D Day 75th Anniversary battle

 Over the past weekend Kent and I headed up to Christchurch to take part in Andy Tucker’s Sword beach landing multiplayer game of FoW to commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the D Day landings. Andy and the other Christchurch gamers really put in a mammoth effort in getting the game together and countless hours of work in creating fortifications, terrain and making sure the whole event went off without a hitch. Having organised events myself I really appreciate the work that went in behind the scenes to make sure this game was a huge success, we even managed to get on the national news!

Anyway, Kent and I headed up on Friday afternoon. We were both running British lists, I had some commandos and Kent was taking a confident trained 3^rd infantry division force- once we’d locate his army and borrowed it off Martin who was also gracious enough to host for the weekend.

Saturday

It was a great game. On day one we landed and stormed the beaches. Re were six British players (me, Kent, Jonathan, Graham, Lionel and Jamie) vs three Germans (Andy, Thomas and Josh) so from the get go the Germans were seriously outnumbered but their fortifications, bunkers, HMG nests, sea walls , minefields and other defences mitigated this somewhat.

As the allies our objective was simple, storm the beach, overcome the beachfront defenes and push inland as quickly as we could before the Germans could counter attack.

My commandos landed at the far left end of the beach and used a lot of smoke (once my artillery support arrived) to neutralise strongpoints and avoid as much damage as I could as we struggled through the initial rows of fortifications. On my immediate right Kent’s confident trained infantry got badly chewed up but eventually made it over the seawall and took out the first line of fortifications and, with the help of Jonathan’s troops, spent a large part of the weekend clearing the very tough casino complex and nearby bunkers. Beside Kent Jonathan’s forces stormed over the wall and into Ouistreham and pushed inland, decimating his son Thomas’s defending forces in the process. On our far right Jamie, Lionel and Graham (our Wellington import for the weekend) also ground out a bloody toe hold and by the end of the day vs Josh and Thomas and by the end of the day on Saturday had too had overcome the beach defences and were starting to push inland in the face of fierce resistance.

Sunday

Sunday morning we resumed the game which had found the allies firmly ensconced in Normandy- having cleared almost all of the first table of enemy though the flak tower in Ouistreham cotinued to hold out for most of the day- though Kent used smoke to neutralise its use as an observer platform. The beaches were reinforced with several armoured squadrons landing whose assistance was greatly appreciated. My commandos had dug in as they were were somewhat exposed to counter attack on the far left of the British front line but Jonathan and Kent soon moved armour and tank destroyers over to support and Jonathon’s other armour started to push out of Ouistreham and so outflank the next line of defences.

Day two turned into a major tank fest as the Germans counter attacked with several companies of panzer IVs, panzer grenadiers and other assets. As I said, Andy ended up commanding the entire German right flank vs Jonathan, Kent and I so did a sterling job trying to keep track of everything we were up to whilst still managing the overall game- ah the joys of higher command.  

The Germans had random reserves and luckily for my commandos most of the German armour ended up pushing against the British right flank and so for most of the day Lionel and Graham were hard pressed defending vs large amounts of massed German armour. As part of the game rules Andy had assigned possible air or naval support each turn and the British had 3 such units available (depending on dice rolls- which we tended to divvy up as one per pair of players). However, on day two we all gave all our artillery assets to Lionel and Graham as they needed everything they could to hold off Thomas and Josh. By late afternoon however the situation had improved considerably. Our AVRE Churchills were pretty hard for most of the German tanks to deal and were ably supported by numerous troops of Shermans and Cromwells so slowly but surely the balance swayed in our favour and in the end we blunted (aka destroyed) the German counter attack and the Germans were forced to withdraw inland.

Final result:  A very hard fought minor victory to the British.

It was a great game andI love games where the table is so big that artillery assets need to redeploy forward to get back in range of enemy forces, really adds another dimension to the game, and the result. It probably was close to reality in that the Germans faced overwhelming numbers and their counter attack, s in the real one od D Day stalled in the face of overwhelming numbers. In the actual battle the commandoes managed to link up with the paras at Pegasus bridge whilst the counter attack by the 21^st panzer prevented a link up between Sword and Juno beaches.

Inspired to get back into gaming

Before the event I’d been a tad reluctant to take part. I’d not taken part in a Flames of War games for quite a long time but this game has once again inspired me both the play Flames (V3) and also rekindled my love of large multiplayer big battles- they can be a hell of a lot of fun.

