Last week I had my first Flames of War games.  While it is still early days as far as rule comprehension goes, I was honestly surprised by the level of awesomeness in this game. As mentioned in a previous post, I used to play 40k, Warhammer Fantasy, Necromunda etc etc, so tabletop gaming isn’t new to me. Even with this history, Flames of War still surprised me. We played through the Open Fire learning games, and finished the night with a small game of Free for All.

AAR

Both sides had small armies.  Small as in scale, and small as in very few units. One platoon infantry and one platoon tanks.  Being the Germans, I was outnumbered, He had three more teams in his platoon and an extra tank. Sadly for him it did not help him.

He deployed his units concentrated  around the centre of the table edge close to the objectives. In response I spread out.  I was planning on marching my people across the table as quickly as possible and hoping for the best.  He has first move and moved (at the double) right towards me. I decided that seeing as he was coming right at me I’d hit the dirt and take defensive positions. My infantry was out of range so did nothing and went to ground. My StuG’s opened up and killed one tank and bailed another. There were some rules missed here regarding shooting at units moving at the double… oh well. This went on for a wee while but basically after two or three turns his tanks were smoking and a number of infantry gone. At this point my command tank left the other behind and shot along the left flank towards the objective. Alas because he took heavy casualties he had to take a platoon morale test which he failed ending the game.

Because no objectives were taken it was technically a draw.  But as he pointed out it was more like the “draw” depicted in Monty Python’s “The holy Grail”, as he had lost all his units, and I had lost…nothing.

Honestly it was loads of fun.  Battlefront supplied a copy of Open Fire! the FoW starter set for some stuff I am writing for ButtonMasher.  Those guys are awesome, and the Open Fire! set is really helpful. They currently busy updating it and I look forward to seeing what they come up with.

We have another game lined up for Friday which I am looking forward to a great deal.  I now have something more resembling a proper army. I need to finish the painting but otherwise its looking alright.  Should be fun.