Post-con takeaways?

 Actually it was leftover pizza. 

Anyway, on to the event and it's outcomes. ValleyCon 2022 was a great weekend and, aside from having to move wooden tabletops in the midst of one of the worst winter storms I've ever seen, largely went off without a hitch. The Flames comp was so much fun and even though I took a tank destroyer company, and there weren't a lot of tank companies for me to destroy, it went better than expected.

Army Gallery

I thought I'd share the wide variety of armies that we saw for the event first: 

Blogger Triple T's Recce Squadron

Richard's Canadians

Regan's Princess Irene Brigade

Sofia's Russians

Chris' Panzergrenadiers

Pats's Kiwi Shermans

Shane's Kiwi Shermans

Octavia's Aufklarungs

Jonathan's Windgruber Grenadiers

Stu's Panzers and Panzergrenadiers

Blogger McBeth's Best Painted Russians

My Panzerjagers

Graham's British Armour

Blogger Tank's Finns

Games

I'm not going to do a full blown game by game, my memory is too hazy for that. So a highlight reel with some pictures.

Round 1: Regan's Princess Irene Brigade

I always enjoy playing Regan. He takes his games as seriously as I do (ie. not a lot) and we always wind up having highly entertaining and very stupid adventures. He wins the prize for the most historical and awesome force of the weekend, the Dutch Princess Irene Brigade.

 

I spent most of the game hammering this objective with Hummels because I didn't want to assault it with Hetzers. In the end, I had to bring up my Panzergrenadiers and get stuck into the Resistance platoon defending. Regan's M10s had a rough handling from the 4 Hetzers and 3 Jagdpanzer IV/70s but the carrier platoon that came on in the right place at the right time to defend it gave me a few scares right at the last. 

These Shermans arrived a turn too late to race to the objective before my Hetzers and infantry overran the last of his defenders.  If they'd arrived anywhere other than the 5/6 arrrival point, this would have been a very, very different game.

Round 2: Jonathan's Grenadiers

This game was always going to be interesting. Jonathan had a powerful Windgruber-led platoon holding the centre of the board and I was going to have to go through it. A first turn assault gave me the centre and an aggressive flanking maneuver with my Hetzers gave his mortars something to worry about and tripped a PaK40 ambush, allowing my Jagdpanzers to whip round the other side.

  

It was all going well till this happened. Jonathan's Tigers arrived and only bailed a single Jagdpanzer. I got excited! My return shooting penetrated both Tigers. Then I failed both firepower rolls. They remounted. Five shots, five hits, five penetrations four dead Jagdpanzer IV/70s. That's about when the game effectively ended. A little bit more luck and this game was all on. It was a very good match though and I was starting to think that this army might not be that bad at attacking. 

Round 3: Tank's Finns

 This game was a bit of a necessity given some organisational duties that required Tank's attention. We figured it might as well affect both of us rather than two of our guests so we played this game. Tank technically attacked in Contact but chose to defend once he cut a chunk of my army off with scouts in a building.

I spent most of the game trying to clear out those scouts so I could get my infantry moving and defending my Hummels so I could finally start dropping 15cm shells on the objective above (before having to send in the Hetzers against Finnish infantry. Yeah.) and that was almost the entire experience. I took too long to clear out his 10.5 howitzers and PaK 40s and didn't assault the Scout platoon in the centre of the board when I had the chance. In the end, a good mortar barrage dented my defending infantry platoon enough that I couldn't keep the Finnish infantry away. It was a great game.

Round 4: Triple Ts Carrier Horde

I knew this was going to hurt and boy oh boy did it hurt. Triple T doesn't play a lot of Flames but he had a few games under his belt by now and was running this army very well. It was a bit of a carpark given his tiny deployment zone in Bridgehead but he attacked with vigour and looked for the shots wherever he could get them.

In the end, I couldn't knock things out fast enough and he was passing 5+ Last Stands like a trooper. I would have been happy to take a 3-6 in this game but I didn't even get close. Once the Wasps flamed my infantry platoon out of existence, it was over.

 Roughly handled in the end. I picked Defend in this one looking to pull out a No Retreat or Fighting Withdrawl, but Bridgehead hurt me a lot. I was looking to avoid giving the PIATs easy flank shots and a corner mission felt like I was going to be in more trouble so I didn't Maneuver. In hindsight, should have just attacked and looked to get Contact or even Free for All so I could have all my guns on table ASAP.

Round 5: Stu's Panzers

This game I finally got to do what I came to do. Stu was attacking in Breakthrough and with his infantry in reserve, spent a lot of the game making sure my easy kills on his arriving infantry would be dealt to quickly - notably the Quad AA and 251 transports. The salvo template on the Nebelwerfers was VERY effective. I'm glad I've got some in the box.

This was my favourite shot of the game where my Jagdpanzer IV/70s came from downtown and wrecked some Panzer IVs you can see on the hill in the distance. This game also presented me with only my second direct fire Hummel shot of the weekend. I hit a Panzer IV and, needing a 6 to save, Stu's dice came through! In the end though, I destroyed enough panzers to keep them away from the objectives and my infantry dealt to his when it finally arrived. 

Conclusions?

I like this army a lot and my refusal to Defend with it (except when I did) lead to really interesting games. It's actually very capable. I need to be careful the resources because it is very small and while having the quad AA as core helps the formation, other than my game with Jonathan, there was no real risk to my breaking so some 3.7mm AA might be more useful as lower ROF but higher AT could serve better.

 My SdKfz 251s got shredded in almost every game as people seem generally afraid of them which was interesting. I wasn't as aggressive with the infantry as I could have been and I would like to be better at that. There were a couple of occasions where a mounted assault would have been achievable and I didn't even think to do it. Given I can't really afford to send in the Panzerjagers at any point, it's gotta be on my option list! 

11/10, will play again. Also, I won Best Sport which is always welcome and I got at least one vote for Best Painted which, given my fairly utilitarian view of painting, was really cool. I am really pleased with how the ambush camo has come out and with the foliage on top, it just gives a cool texture on top of the paint job.

Next Time

Good question. I'm working on my 8cm mortars for platoon a month and a few other little projects so the next one will be a workbench of some sort.