Truth be told over the past few years I’ve really pulled back from organised gaming, comps and events like this and this year with everything else that’s been going on have had little motivation or interest in gaming in general. In fact more often than not this year Kent and I have postponed our scheduled games as a range of other things have cropped up to get in the way of our regular game. So long story short I wasn’t that keen to get involved and almost decided to pull out a couple of weeks ago. I had too much other real life stuff I was dealing with and really wasn’t that motivated to play so told Andy I wasn’t going to be able to make it but after a few messages between us I  changed my mind  tans in the end thought bugger it and went.

I am really glad I did go. Not only did Andy put on a fantastic weekend but the guys participating were a great bunch that really got into the spirit of the event. Andy not only ensured that everyone had fun but also bravely took command on the entire right flank of the German counter attack on day two and fought vs Kent, Jonathan single handedly so was a tad busy all day ensuring things ran smoothly whilst still trying his best to focus on the game. 

But for me, more important than the gaming was getting out and having a chance to catch up with Martin Wilkinson, Stephen Stout, Eric Juhl, Dave Dreaver and a few other old  lags, reminisce about the various Day of Days weekends we had ran, other events we’d gamed, the pros and cons of the various rulesets we were playing, and so had a great opportunity to just shoot the breeze and reconnect with a great community of gamers. It really was the pick up I needed so thanks Andy.

 A few pictures follow: 

Cheers 

Craig

WIP FoW D Day Anniversary Game

Next week is the 75th anniversary of the D Day landings. To commemorate this event my friend Andy Tucker has been organising a multiplayer game of Flames of War in Christchurch. It has been about 3 years since I last played Flames, my last games being at Panzershrek (2016?) with Poochie and with the recent move all my gaming gear is packed away in a small storage shed till I get things organised at my bach to store my gaming collection.

I have really been out of the loop with regards to gaming over the past couple of years or so and not really done much apart from the occasional game vs Kent. With going overseas for a year to volunteer, returning and separating from my wife, moving, selling our house and helping my wife move things have been a tad, how shall we say, non-conducive to gaming.

Anyhow, long short short I told Andy a few months back that I could play in this game then with everything else going on promptly forgot about it. Last week Andy got in contact to see if I was still ken and initially I wasn't going to play but in the end thought, bugger it; its been a long while since I caught up with the Christchurch gamers and am now quite looking forward to the event.

I told Andy I'd run some commandos so have been fossicking around through my stuff and have managed to locate everything I need as well as some landing craft and DD tanks so have a bit of work to do over the next few nights to get everything organised.

Craig

Panzershrek Game 5

Game 5: Dust up vs Bede Bailey and Russell Briant

Going into the final round somehow Poochie and I had burgled our way to top of the standings along with Bede and Russell but very, very good players. In fact Poochie and I were hoping that we might not have to face them but as it turns out we did and that as both teams had a really good shot at winning the entire comp (not that that was a goal when we started) so it made for the perfect way to finish the weekend. Pity a complete brain fade by me on turn 1 by me almost turned an exciting, crazy, fun final game into a non-event but more of that shortly.

Bede and Russell ran a French Recon and British (vet) infantry force.

Bede ran something like:

·        1x Hotchkiss

·        5x Hotchkiss

·        3x Somuas (?)

·        4x Panhard Armoured cars

·        3x Panhard armoured cars

·        4x laffey portees

Bede’s French recon was voted the best painted army of the comp- you can see what, it was lovely!

It was well supported by a very solid infantry force of Russell’s:

·        2x Vet British infantry

·        4x Vet 25pdrs

·        4x Vet 25pdrs

For some reason at the start of the game I just couldn’t get my head around Dust Up and what we needed to do to win the game- a result of lack of playing- the objective placement really did my head in! In fact I had completely forgotten my standard tactics in that one till partway though the game and that really did almost cost us the game early on.

Turn 1: Poochie and I got the first turn so I advanced one panzer 3 out of the woods near the front objective to snipe a panhard armoured cars, then I planned to then stormtrooper the tank back into cover. However, at the last minute I also decided to add my commander to have a second crack- and so risk my only platoon on table unnecessarily! I had assumed the laffeys would have been out or range after moving but boy was I wrong! In fact I really hadn’t counted them in my plan at all and that was a HUGE mistake.  Then I failed to Stormtrooper back into cover and so was left with both tanks hanging out in the open on the road!

