So here is Al all happy and smiling at the very start of the tournament. We'd been drawn together in the first round, which suited us both just fine as: 1) We had never actually played an early war game before; & 2) It was a nice gentle start to the weekend against a relatively friendly opponent.
Al had decided to field a British Armoured Regiment list from "Hell fire and Back!" for the weekend. His list was basically a ton of tanks, like mine. This saw two armies that actually met historically, from the same army list book, so this game would be interesting to see how the two tank forces would do slugging it out against each other. The battlefield we were allocated was Russian based, with one side dominated by a ruined factory complex with roads running through and a small village set among wheat fields. We rolled off to see who would attack and who would defend and Al end up attacking.
Al set up his force opposite mine on the left hand side of the board. Concentrating his force and counting on my reinforcements not arriving soon enough to push him back of the objective.
I set up my force defending the objective in the village. Another objective can be seen on the furthest road from view. My set up split my force to cover both objectives, with one carri platoon within striking distance of each. My commander deployed on the right flank.
Here is first platoon deployed just ahead of a wheat field that would give them good cover. I bit of an early morning gaming mistake here from me. the tanks ended up reversing back into the field in my turn one.
Al's first turn saw a head long advance towards the village and a few speculative shots. Al's tank enjoy good AT guns that can fire at full rate of fire on the move. Useful for attacking! (As Al would point out this comes at the cost of anti infantry high explosive rounds, making him rely on machine gun festooned light tanks and howitzer armed CS tanks to deal with infantry.)
Al lines up his shots.
By biplanes turn up for the first of many strafing runs over the weekend. Far more in fact than they statistically had any right too as it would turn out!
Al's tanks get into shooting range.
My commander takes on half the British force alone in the village.
My second airstrike is chased off my Al's hurricane fighter interception.
Reinforcements arrive on the left flank. Just where i don't need them.
Al goes in for the charge World of Tanks style, and gives my Italians a good kicking. We reenacted the cover art from the "Hellfire and Back!" book much to our delight!
The was game over. Al had stormed the objective for very few losses winning 6-1. All in 20 minutes! (Game rounds have a hour and a half to be completed in.) With that we opted to play another game just for the hell of it, much to the amusement of the other tournament players!
This is my only photo from my game two, against a German infantry list. I only lost two tanks during the entire game, assaulting his positions quickly and taking the game 6-1, much as Al had to me the game before! In fairness to my opponent I had never seen a combination of my dice rolling being so good and his being so poor. Again the biplanes came in every time i called and wrecked terrible havoc in the German back field.
Game three, against the dreaded French! (More on that later.) I ended up defending with his force attacking from both sides of the table. He was running a bunch of Somua S35 medium tanks which did an excellent job taking apart my scattered defense. My tanks were outclassed and having to cover two objective far apart in deployment meant he could use concentration of force to great effect.
Game four, Sunday morning. I was drawn to play a guy who had in fact gone down ill over night, so one of the organisers, Mr Mick Rood stepped in to take his place. Mick had brought his light panzer company with him. I ended up defending with his attack coming from two opposite ends of the board. I deployed to cover one objective on the right with the intention of using my great number of tanks to drive the Germans from the field on that flank in an aggressive defense.
I counted on doing this fast enough to be able to transfer units to defend the object on my left.
This strategy largely paid off. I think Mick's list struggled against the sheer number of medium tanks that my army was entirely made up of.
My biplanes came through for me again and bagged a few more kills, rapidly over taking my other units on the regimental score board and proving themselves to be the most effective unit in my army despite the odds against them even turning up during games.
my reinforcements arrive behind his attack force on the left flank and begin to roll up his force on this side. Another platoon joined this one and rolled forward to secure their objective suffering several losses, but making the German pay dearly for each kill.
The German on the right flank falling back in he face of my aggressive Italian flavoured counter attack.
More World of Tanks style close combat in the village.
Overview of my left flank towards the end of the game. A platoon holding the objective having redeployed from my attack on the right, with reinforcements arriving behind the Germans.
My biplanes come through yet again to bag some German recon armoured cars!
A pause for lunch on Sunday saw armies picked by the organisers as best painted on show and put to the popular vote to win "Best Allied" and "Best Axis" painted armies of the tournament. One guy brought a lovely painted LRDG desert raiding force which not only won best painted allied army, but went on to win the tournament overall. I voted for him! Pink trucks man! Pink trucks!
Here is my last game against a very similar list to Mick's, more German light panzers.
I opted to deploy in a napoleonic French style "column d'attack"! I admit it, it was silly, but i wanted to press one objective to the max and was fairly confident in my tanks abilities against the German ones.
It was a blood bath for both sides. Both armies air support took a heavy toll on the enemy, with my biplanes even chasing off his Stuka dive bombers in one turn, much to both players amuzement. Speaking of which this was by far the most fun game I played all weekend against a very affable and fun opponent. A Welshman whose name escapes me at the moment, but whom i will always remember for introducing my to the wonderful sport of trackor pulling!
My biplanes coming through for me yet again, bagging a few panzer IIs in the process.
When the game was over, I'd manage to lose every since tank. I'd taken a heavy toll on the German defenders, but eventually the sheer weight of fire from the panzer IIs found their mark time and again. What a game!
So all in all i'd won twice and lost three times. Most importantly I'd beaten Al in the points table, by one point! Alas I believe this was mostly down to Al's unfortunate drawing of French tank lists in three out of his five games over the weekend.
Now there was a lot of talk at the tournament's end about how the British Armoured Regiment wasn't a competitive list and i can see why Al might have decided on this after a weekend of having seemingly unstoppable French heavy tanks beating him over and over. However i think this a little unfair as the BAR is not supposed to play against the French (blue on blue games can happen in Flames of War, but the game is written from a mostly historical premise of Axis vs Allied lists meeting each other). I'd also point out that his tanks tore through my tanks quickly and would probably have done the same to many of the other lists present that weekend. Al's conclusion was he'd probably drop the BAR in favor of another list in future early war tournaments, mostly likely a British armoured car recon list or a Jock Column infantry list, both of which would no doubt be interesting to play as and against! However I think this might be to miss the overall issue with this early war tournament and, according to the players we talked to over the weekend, early war tournaments in the UK at the moment. This is that not enough players are fielding Axis lists to avoid blue on blue games as a matter of course. Which is why I reckon Al should field his Das Afrika Korps at the next early war tournament we go too! (Or better yet join team Italia!)
As for me? Well I'll be taking my Italian tanks again. They were just too much fun both during and between games. A true highlight of the weekend for me was all the fun of being part of the tournaments "Team Italy". Myself and the other players fielding Italian army lists banded together between games and at lunch, meeting up to see how everyone was doing and if our games finished early (which all of mine did), going to cheer on the other guys in their games. We were even made honorary Italians for the weekend by the one of us that really was from Italy. Avanti! Avanti! Avanti!
The weekend was great fun, i met some great players and learnt a lot from them. I'd like to thank Al for buying me the ticket and accompanying me on another "gay gaming weekend" (as his girlfriend Sarah put it!), the organisers for running such a great event, my opponents for being such great sports and the rest of "Team Italia"! Here is to the next one!
Speaking of which, me and Al will be heading to their next tournament, a D-Day themed weekend in June. Come join us why don't you?! (http://www.reluctantconscripts.co.uk/)
