Flames of War - Total War - Loraine Campaign

Hello Folks, so on Friday we got together at the club to play a total war game to cap off our recent Loraine campaign. We have found that it is fun to do a big multi player event at the end of these as a way to mix things up a bit.

We had 7 players with 1250 point armies each, and Serge had 2 armies I think to balance out the numbers.

Allies - Mike, Bad Duncan, Bernhard, Chris
Germans - Serge, Jeff, Lev

The played the total victory mission, which has 6 objectives and you get 1 point for every one you control every turn. So you have to get on them fast or else you really start to bleed points and it can be hard to come back. Last time the allies were quite well organized and we had a good plan before hand, this time not so much.

Since there wasn't to many of us we decided to be lazy and just use the big conference table, it was long enough but really a bit narrow in retrospect. I think next time we will likely drag out the tables.

Sadly I did not do such a great job of taking pictures but we will have to make do. The Germans deployed first and put tigers on the left, then infantry with heavy anti-tank guns, then more infantry, then on the far right a bunch of Panthers. On the allied side we had the objectives in our deployment on the wings and the middle objectives where in the center, so we did the opposite. On our left we had US Para troopers with Shermans, tank destroyers with Patton, my Shermans, and then Infantry with heavy artillery. I took a plane so I could bomb stuff all over as well.

Here is a set of pictures around turn 2 I think. I offered to bomb the tigers with my plan but I was declined so had to try for some Panthers. Sadly this was the one area with allot of AA so my plans got destroyed on that run. But anyway I moved up my Shermans to contest / capture my center objective, and the infantry by my smoked and bombed as many tanks as they could to cover. On the other flank our compatriots ignored the objective and went to hunt tigers. So we started loosing on points right from turn 2.

The fire ending up being allot worse then I had thought and I was loosing tanks very fast, after one round I only had my commander in a jumbo to protect the objective, and there was a distressing amount of infantry around.

So next turn we fared a bit better. I moved my next platoon of tank right into the panthers and got a kill or 2, and was now being supported by some tank destroyers, and my plane destroyed a German rocket launcher. on the far side the tiger hunting party is going better then I would have thought and they have 2 killed with only 3 lost Shermans. I moved my commander up to machine gun some anti-tank guns that had pressed forward at the double, but stayed in range of the objective, this turned out to be a bad idea with so many infantry around.

Next time around the tigers polished off the rest of the Shermans, but it is costing them time and they are taking allot of hits from the artillery. In the center the Panthers made quick work of my Shermans, and my commander in the jumbo was assaulted by allot of infantry and died as well. This meant that my company was broken, and although I had contested an objective for awhile no one else had really pushed up so were losing by more and more each turn. But the other guys were putting a good hurt on the Panthers as well so all was not lost.

This tank battle continued on for a few turns as the Germans racked up the points. The Paratroopers were now well on the way to breaking the tiger company so they continued to work on that, and the far infantry, kept hammering on the Panthers who were pushing in. As you can see they are starting to be a bit light on tanks.

In the late game we got a few assaults. The para guys aided by some tank destroyers had finally killed all the tigers, and now made an attempt to assault the woods and take back that objective. This failed due to a massive amount of defensive fire, but at least they tried. On the other end we realized that we now just had to break the Panthers to win and so they got much more aggressive down there. The Germans assaulted out of the forest and took out a recovery vehicle and a tank destroyer but that was not so bad. Of course through out all of these the Germans continued to increase their lead by 2 points every turn, so our only hope really was to break their battalion.

It went down to the wire in the end, but we never quit killed enough Panthers, although we were only a couple short. On the other had Bernhard had to make a few company morale tests for the tank destroyers, so we almost got broken as well. The final score was 20-12 for the Germans, or something like that, so a solid victory for them.

So we had a fun game even though it was a loss. It probably would have been better on a deeper table, but on the other hand it forced everything into the game right from turn 1, so that is kind of fun also!

These big games play out a bit differently then a normal flames of war game, so I find them to be a good bit of fun to do once in awhile. But admit it can be disheartening to see all of your tanks destroyed in 2 turns hah.

I was hopping that the next campaign might be something a bit different, but seems that we are going to be doing Bagration again, but with the new lists. So look forward to that, I will be on the German side this time at least.

Thanks;

Mike