks fired again on Carius but just kept bouncing shells off the rear of tank.  My ARP shot at the guns and didn't do anything.  The priests kept try to range in in Carius and the Jagpanthers and only bailed on Jagpanther. Json struck back killing 2 76s and bailing the Junbo in platton right in front of them and Garius killed 2 76's in the other platoon.

I finally had my recon in position and took away gone to ground of this infantry.  We shot at the infantry and guns and manged to pin both of them. I ended up bailing Carius with my Priests and killing both Jagpanthers.  Jason failed to unpin both unit and Carius failed to get back into his tank so it wasn't looking good so he surrendered.

It was a pretty fun game and could have went either wy with a few key dice rolls.  I am really looking forward to our next game.