Flames of War game - 11/16/13, Operation Barbarossa

Last weekend, Steve H. ran a game of Flames of War at the Wargamer's Cave (link).  It went fairly well and I think most enjoyed themselves.  The set up was an armor heavy task force of Germans was to push across the board and exit off board at a specific road point.  The Germans were run by Glenn & Ravi.  I am not entirely sure of the German make up, but if I am correct, Glenn was pushing a platoon of Pz IIC, a platoon of Pz 38t, and the 2ic's Pz 38t; and Ravi was pushing a platoon of Pz 38t, a platoon of of Pz IVD, a weak platoon of pioneers, and the CO in his Pz 38t.  On the Russian's side, Curtis pushed a infantry platoon, 3x MMG teams, a T-28, and both the CO and 2ic; Blake was pushing a company of T-26's; and I was pushing a company of BT-7's.  We had numbers, but poor armored vehicles (my BT-7's have 0 armor rating all around!)  Anyway, here are some pictures from the game, plus a brief AAR with the pictures.

Steve is setting up the game.  Curtis' Soviets are set up with the infantry along the road and the MMG teams and the T-28 at the bend in the road.  The two Soviet tank companies start off board, but are were they are for storage until they show up.  The Germans will be coming on the right table edge in the picture.

This is either turn one or two.  Blake's T-26's are advancing down the road while my BT-7's are forming a battle line at the edge of the wheat fields.  Due to my misunderstanding, I thought the grassy field in front of me was also rough ground preventing me from moving full speed, which is the BT-7's big edge.  So I was more cautious than what I would have normally have been.  The Germans on the far corner are Glenn's and the one's in the middle are Ravi's.

This is either turn two or three.  There has been a round of fire between the tanks already.  Blake's T-26's where trading shots with the Pz IVD's and came out the worst for it.  My BT-7's lost one tank in the first round of shooting with Ravi's platoon of Pz 38t's.  So I turned moved the rest of the company through the woods (luckily without bogging any tanks until the 2nd to last) so I could get wood cover for my 0 armored tanks and also prevent half of the Pz 38t platoon to get shots at me.  Unfortunately, they still knocked out three more of my tanks!

 

Revenge!  Next round I killed the only two Pz 38t's that could shoot at my BT-7's.

Blake's T-26's where wiped out shortly later and finish killing the rest of Ravi's Pz 38t's when he advanced them to a spot were they could shoot me.  Glenn decides to do a Thunder Run past the MMG and the T-28 blocking force.  So I pull out of the woods to try to beat Glenn to the corner.

The picture before the end.  Due to the rough terrain, only two of my four remaining BT-7's can get in position to shoot at Glenn as Curtis' T-28 moves up to shoot the rear of Glenn's column.  I was able to get the lead two tanks to bail and Curtis got the rear tank to bail as well.  But Glenn passed his rolls to remount and was able to double move pass me for a win.

In the end, the Soviets lost a full company of T-26's, a half company of BT-7's, and almost a full platoon of infantry.  The Germans only lost one platoon of Pz 38t's and half of their pioneers.  The one Pz IIC was bogged down behind Soviet lines, so it might have been abandoned temporary and possibly destroyed later only to be recovered by the rest of the Panzer division following on.

Also going on at another table at the same time was a game by Dave S. using his homemade rules and 10mm / 1-144th figures.  As I was not involved with it, I can not comment on the pictures other than it was also an Eastern Front game.

On a couple of final notes, one is that if all goes well, next Saturday I will be running another 10mm Vietnam game, but this time I will be using Flames of War's Tour of Duty instead of TFL's Charlie Don't Surf.  I want to try it them out because to be brutally honest, I want a every simple game system for convention games because with only 4-5 hours to set up, tear down, explain rules, and do the game, I just don't have time to do TFL's Charlie Don't Surf justice.  Plus some people can't get around the card system with TFL's games, the fact that they might not go for several card turns, or suffer the American disease (Short attention span.)  Charlie Don't Surf will still be my game of choice for Vietnam with regular gamers but not for conventions.

Next is that I did open my package of my painted figures to find that the mail service beat the hell out of the boxes and most of the stuff was chipped.  Some has very few chips, other were really bad.  I am waiting to find what paints to use for the touch up work and do the work before taking pictures of them.  I have already have a plan on a better shipping method for future paint jobs.

Sapper