Old minefields you say?

 Stupid command cards FTW! Was Old Minefields good? No. Was it funny? Yes. Would it be entertaining as part of a Beach Defence Company that is defending and already also getting actual minefields? Very much yes. 

FallschirmStuGs vs. 'Dutch' Cota

My first game of the day was against blogger Scotty in Contact. Norman 'Dutch' Cota lead a pair of Armoured Rifle platoons (hereafter ARPs) supported by their artillery and some cheeky Stuarts into combat with my FallshirmStuGs somewhere behind the beaches of Normandy.

 

Scotty pushed the two ARPs forward, aggressively into the village on my right and along the hedgerows on my left while the Stuarts snuck up the centre. The ARP on the right tripped a StuG ambush who promptly, with the help of Heinz Deutsch, sent all the M1 halftracks to the rear in the most explosive way possible while Scotty passed 13 out of 14 infantry saves to debark!

 

On the left, the StuGs had a much less successful time against the ARP but they bravely pushed through the gap in the hedge to discover someone left a minefield there which promptly vexed an M1 into flames. Despite this, 'Dutch' pushed them forward to the next hedgerow:

 

Scotty's first reserve arrived at the same time his Stuarts decided to commit some shenanigans! On the hill in the top right you can see five 76mm-armed (don't look too closely at the models) Shermans who popped a Hummel on the turn they arrived, greatly reducing my ability to keep the ARP on my right pinned - turns out I didn't need them anyway, Scotty couldn't unpin that platoon for love nor money! This was the beginning of an epic duel...

  

The Stuarts chased some cheeky side shots on my StuGs, to no avail, and when more StuGs arrived from reserve, I was able to pull the ones on my right back to deal to the Stuarts while the other six went after the 76mm Shermans. This is where the rolling fives came into play as I basically popped a single Sherman every turn for the next four turns for the loss of no StuGs in reply. 

Scotty and 'Dutch' pushed aggressively into the centre of the table and the sheer volume of bazookas put my StuGs in real danger. Mercifully, some lucky Defensive Fire and the inability for 'Dutch' to push those boys into a second assault, only cost me one vehicle! Scotty finally landed some hits on the StuGs with his 76s but was defeated by either German steel or poor quality ammunition....

  

My FJ platoon arrived from reserve and began to threaten his central ARP, ably supported by the OP and his broom handle, while on my far right, four M10s arrived from reserve and singularly failed to hit a StuG losing two in the return fire. The ARP on my right finally unpinned and rolled up for some carefully positioned assaults into the StuGs who, miraculously, survived as they were at real risk of not being able to retreat over a hedge and being captured!

 

In the end, both the ARPs were whittled down to too few teams to be combat effective against the remaining German armour. The Priests and Shermans both got shot up and fled and when a couple of Pumas arrived from reserve and dealt to the mortar halftracks, the game was pretty much done. 

It was Scotty's first game with the ARPs and he ran them well! The volume of bazooka shots is occasionally terrifying and if you can manage to get clear shots on the move and hit Careful troops on 5s then bazooka skirts or not, they're genuinely a risky proposition, especially with the followup assault. He pushed aggressively and made the most of the large platoons to vex me in multiple places. Had his dice been just a touch better, I'd have been in real trouble in a couple of places. I got consistently better luck hitting and penetrating his armour than I did making him fail infantry saves!

What did I learn? That Flames of War is an easy game for babies if you can roll 5s and that the FallshirmStuG list in the D-Day books is just not great. They're just too expensive to run as a core platoon - the 10 StuGs that are the core of the list are almost 60 points...

My second game was against Tank's Commandos and between his Typhoons and my appalling dice, the game was over fairly smartly as, by the time I got reserves, I only had one real shot at moving a pair of late Churchills off an objective so I could try assaulting the Commando platoon off it as well. It was....one of those games. 

I've also finally finished up the air support for Panzerschreck XXIII: 

Just adding the decals kind of finishes them off nicely. They'll be very silly in a few weeks! 

Next Time

A camel. That's all I'm going to say about that.