Battle Report - Flames of War Italy

Hello Folks,

So back after a bit of a break, I had to make a work trip down to Colombia so missed out on gaming for a bit. Getting back into the swing of things now.

The weekly Wednesday wargaming started up again yesterday. Serge wanted to do some Flames of War battles in Italy, so we decided to use Fortress Italy, and Road to Rome, along with the mountains he created for the infantry aces campaign awhile back.

I went for an Indian Rifle Company with 2 platoons of Gurhkas, 6 tubes of mortars, a carrier platoons, and some American Tanks and Tank Destroyers in support. Serge had a Fallschimjager company, with 2 platoons of infantry, 2 machine gun platoons, some 88s and Pak40s, and a few other bits. I was going to put the lists up as usual, but I forgot to bring the German one and got lazy and decided to just leave it out.

So as you can see from the picture the mountains are quite large, we decided they would be very difficult for vehicles. Mission wise it seemed good to pick on that seemed appropriate for this type of mission so we went for dust up. I won the roll to deploy first so got to choose my table quater, and as you can see I choose the big hill so I could control the crest. I put one platoon of infantry on the far side to dig in and defend the objective, mortars on the down slope with observers along the ridge to fire in safety, and the other infantry to run down the side of the mountain, and then attack over. The Indian companies are all mountaineers so that would really help me. This left the Germans kind of stuck in the valley floor, which turned out to be allot more important then I would have thought.

Everything else was in reserve.

This mission is a meeting engagement, so you can't fire artillery on the first turn. With that in mind I just dug in with most of my guys, successfully, and then moved up my other platoon t the double to get into attack position.

The Germans advanced with the valley floor platoon, and tried to dig in with the rest, but they had bad luck and failed. They also tried smoking my mortar observer thinking I just had one, and not realizing there was 3.

On my turn I took my chance to fire a bombardment while the German Paras were all clumped up in the valley, and this turned out to be fairly decisive. They lost close to half a dozen teams I believe and had some pins. I kept moving up with my other platoon, and the German sniper tried to harass them but with no effect.

Next turn is just more of the same, we both have 1 platoons getting set up to assault, and some mortars hammering the rest. The difference being that all my stuff was dug in that the Germans could fire at due to the ridge line, so they were far less effective then me.

The action started to pick up the following turn, my infantry platoon was now in range to assault the German position along the ridge. My idea was to clear out some of the AT assests there, without getting exposed to to much defensive fire. Basically trying to pick the platoon apart over a few turns, rather then trying for 1 decisive assault. This is because you need to pin and smoke to get that and I never had the resources. So I assaulted such that only 3 German teams were in range, and tried to limit the defensive fire as best I could. They got 12 dice in the end, but only rolled 3 of the 5 hits needed to stop the assault. I lost one team, but killed all 3 in range. Due to the Indian War Cry special rule, the Germans failed their attempt to counter attack, so I dropped back behind the ridge. The Germans kept pushing forward for their own assault, I had the same number of dice for defensive fire. But rolled twice as many hits, which stopped the assault from going in and killed a few teams.

The sniper by now had re-deployed to fire on my mortar teams, and so far has killed one of them, loosing me the double wide temple/re-roll option. But I am passing my tests to unpin so it's not that bad.

On my next turn I got my reserve and brought in some tanks. My mortars fired on the German mortars, who were not dug in, and were part of the valley floor infantry platoon, killing 2 of them. This left that platoon needing a platoon morale check which they failed. In the assault phase I launched another picking attack on the German ridge to take out the last Pak40 and another infantry team or two. This worked exactly the same as before killing a few and they failed to counter due to the war cry forcing a re-roll. At this point Serge conceded that there was no way for the Germans to win, and although they could play for a draw, it was starting to look unlikely so we called it there.

In the end the Germans suffered from a run of bad luck, I never offered a Beer so that is perhaps the cause of that. But also I think our table had allot of terrain, but none of it offered concealment for infantry teams, so there was a huge advantage for whoever got to control the ridge. Which in thhis case was me. Still I found it to be quite an interesting game, and the big hills are a bit different then normal so that makes it fun.

Hope you enjoyed it, let me know what you thought. I broke my phone in Colombian so had to get a new one. I am still getting sued to how the camera works on this new beast, so quality may suffer for awhile. I have been getting over the flu as well, but hopefully will get some more painting done over the weekend as well.