 Seeing the chance to win the game on turn 1 Bede and Russell pounced, suddenly my panzers were swarmed by panhards and laffeys which raced forward into range. Not only that but Russell man handled 2x 25 pdrs down the road towards the mk 3s which had no cover. As it turned out pure luck saved my bacon, I managed to bounce a 25 pdr hit (needing a 6) and the hit that did penetrate a panzer 3 only bailed it due to a poor firepower roll so I survived the shooting but I was absolutely gutted that I had almost cost Poochie a chance of a good game vs these guys by playing like a beginner and we really should have lost it then and there but am glad that we didn’t as the game grew into a really topsy-turvey pulsating nailbiter- but you can bet my tanks scurried back into the woods to lick their wounds after that debacle.

On turn 2 I decided to risk my company commander by popping him out too- I had foolishly double timed him on turn 1 to the second quarter, anticipating him helping Boris (the T34) to snipe the second 25 pdr gun line when Boris appeared from reserve, only to realise that was probably suicide (and finally remembering how I used to play Dust Up- win by intercepting/destroying the reserves as they come on table!)  so moving back to support my other tanks made much more sense! However, Russell had moved his 25 pdrs forward along the road so my commander was behind their gunshield. I saw a great opportunity to snipe a 25pdrs then stormtrooper out of trouble. A good plan but the execution was a little off. I hit the 25 pdrs twice but Russell made both his gun saves then (again) I failed to stormtrooper out of trouble leaving my commander in direct LoS of 2x 25 pdrs. BOOM! There goes my commander, which meant no company morale check rolls for me! YIKES!

By the end of turn 2 the panhards were contesting the objective so for the second game in a row I was tethered to remaining within 4” of an objective and trading blows with enemy armour- or in this  case Panhards.

Poochie sent his panzer threes through a woods and along the road to support my tanks and we managed to destroy two panhards but then just couldn’t finish off the last two. We either missed or they passed saves but luckily (for us) Bede failed to remount the bailed armoured cars, despite having a nearby company commander, and on turn 4 we finally destroyed the last armoured car. However, the French command tank had by now parked up in a wood within range of the objective so was also contesting the objective.

The laffeys and 25 pdrs work together to keep us under pressure and those sneaky opponents also made use of buildings and woods to mitigate vs our stukas. In fact in this game we got lots of stuka strikes but by sticking close to buildings and woods Bede and Russell were able to minimise this superiority and several flights failed to spot targets or were much less effective than we’d hoped.

By now the pressure was well and truly on for both teams. The amusing thing with this game as that for most of it both Bede and I, and Poochie too for that matter, were barely a dice roll or two away from losing a platoon and potentially the game too so all put ourselves under pressure. Both sides thought that had the other team pressed the advantage a wee bit more the game was theirs for the taking.

On about turn 4 Bede discussed going for the kill or pulling back to regroup and Russell counselled  regrouping and waiting for reinforcements. I was relieved he did as I still felt I was pinned to the ropes and taking body blow after body blow- only 2x tanks at that stage and no company commander if they had broken my (only) platoon by killing one more tank! But maybe the fact that Poochie’s force was slightly healthier than mine and nearby to offer support was a factor that helped sway them. Poochie was adding his fire vs the panhards and slowly gaining an advantage there but I did not feel at all confident that we (I) would/could weather another turn. But I think that is why this game was so great, we both had opportunities to win it (or lose it) but each felt the other side had the upper hand/advantage!  

I thought that decision to wait for reinforcements gave us a glimmer of hope- through I could see that rationale in trying to get more platoons on table to raise the platoon count/company morale test break point and reduce the risk of us breaking their French recon company. 

On turn 5 we finally we managed to finish off the panahard company and so claim a point! that sneaky French command tank is contesting the objective so my panzer III couldn't move too far or we'd lose the game.

The laffeys continued working their way round using the roads for mobility and the buildings to hide from the stukas.

Turn 6. The 25 pdrs range in on the two panzer 3s. That 25pdr has been manhandled so far along the road it may claim an objective!

And then there was one. I think my panzer fell victim to a 25 pdr shot but the last panzer III stayed on table. the panzer III and Boris who was rushing to the rescue then destroyed the laffey platoon which meant that Bede needed to pass a company morale test  which he calmly did.

Turn 7: My last panzer 3 is destroyed by a repeat bombardment  meaning that the French company commander is contesting the objective and we have no hope of contesting. This meant that Poochie and I had one turn of shooting vs the GTG Hotchkiss platoon (with 2 bailed tanks already) to break them and force a company morale test BEFORE we checked victory conditions and they won. A half chance was better than none so we went for it! Boris rolled 2 dice and…both missed. Poochie’s panzer IIIs rolled 9 dice needing 5s and… all missed. GAME to Bede and Russell (5-2 as the first platoon didn't count).

