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.

 

 

 



A Mid War Dust Up

I had a chance to play a game a couple of months back with Keith and I never got a chance to post it up. I had my german infantry with Marder II's and Panzer III's.  He had his Irish guards with Churchhills and his mounted AT guns.

The battle started out with a shootout between my Marder III's against his AT guns mounted on trucks.

My Panzer III's try to assault his objective guarded by an infantry platoon and 8 6 pounders.  I din't have much luck.

Keith assaulted my objective with his Churchhills and an infantry Platoon. I kept my infantry and pak38's gone to ground since I couldn't crack his front armor.  He never took the bait to assault me so I could blast apart his Churchills.

My reserves came on the table but were too late to save the tanks and got ripped up by some machine guns in the Manor house.

A bird's eye view from Keith's side of the battle.  He was almost ready for the final assault.

I narrowed down his forces but I just didn't have enough left to kick him off the objective.

Keith was sizing me up and dialing in the range.

Keith finally ended it by crushing my flank and destroying my morale.  It was a fun and it's probably about time he gives me a rematch.