Slow progress and illness

I'm aware I've not posted very much recently, but there has been a combination of factors that have slowed my progress down.

One has been that after deciding I was happy to use yellow number decals on the turrets of my flails, I decided (surprise surprise) that I wanted to use the correct red ones. These are on order from Doms Decals, but I've been waiting a week now.

The second thing that's slowed me down this week has been a kidney stone that's more or less floored me. My lovely girl was so concerned that she actually traveled up to look after me for several days.

While I'm still very sore, I hope to be able to head to the club today and play some 10mm rapid fire. Just need to make sure I need to take a load of painkillers!

Knightly Gaming Generals day, 16/11/13

Last Saturday I attended the FoW Generals day held at my local gaming shop in Lanark, Knightly Gaming. There were a few players there, none of which I've played before, so it was interesting to see other peoples armies.

As it worked out I was matched against a 750pt late war Russian Tank Company... I'm afraid I didn't catch my opponents name but we had a very friendly game together and we both picked up bits and bobs rules wise we had been doing wrong. His force consisted of 9 T34/85's (daunting to be sitting across from). The other tank company present (a German late war list) was his regular opponent, so my Highland Division mechanised force was up against a wall of tanks!

I tried to go for a balanced list with my 2 infantry platoons backed up with a troop of Shermans and 4 x 6 Pounder anti tank guns.

The table (at the end of turn one)

As it turned out my infantry's mobility wasn't used - I basically unloaded into buildings and dug in. The battle was just a fight to the death, so no objectives to take and hold. My veteran infantry in buildings (concealed and gone to ground) proved impossible for the t34's to shift. They needed 4+ basic, 6+ for concealed and gone to ground and 7+ due to the russkies hen and chick rules. 

Despite losing my Firefly to the first round of shooting, my Shermans actually gave a really good account of themselves. My command tank adding to it's impressive tally of tank kills!

With my infantry and guns dug in, the Russkie advance continues...

With the T34's on the left flank failing their motivation test (and taking the HQ unit with them), it left my two remaining guns and Shermans to handle the right flank (while my infantry hid and took PIAT shots at anything coming near!)

I decided one of my Infantry platoons that had been on the left should redeploy to get it's PIAT into the fight... so began their epic chase! (I forgot I could have recalled the transports).

Before finally the last Russkie tank was dealt with.

Yes, that is a Sherman model, my opponents force had been a mid war soviet one prior to being rejigged.

Some of the other games:

A good day and I think I learned a good few things about my understanding of the rules. One of the Battlefront 'Rangers' was present and taking pics, so there might be a chance the event gets featured on the Battlefront website.

Thanks to Brett at Knightly Gaming for hosting the event! Attendees also got a free plastic Sherman or StuG model and another gamer very kindly gave me their Sherman Firefly plastic kit as well as the standard Sherman V I got :)

FoW game, Saturday 9/11/13 - 144RAC vs Germans

Finally getting around to posting some of the pictures from my game with YD last weekend. It's been a busy week so I hadn't got round to typing anything up (and nothing to do with the fact I got soundly thumped).

This was my first game playing with a armored list, using a list from Overlord and the 11th armored list as a proxy for my 33 Armored Brigade.

I fielded a lot of unpainted mini's in this game, which is something I have been avoiding whenever possible. But I fancied changing things up a bit and seeing how I got on. The list consisted of (roughly):

Confident Trained Armor:

Command Troop (2 x Sherman I's)

2 x Troops (3 x Sherman I's, 1 x Firefly)

1 x Recce troop (3 x Daimler I's, 2 x Humber LRC's)

2 x Highland Division Infantry Platoons (in De-frocked priests)

1 x A/T platoon (4 x 6 pounder guns)

Priority air support.

Light cruiser artillery support (off table) - this was mainly to make up the points and I had a ground team spotter for them.

YD fielded his Confident Vet infantry, with 2 x 4 Panzer IV's and 1 x Tiger, Neb's and a few other bits and bobs.

Neither of these lists were strictly speaking accurate, but what the hell!

A brief synopsis of the game saw me advancing into contact and getting bogged down due to dug in Pak40's (again!). A few Shermans were lost without much forward movement, then the Tiger got involved and my Shermans started to pop all over the place. The game ended without me killing many units and with my infantry not even dismounting before I decided I would fall back and concede.

YD's 15mm Tiger

YD's German infantry

Result: Allied Defeat!