This past Sunday I got a chance to head over to Duncan's to play a game of Flames of War! We decided to give the objective cards a go as they are kind of fun, Duncan was planing to try out some new tanks so I took an infantry company and threw in a few TIgers for them to kill!
Sadly with the cards it can be a bit hard to remember all of the objectives, but I think I can get the main points.
We set up a table with multiple center piece terrain features on the corners, a major farm, a church yard with cemetery, bit of a town ect.. Eventually came to realize that this left the open very open, but you know these things happen.
I started with most of my infantry stuff in the church yard and TIgers hiding in town. The americans have some infantry and Pershings in the Farm, and some infantry and artillery behind the woods.
I got a card for 3 objectives around the middle of the table, and am slowly collecting the outer ones for one point each. On the far end of the church I moved up some guns to try and take out the artillery, while the tried to blow me up. The Americans found that the Farm had to be held for awhile and had some intelligence in the middle of the board, so the Pershings head there.
This game starts to have a bit of an odd flow now. The artillery eventually wins the duel with the guns without loss. Then we start bombing each others infantry to not huge effects. The Pershings sit in the center and the Tigers are not to interested in facing them so not much is going down. I am sending out solo teams from the church to capture and contest objectives and wait for opportunity.
Tigers about to make a move, but fail a 2+ Blitz and instead go back to town for a coffee.
People start wondering if we are playing a WW1 game, but the American infantry get tired of mortar bombs and line up to have a fire fight over the Church. By this point the clock on the Farm objective is almost gone and the Pershings got a big objective worth 5 points in the center. So this game is becoming a big problem. They smoke to block the Tigers and wait it out.
The Tigers are now forced to be in a game, really against their better judgement. I BLitz and move and am able to get a single shot on the far Pershing which bails him, hey not bad right? I am feeding stands to contest the objective and keep things going. But have allot of pressure on that infantry group now.
The Pershing remounts and they have a shot back, by some miracle don't kill anyone, basically no hits at long range. This makes the Tigers think shit we might have a go of this yet.
I Blitz into short range and shoot up the Pershings real good. Heroic effort for sure, but they passed all there saves. Very Serge like thing to do but never mind. The grind down for the Church is reaching the end point now as well.
The Pershings of course fire back, I think they might be out of gas or something as they haven't moved for awhile. Of course at short range they have more luck and kill 2 Tigers and bail the last. Who as you can expect fails his last stand test, this reminds me that I do have some commanders left in town.
I delay the Pershings from getting their well earned victory for as long as possible. But there is no way at all for me to kill them or catch up on points some how so they eventually score all the points. It ended up like 15 to 3 for the Americans. You only need to get 8 points on your turn to win so that is a bit showy but nicely done!
Fun game, interesting how different things can go. Obviously it was pretty clear from the start that this would most likely come down to a Pershing v Tigers show down. Which is not awesome for the
Tigers but anything can happen! I was expecting to see Comets which would be a bit more of a fair fight, especially consider it was 4-3!
Thanks;
Mike
I think the cards made the Free-for-All much more interesting. I think we both had too many points in a single unit. My Pershings were more than half of the 1500 points.
ReplyDeleteI think adding some random events into the cards might be interesting as well.
It is hard to tell how the Comets would have done -- I would have take 7 of them but they would die faster.