Blogger Pel and I played a game of Flames as a bit of a test for our club convention later in the year where we'll be playing 111-point Late War. His list was an extended 100 point list of Comets and Paras and mine was a rapidly-revised-I-liked-the-other-version-better-but-I-haven't-painted-the-bits-yet Volksgrenadier build.
Turn one, in which I passed one 3+ roll and it was the least useful one to pass. Everything failed to Rally, despite Siegfried Moldenhauer being carefully placed to make this as easy as possible (which made me sad as there was this Para Engineer platoon loitering in the open and I have assault rifles!!)
I popped my Brigade Panthers out of Ambush on my first turn and took a janky shot at Pel's HQ. Six shots, 2 hits on 6s. YAY! I thought. One penetrate, one glancing hit and I passed a 3+ roll on the glance to bail both tanks. GRRR....
I was a bit salty but, as it turns out, both our dice on this flank made this whole thing much harder.
By Pel's second turn he was aggressively threatening the left hand objective and I was not....feeling good about how this was going.
And of course my cunning plan (which involved rolling 3+ just one time again) did not come off! The Comets took out the one Panther that failed to Cross in the wood and the Paras went into the first Assault Platoon and actually, it was a surprisingly good fight - the Volksgrenadiers acquitted themselves well, but not well enough to see off the Paras. The Engineers took the top of the hill to prepare to assault my second platoon. Pel's dice caught up with him here and six Comets failed to remove one of the Brigade Panthers.
I failed to Rally the Assault Platoon (AGAIN) and so the Engineers lived a turn but the Brigade Panther remounted (!) and the radical redeployment of the Jagdpanthers continued, vexed by my stupid minefield placement. I kept Pel's 6pdrs occupied while I did it and advanced the Rifle Platoon to protect the flanks of the Jagds.
By the next turn, Pel had removed a Jagdpanther (for the cost of a Chaffee. Seems deece.) and my Rifle Platoon had NOT removed the Chaffees because hitting things on the move with a Panzerfaust is reasonably challenging and then I missed in the assault. Completely. But with no Moldenhauer in sight, not super surprising. For my accounting though, the Assault Platoon shot the Engineers out of existence, a Jagdpanther shot a Comet (YAY!) and the Para HQ repelled an assault by the Assault Platoon with five hits out of six. Sten Teams, yeah! The Jagdpanthers, amazingly, rolled over them instead. It wasn't altogether bad and I was starting to think this might be salvageable.
In his turn, Pel bailed a Panther and a Jagdpanther and destroyed three of my four PaK40s. It wasn't pretty. And then...
...the start of my next turn was where we called the game. I failed to remount or unpin literally anything and then failed Last Man Standing Tests for the last Jagdpanther, the last Brigade Panther and the last PaK40 leaving me with a pinned Assault Platoon (because of course I didn't unpin!) and a way out of position Rifle Platoon. If I'd unpinned, I'd have forced Pel's remnant Paras off the Objective but there were still 6 Comets there and I'd have been out in the wind at that point and unlikely to live...
Lessons?
I need to deploy better and really learn to be better at minefields! Those Jagds were completely out of position for too much of the game and honestly, Comets are a bit scary. Real Panthers might have been okay in a 3 vs 8 fight but not Brigade ones. Pel deserves lots of credit for some very good use of smoke too to neutralise my PaK40s so effectively as well. This list is a bit of a hackjob and it needs work. Some recent list-building changes by Battlefront have created some challenges for me in building the list, notably with it's supports, so I need to give it a bit of a rethink.
Next Time
Maybe some painting? If not, it'll be a runthrough of our clubs postponed 2022-year-end event and how that goes!!
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