The Saturday Night Skirmishers met for our monthly get together at GAJO's. The subject was Flames of War 15mm WW2. Specifically, I created a scenario representative of the British battles around Caen in 1944. The beautiful table terrain you see in the photo above was put together by Chris at GAJO's the day before we were scheduled to play. Big points for him, the table looked fantastic and was battled over with much enthusiasm.
This was a bigger game than originally designed, we ended up with three visitors for the game: welcome Pat, Casey and Norm. Norm just recently returned from duty in Afghanistan, and he gets extra points for putting up with a billion questions from all of us (especially me). Casey gets extra points for being Gary's son and putting the crunch on his dad: his British infantry (my figures, ta-da!) made a mess of Gary's PanzerGrenadiers. And Pat gets points merely for deploying more Tigers than your average zoo. Any one else want points? They're free...
I used scenario 1, Hill Defense Line, from Charles Grant's book "Programmed Wargames Scenarios." I used the random terrain generator, and some of the random orders and objectives. The Germans were assigned to hold the ridge in the photo on the left, and specifically not to move beyond it... which they promptly disobeyed. They evidently figured on a more successful outcome if they were to counter-attack the attacking British. Of course, if you know your history, that IS in keeping with German tactical doctrine. Dave B's Fallschirmjager moved down the flank of the hill (affectionately named "Fromage Ridge") and among the nearby fields and hedges. Gary's Stugs and Panzergrenadiers in Sd 251's moved down the paved road in the center, followed by Pat's Tigers. Dennis valiantly marched his Luftwaffe field troops off the hill into a meatgrinder among the bocage. His Stugs evidently caught the atention of the British FAC.
In the picture, Dennis is doing his best to shoot down Russ' Typhoon before it rockets his remaining Stugs. His triple-A did all right, scoring hits on several planes, but enough hits got in to cripple the Stug force. By the end of the game, the LW troops had taken severe losses and Dennis felt he might have to withdraw.
Lucky for the Germans then, that we did not finish the game. We started a little late, and that meant we ran out of time to reach a conclusion. So no one really won, although the Brit players (Russ, Casey, Lynn, Norm) get a points advantage for following orders!
Most everybody in the group loves FOW and the guys want to play more. Good. We all need to learn the rules better. GAJO is setting up a large FOW mega-battle next month.
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