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Double Feature - SAGA & Dead Mans Hand

Hello Folks,

So we got together for the usual Wednesday wargaming. This time I had just painted a few Rus, and Serge had just finished him Dead Mans Hand Outlaws gang. So we decided to just play both games! No messing around here.

SAGA - Rus Princes vs Vikings

So I was excited to try out the other Russian army, and Serge wanted to try some Vikings as they were being considered as an option for our upcoming tournament. I also used this as an opportunity to try out some different Viking options, so I talked him into the Harald Hardrada hero, which allows you to upgrade some units to Varangian Guard, which have armor 6 and great axes, and Harald has armor 6 and gets 3 Saga dice. I basically just used the start box army for the Rus Princes, which turned out to be a huge mistake but oh well.

I decided to try some more unusal mission, so we went for the Escort scenario with the Vikings attacking. I couldn't find any suitable baggage, so I used some extra Viking Warlords as prisoners, the 2 guys on the road. So I had to take them off the far edge, before the Vikings could kill them. Which was not possible really but it's mainly to give something to fight over. As you can see I have 2 mounted durzhina units, some warriors, and levy bow men, the Vikings have Harald, berserkers, varangian guard, and warriors.

On turn one I just moved most of my forces up, and set my one mounted unit on a trip around to flank the vikings and pick off the berserkers with some javelins is the plan. The Rus have a battleboard ability for that.

The Vikings moved their forces up keeping together. On my next turn I tried my parting shot, but only killed one of them. So that is going to be a dead mounted unit. I moved up some more troops, using the captives as bait.

As predicted the Berserkers made short work of my mounted unit, and embarrassingly one survived! Then the Viking warriors moved up and killed a baggage guy, only to be counter attacked by the other Durzhina unit on my turn, again 1 survived so that is becoming a problem.

This started to look very grim around this time, the Vikings still had 6 dice, and I was down to only 4, and they still had the hard to kill Varagians around.

This murder men along with Harald beat up the rest of my forces, with only minor losses.

They axed down my warlord finally leaving me with no Saga dice, so a victory for the Vikings. Harald and his boys were dangerous and hard to damage, but I think it was the levy that cost me the game. In a 4 point game you just don't have enough dice to bring them into the battle effectively and do some damage, and to make it worse I also had to move around the baggage guys. But a fun game never the less.

Dead Mans Hand: The Quick and the Lead

I am a bit less solid on the pictures for this game, as it was getting a bit later and we were rushing to get this in.

This scenario starts off with a classic draw scene, 2 men with pistols meet at 20 paces and draw down on each other. I set in my one-armed deputy, against the funny hat Outlaw. The way this works in the game is each player deals 6 cards face down to represent the bullets and then you play a game of basically blackjack off each one. Whoever gets the closest to 21 shoots first and adds the difference to his roll to try and get a kill, then the other returns with no bonus. If you go over 21 you loose nerve and miss the shot. The Outlaw got the draw the first time and put a pin on one armed Jack, 3 and your out. But then I got lucky and won almost all the rest of the hands by repeatedly drawing 18, so the Outlaw was put out of action on the 5th shot I believe.

The second scene starts with another duel, but this time the gangs are getting into things as well, so they are in the buildings around waiting for trouble. On turn 1 only the duelists get to go and then everything breaks loose. The first to loose 2 models is out.

If I remember right one arm guy got the drop again and managed to kill that guy giving me an early lead, but the Outlaws were quick to take him out as well. Then later on the Outlaws gunsligner and my citizen with a shot gun shot each other point blank in the hard ware store. They both died so we had a draw for round 2.

For round 3 you set up gangs on opposite sides of the table and just have a big scrum. The first gang to loose a big nerve test and leave town is the looser. This one includes a very interesting special rules which allows either player to request a shot of whisky when setting up, so I had to give Serge a shot!

Well this only made him more lucky I guess. This battle had tons of guys running out of ammo and killing each other. On the last turn we both were below half and had to test or run, the Outlaws Passed on a 9, and the Law failed on a 1 and left town.

So there is another fun game in the old west. I was short a guy so had to put the bar man in the mix and he sadly was shot.


Thanks;
Mike