Battle Report - Flames of War - Desperate Measures

So had some more gaming last night, played a big game of Flames of War. The original intention was to try a 1900 point game using the new Desperate Measures book (1900 as that is the new point value for official tournaments), but ended up going a bit over so it was changed to be 1950.

Desperate Measures is the new very late war book that covers the Russians closing in on Germany, so the German force are suffering from worse and worse training and morale and the Russians are getting better, they pretty much cross over with the lists in this book. The German forces I played had a special rule 'Enjoy the War' so their units are likely to fall apart and retreat piece meal as they take losses. The Russian forces have a few new rules but the main one is that they take skill tests as if they were veteran.

Here are the lists I used, I split it into 2 Companies as I was expecting a third player, and it's allot of points for a single company like this. Basically a few Panthers and StugGs and a bunch of trained infantry with tons of Panzerfausts.

The Russians had an assault gun company with SU 100s, some IS 2s a bit of infantry, and some big anti-tank guns. We rolled for the mission and got surrounded, with me as the defender due to the Infantry component.

In this mission the attacker places 2 objectives in the defenders deployment which is in the center, and then attacks from 2 sides.

You can see the plane and the supplies in the open ground, I deployed an infantry platoon on each of those, and my special infantry with anti-tank guns in the middle hoping to cover both a bit. I than stached my StugGs in the woods, and my rocket launchers had to deploy in the open. My Panthers were in immediate ambush so I got to place them after the Russians. I was pretty sure that I would loose the game to company morale if I lost the fragile SutgGs so wanted to try and be careful with them.

The Russians crammed everything on the Right flank with some on each side of the board, so I had free space to do what I wanted on the left.

The Russians went first and make short work of the rocket launchers, they destroyed 3, and I lost the last to 'enjoy the war', the commander then auto-failed his 'all on your own test' at the start of my turn due to 'enjoy the war'.

I brought my Panthers around into the Village to flank the main tank force and get some kills, and brought out the main unit of StugGs, which was a big mistake. The infantry stayed in cover, except I started to bring over the left flank platoon.

Here we are a few turns later, most of the StugGs have been destroyed, one left in each platoon, the Panthers have destroyed a few Russian tanks but have now dangerously exposed themselves. No significant losses to the infantry except for an anti-tank gun or 2. The Russians have run into allot of trouble crossing the train tracks on the other end as they have overloaded tanks and heavy guns. So a bit of a delay down there.

The Russians pull back from attack the objective to battle the tanks, and do a good job of it. I have lost 1 StugG platoon and most of the Panthers. If this company losses another platoon they have to take company morale tests, so they are starting to be in danger of breaking and loosing me the game.

At this point I decided it's time to make some risky assaults with the infantry and try to get a few more kills on the tank. The assault guns down by the train tracks have no machine guns so they are a bit defenseless against my infantry who have lots of anti-tank close assault weapons. I send in 3 teams against the 3 guns (1 more behind the train tracks), and pass my tank terror test. we counter attack back and forth and I bail 1 tank and force them to fight. But I loose 2 stands and am forced to fall back with just the commander alive. This was the last chance for me to turn the battle as there was a good chance of me killing the platoon there and getting the guns next turn, but not to be.

The Russians keep up the tank battle and get the est of the Panther platoon leaving just the commander bailed, who now has to roll company morale as another StugG has been lost. The infantry in the woods had tried an assault but I pushed them back in defensive fire and killed half their teams. On my turn I make a last desperate assault on the infantry in the woods which would also draw in the IS 2s and give me a chance to kill them. But with the T34 commander involved as well they easily have enough fire to push me back with heavy losses. On the Russian turn they have no trouble taking out the tank commander meaning I will auto-fail my company morale test on the next turn so they win the game.

This one was a pretty fun game, there were a few points were it could have gone either way, in the end I was a bit to aggressive with my tanks, especially the vulnerable StugGs, and I should have designed my forces so that company had 4 platoons make it much harder to break. The new special rules really give the game a bit of a different dynamic, and I was certainly forced to make some desperate attacks!

We are going to try out the new version of DBA next week.

Thanks;
Mike