Sorry no photos of the epic last shots at the panhards :(

Wow, another  great game to finish on. Both sides had chances to win. As it was some outrageous dice rolling on my behalf kept us in it for a couple of turns when it should have been all over and we tried to ride this luck to victory, only to come up just short. 

Poochie thought they had 10 good chances to win we had about 5- I don’t think it was quite that high but the ratio was about right. For two turns in a row my dice suddenly ran hot and kept my force alive only by me rolling lots of 5+s for armour saves, any one failure here and it was all over for my force and the game as if at any time my panzer IIIs broke it left the French Recon command tank holding an uncontested objective. To tell the truth I was more than happy to keep rolling high but knew it was a game of Russian roulette and sooner or later my luck would run out but while it lasted it gave Poochie a great chance to break Bede’s recon company which he did his absolute best to do so it really did go down to the wire!

Notes

What can I say? Bede and Russell thoroughly deserved the win. They had the upper hand for most of the game but we too had a couple of chances to snatch victory which almost came off so can’t complain about that.

I’m just glad that the game lasted more than one turn as it would have really been an anticlimactic end to the weekend if my stupid mistake had cost us the game on turn 1. As it was it instead built into a really epic game. Bede too made a critical error that gave Poochie a sniff of victory vs his Hotchkiss platoon but Poochie was just unable to pass firepower tests to finish off bailed Hotchkis. Bede must have felt alarmed as for two turns in a row he failed to remount any of the bailed out tanks and so was unable to escape from Poochie’s tanks. We should have been able to hammer that advantage home but didn’t manage to.

Bede and Russell’s win ensured that they won the entire competition and Poochie and I were pipped into third place by Rob Sadler and his partner. Had Bede failed his company morale check then it would have been a 6-1 to Poochie and me and we’d have come out on top so you can’t really be disappointed by that.

Well done Bede and Russell it was an epic game and I hope that his report does it a modicum of justice. It really was a great game, played in a great spirit and you guys thoroughly deserved the win. I think you made an awesome (and somewhat formidable) pairing!  I look forward to meeting across the table at Panzershrek next year.

Bede and Russell claim first place. 

Me and Poochie accept prizes for 3rd. 

Poochie and I were rather surprised at how well e did, having written off our force ourselves before the weekend. As it turned out we played the teams that came 1st, 4th, 5th and 6th and had some really memorable matches.

Part of the reason that I decided to go to Panzershrek was the unexpected death of Nick Garden last year. It really hit home how important the gaming friendships I'd fostered playing Flames over the past decade or so are so I decided to try and get up north one per year to game with the Wellington guys (somehow most of the guys I enjoy gaming with have been sucked up into living in Wellington over the past few years- it seems that Wellington is some sort of vortex for South Island gamers!). Having not been to any comps/events over the past 2 1/2 years also decided not to go but in the end decided to and am glad I did.

I was adopted by the Wellington Regiment for the weekend and really enjoyed hanging out with them.

The Wellington Regiment muster

As a tripute to Nick the regiment had new T Shirts made and Bede's wife Katie made the Staghound design in his memory- he ran a staghound force very successfully. A minute's silence was also held to remember him as he was an important pillar of the gaming community and a Panzershrek regular.

 Final Comments

Finally, thanks to the Palmerston North organisers for running such a great event. It is the world’s oldest FoW event and can see why people come back year after year. I was really impressed with the spirit that all games were played in and there really had a good, low key let’s just have fun kind of vibe to the whole weekend. I had an awesome weekend which really has reinvigorated my desire to play Flames again.

Thanks to all our opponents. I had 5 very enjoyable games. Cheers to the Wellington guys too for their hospitality over the weekend and finally big cheers to Poochie. For a number of years we’ve not paired up so as to ensure we had balanced teams at Day of Days but I thought our gaming styles complemented each other really well and made for a great team. Neither or us gave our force a snow balls chance in hell of doing very well beforehand but somehow it all came together quite nicely and though we did get more than our share of luck at times we had a blast all weekend and hope our opponents did too.

Cheers

Craig

Panzershrek- Game 4

Game 4: Pincer vs Japanese

A pretty successful day one saw Poochie and me surprising ourselves and being near the front of the pack and on Sunday morning faced another of our worst nightmare lists, Japanese. I’ve never played Japanese before but the guys said that they had a boat load of special rules and they weren’t wrong (night attacking tanks that re-roll misses while moving- and also the need to destroy every tank to break a platoon, or near enough- yikes!). Looking at the Japanese force on paper I wasn’t overly confident of our chances.

