Thursday 23 October 2014

Battle Report - Flames of War - Late War East Front

So we went for another bit of Wednesday gaming, this time playing some Flames of War. I finally got to try out my Kampfgruppe Bake force that I had painted a good while back. Basically it's a heavy tank company with a mix of Panthers and Tigers. Here is my list:


Bake has rerolls on shooting, 2+ storm trooper moves for a platoon he joins, is Fearless Veteran, and allows one platoon to make a recon move. I faced a Russian tank company with 21 T34-85, 4 heavy tank destroyers, and 2 heavy anti-tank guns.

In the first game we rolled for a mission and got encounter.


My Tiger Ace skill ended up being 'Every Shot Counts', so they would all get to re roll misses. I had them hull down behind a hill, and all the Panthers way down on the other side of the forest. 1 T34 platoon taking cover behind a ruined church, and the tank destroyers behind a tree line. All of the Panthers made a recon move to get up closer and then I won the roll to go first which was pretty lucky.


I basically had the T34s trapped between Panthers and a few just barely in range of the Tigers from time to time so they wore down that platoon very fast. Then got rid of most of the tank destroyers before any reserves could re-enforce that objective, which is right behind the church. So a quick win for Bake. The Hen and Chicks rule the Russians had really prevented them from having much of a chance to damage the Veteran Russian tanks, and I was able to make good use of storm troops to limit return fire and force them to move which makes things very hard.

As that was such a quick game we decided to do another and got No Retreat, the Russian force is always attack so they would have to be the attacker. I started with both tank platoons again with the Tigers deployed behind a hill again and the Panthers in ambush.

This time my Tiger commander got Top ace so there would be 2 skills, I rolled ace again and got to pick the first skill, I choose Rapid Fire as they didn't plan to move allot so would be Rate of Fire 3, and then rolled Schnell for the commander, so they would be Storm Troopering on a 2+.


The Tigers hide behind the hill, and Bake takes up a position in the town, within 16" of the forward objective to contest if needed. My plan was to try and limit return fire as much as I could again and try to destroy the Russians at long range where they couldn't threaten my vulnerable flanks.


This worked out very well and the Russians were worn down slowly with no losses to my cats. The big Russian guns were AT 16, but as they were ROF 1 with Hen and Chicks and I kept allot tanks in cover their success was limited. Twice they got a hit on my tanks but then rolled a 1 for fire power resulting just in a bail!


Things continued like that for awhile, but the Russians lost to many tanks before they could get close so ended up with another loss. I completely forgot to roll for my weak token reserves, but they would have just died and not been able to do anything so safe to just assume the Russians killed both platoons, but with no Tank losses it made no difference really.

I found the Bake force to be pretty fun, it's cool to have a mix of Panthers and Tigers as you get to play with all the big cool tanks. I think this was pretty much an ideal opponent for them thou and it's would be allot harder facing off against some other armies, like good Infantry or the really mobile American tanks for instance.

Thanks;
Mike

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