Time for another Wednesday Wargaming battle report. This week we are once again playing the new version of flames of War, this time Stan joined in as well. I played the exact same Bake list as lat time, although I forgot to bring my rocket guys in from reserve which was not smart. The Russians had an assault gun company with ISU 122, 152s, an IS2 commander, and a bunch of T34/85s.
On the missions map I decided to defend, which turned out to be a mistake. Basically I was being greedy, should have went for the prepared attack, but oh well. We rolled Free For All, but decided to do Dust Up instead just to try a different one.
This mission has delayed reserves so I had to start with the Tigers and Rockets off the board. This gave me the closest to 40%.
Here is the first turn, the Russians had the first round but just went Gone to Ground in the crop fields. I moved up to take some shots, hoping to be able to deal with these 4 big tanks before the T34s show up. No effect first go due to moving and all the modifiers.
Next turn the Russians return fire, but they only have 1 shot each even stationary and with long range and veteran I was safe for now. The smaller assault guns just stayed with their position, not wanting to tangle with the Panthers at long range.
This gave me a second shot, but still not having great luck, getting only 1 kill even with Bake! Not going super great so far, but still can be fine provided no reserves come.
A whole bunch of T-34s arrive of course, and the guns take cover. No reserves for our side, so I decided my position was now to exposed. The T-34s can easily move and get rear shots.
So I withdrew to the woods to get some shots. Bake was able to Blitz move and shoot at full rate of fire. This got me a couple of kills which is not bad, but hardly making a dent in such a big company of tanks!
The Russians advanced in cover, no real fire but giving me a hard choice to make. The other guns moved back to wait for the tigers.
Turn 4 for me and still no reserves. Not much to shoot at so I fell back again with the Panthers behind a woods. Bake took a stationary shot at the IS2, but still no luck for me. The used shoot and scoot to hide a bit. I have my little AA guns to contest the objective at least temporarily.
The Russians move in and kill Bake, and the AA guns, well one died and the other failed his last stand test, getting used to that now hah. At this point it is starting to feel grim.
Turn 5 the Tigers finally arrive. They decide to join the desperate fight instead of going for the objective. I had to move up my Panthers to contest the objective. I had a hope that if we could break the T-34s we would have a chance, and a couple were out of command. I got only 1 kill and a bail from the Panthers, so I requested the one tiger that could see to shoot as well, I think he got a second bail. The other killed a big gun, so they had a strong start. They used a Blitz move to get onto the board so could fire at the full rate.
The T-34s of course had one guy remount so they didn't need a last stand test, they then moved in on the Panthers killed 2. Meanwhile the guns killed a tiger. They also were able to use Blitz to move, so could shoot both without penalty, and using volley fire, big deal!
Things were looking bad, but we at least made all of our formation test, so got to hang in there. I killed yet another T-34, so that is like 5 now, but still accomplishing nothing really. Kind of disheartening. The poor tiger just got a bail.
This game is really making me think about how the morale rules work in the new version. You can have 1 tiger bailed out fail to remount, and that makes you take a last stand and you might loose them. Meanwhile we can kill half a dozen of more tanks from one Russian platoon and they don't even have to test. I am not feeling that this is very fair, as it makes some of the German units extremely brittle, and the Russians will fight to the last man! Also there morale is often higher to boot!
Thanks;
Mike
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