The Japanese force was played by Craig and his son Flynn who at the age of maybe 10 or 11 was by a by far the youngest player present and it was really cool to see him and his father enjoying the games together all weekend. Flynn stayed focused throughout the game we played, and from what I could tell the whole weekend too so it was really great to see such dedication at such a young age.

The Japanese had something like:

A tank company of 4 platoons of 4 tanks + command tanks

2x infantry platoons each with 3 niku (?) tank destroyer teams

2x 75mm (?) howitzers

2x 75mm (?) howitzers

2x 45mm AT guns

Being Japanese they auto attacked (and made it a night attack too) so Poochie and I deployed my panzers IIIs, supported by his command panzer III, covering the forward objective and his panzer IIs in ambush. The Japanese set up their two infantry platoons on the Japanese left flank and the tanks, supported by the artillery, in a rather intimidating mass near the centre-right. One hope I had was that the river would split their forces and give us a chance to do something.

A view of the infantry deployment.

Turn 1 the Japanese advanced under darkness and either were unable to see any targets to fire at or as we were veteran Germans we were concealed and gone to ground so impossible to hit.

By turn 2 I was more than a bit concerned about how close the tanks were advancing but really couldn’t afford to fire as the advancing guns combining with the tanks made it potential suicide! Poochie however relished in ambushing the far right infantry platoon with 30 dice of panzer II 2cm cannon and destroyed about 8 teams including the tank destroyer teams so that threat was neutralised (but still on table).

Turn 3 the Japanese again advanced under the cover of darkness. On our turn morning broke, Poochie managed to finish off the infantry platoon he had mauled first turn and start duking it out between his panzer IIs and a platoon of Japanese tanks that was helping the infantry. Again on my flank the pressure was on, my panzers backpedalling to cover the objective and avoid too much massed gun fire.

Turn 4+ the Game became very intense. Poochie Panzer IIs managed to destroy a couple of tank sin the platoon supporting the infantry forcing the others to hide, but he did also lose a couple of tanks to AT guns.

It wasn’t till turn 5 our reserves finally started to appear (Boris) so I had to risk double moving Boris (the T34) to try and support our now badly mauled panzers. 

Craig & Flynn organised their tanks to maximise firepower (an armoured wedge) and slowly whittled us down. Poochie’s commander died first and he was down to 2-3 working panzer IIs so all but broken and I was pinned to the near objective facing massed tanks but somehow we hung on, and on and on. One my turn I managed to bail 3 tanks and destroy one but that isn’t good enough vs Japanese they just get back in and carry on and don't need to pass morale checks to do so. 

[Sorry, no more pictures as the game the games was getting too intense and I forgot to take any]. 

By now I was down to two tanks (one from the platoon and the company commander!)  and then I started rolling some obscene saves and somehow managed to keep the game alive for an extra 2 turns while we tried to get a second point from the Japanese. Both tanks survived multiple hits and luckily for us the Japanese infantry failed 2 turns in a row to pass fearless tests to assault them off the front objective.

In the end our luck held and on turn 6 or 7 an outrageous round of shooting meant we were able to finish off two badly mauled platoons of Japanese tanks and Boris and Poochie’s newly arrived panzer 3s destroyed a third. The Japanese failed their fearless morale test and broke. 6-1 to us!

Notes

That was another hell of a game, we not only used our get out of jail card, we took the whole jail and flew it to South America! Poochie and I agree that Craig and Flynn made a couple of errors later in the game that possibly cost them but really the game was theirs and would have been 9 times out of 10 on those last 3 turns and it was only incredible armour save dice that kept us in the game. 

At the start we needed to whittle down those Japanese tanks but the return fire would have been horrendous so had to try to make the most of range and remained GTG to stay alive as long as possible so refusing to fire for two turns, then moving back further still in turn 3 was in the end I think one of the important decisions that kept us in it (just). 

 I felt bad for Craig and Flynn for somehow finding themselves losing 6-1 on a game that was too all intents and purposes theirs and in which we really only had 4-5 tanks (2 mk IIIs and 2-3 panzer 2s) for the last 2-3 turns and should have been dead several times over.

 Again it was an outstanding game and was awesome to see such a young player thoroughly enjoying himself, making tactically sound decisions, and having an obvious blast gaming with his dad.