Getting back into Flames of War

It's been awhile since my last game of FoW, over two years in fact (Day of Days 2014). After more than a decade of FoW I'd had enough and put it aside for other games and activities.

However, Poochie and I have decided to play in  Panzershrek this year. We chatted about it last time we met up and after being keen then changing my mind decided what the hell it would be a great chance to catch up with some of the North Island gamers I enjoy playing against. Panzershrek is Early War doubles so we've been emailing over the past few weeks throwing a few ideas around and slowly our ideas have been crysallising into a couple of (hopefully) viable lists.

I'm looking at running a panzer company and  Poochie a supporting infantry company. Anyone who knows Poochie's style of play will quickly realise the most dangerous part of our force will no doubt be his infantry- he is a rather aggressive infantry player. You can be assured when laying him that that his tactics are not usually to turn turtle and dig in but take the fight to the enemy whenever he can. We will be using Barbarossa (good call Poochie, pick the only EW book I don't have!) which I've ordered but in meantime I'm using Hellfire and Back to trial/playtest my list. I can do it as a DAK force but not as a Barbarossa based one... (yet).

I  hope to get Dale, Nigel and Kent involved. Dale has a Stuart Squadron that can be used Early War. He first used it in 1E taking it to the Nationals (about 2003-2004) and it was a bitch to play against. Of course his force was all Poochie's fault. Having a night sitting round having a few beers at Dale's during one of one of our early TAGCON/ Day of Days Dale and Poochie had one of their (typical) see who can make the craziest list discussions and they came up with two armoured squadrons of (about 30-32) M3A1 Honey Stuarts at 1500 points.

Dale being Dale soon had the force bought and painted and terrorising the local gaming community- we used to love it when he got totally confused with which tank belonged to which troop/squadron once turn 2 or 3 came around- there would be a huge mass of 28+ intermingled Stuarts driving full tilt straight at some hapless opponents objectives and Dae losing track of which start belonged to which troop. It was a nasty, nasty list to play but over the years we  bought some of the Stuarts off him so reduced its nastiness :) Still it was a great list to learn to focus fire against, picking off one squadron at a time to break his force (Though h would usually withdraw a battered squadron and throw the other one in before either as broken), he played it well and you really had to bring your A game to the table and a decent amount of luck to beat it versus its traditional DAK opponents.

The last time we used them was ANZAC Day 2013 when we had a desert themed midwar doubles game.

Nigel also has a Crusader squadron that I sold to him many years back I hope to play against. It was my first desert force which I bought way back in about 2002-2003 when under V1 crusaders were absolute pants (reluctant trained IIRC) but did quite well with it at a TAGCON/Day of Days.

So we can do a few trial games in the desert vs armoured forces to test my ideas out.

I am looking at two possible panzer companies to run (1000 pts per player, 2000pts per team). I'm looking at running a panzer IV company and have 2 play test options:

Mittlere Panzers (1010pts)          

2x           Panzer IVD          300

4x           4 Panzer IVD       600

2x           232 ACs                110

Simple and hopefully effective- not much to it really except as many Mk IVs as  I can fit in and some recon to lift Gone to Ground of necessary.  

                                                           

Med Panzer Kompanie (990pts)

1x           Mk IVD                 150

3x           MK IVDs               450

5x           Panzer IICs          280

2x           232 ACs                110

This has possibly a bit more subtlety/flexibility to it with the Panzer IIs there to terrorise infantry forces so would (I hope) have a bit less one dimensional.

                              

My first run will be the version with the Panzer IIs.

The Panzer IVs

Recon and 232 Armoured Cars.

I've thrown together a couple of British forces to playtest vs- one of which is a Kiwi (CT) rifle company to see how it handles the heavier armour of tanks like Valentines. I've not enough British tanks myself so have put together the infantry to test the force out.
HQ
2x infantry squads
4x 2 pdrs
3x Valentines

The  2pdrs need a bit of work but will do.

Infantry platoons

A playtest table I put together today to run a few solo/playtest games on.

I've ordered the tanks I'll need to do the East Front version.

Craig