DanCon 2014

Today I attended the greatest Flames Of War event held in the Southern Hemisphere. I speak, of course, of the illustrious DanCon 2014, hosted by the standup gents of TCOW (That Club Out West). The event was a three-game tournament (1250 points) with entirely random mission selection with some general guide lines. True to form, Dan, over at KingDan's Place, and the TCOW guys delivered an excellent easy-going event.


I ended up taking this silly little list:

Parachute Rifle Company
(from Market Garden)

Parachute Rifle Company HQ
add 3x Bazooka

Parachute Rifle Platoon
replace HQ with Capt. Panzerfaust SMG
add 3x Rifle teams

Parachute Rifle Platoon
replace HQ with Capt. Panzerfaust SMG
add 3x Rifle teams

Parachute Mortar Platoon (2x M1 81mm)

Parachute Artillery Battery (4x M1A1 75mm)

82nd AB Div Recon Platoon (4x .50cal Armored Jeeps)

Major Julian Cook (Warrior)

Total: 1250

I had to do some painting to get this up to scratch. I needed six extra Rifle teams, Major Cook, and four armored jeeps. So I busted those out last week and ended up being ready for the event by 8pm the night before. I can't remember the last time I wasn't painting up to the wee hours of the night before!

Game 1: FFA
vs. Mike 'Surfboard' Haycock and his Puma army

Roughly speaking Mike had three or four pairs of Puma armored cars, two platoons of PaK40s, three Nebelwerfers, and a platoon of PanzerLehr Grenadiers.

I was caught on my back foot, as would be expected with a lot of Pumas on the field. I engaged them with my armored jeeps and managed to bag a platoon with 50 cal shots into the side, but they were in turn knocked out.

Mike kept the pressure on my line, killing the dumbass Pack 75s who couldn't dig in the whole damn time! Anyway, that aside, Mike shifted slightly toward my left flank and I had a moment of opportunity. I smoked the hell out of his Pumas and tried to assault. I failed to get through the Defensive fire (hitting me 7 times out of 8 shots!). But I ended up slinking away unscathed and made a break for an open objective with some Truscott Trot moves.

I nearly had him, in fact one more turn and the game was going to be mine 4:3, but the game timed out ending in a 2:3 draw.

Game 2: Hold the Line
vs. Damian Reid's Fortified Cassino FJ

After hassling Damian about his fortified FJ, I was matched up against him in round three. He had something like three Panther turrets, a pair of 2cm FlaK nests, some minefields, and an HMG bunker as well as some small FJ that he KG'ed into a large defensive unit. Damo put the minefield exactly where he needed to in the terrain I was planning on using to advance. Well, I decided to charge up the middle across a tough killing ground to swamp the bunkers and sweep the hill objective. Then I had to deal with the FJ at bayonet point.

As it happened, my jeeps stormed up and failed to knock out the FlaK bunker with their 50s. The infantry advanced. The FlaK nest KO'd a jeep, but the Panther turrets ended up making a mess of 1st Platoon, scoring four hits and killing four stands! The Flak Nest killed another team. I rolled a-l-o-t of ones!

The next turn the jeeps bounced and got into assault range of the FJ behind the hill. The infantry overran the FlaK nest and moved up to take out the Panther turret. The jeeps assaulted the FJ so that they made it through the defensive fire, KO'd a team. Damian then rolled to counterattack... Now it should be noted that Damian's force motivates on a 2+, so even with a company commander there, he wasn't able to retaliate! The FJ backed off.

I proceeded to lose several more teams to MG fire, but the infantry jumped the Panther turret and destroyed it while the Pack 75s bombarded and pinned down the FJ. I prepared for Damian's assault and contested the unguarded objective, but once again a terrible streak of bad luck hit Damo hard as another pair of 1s prevented him from moving toward the objective. All he needed was 1/2" too! Good game, but it ended up a 6-1 for me. Neither of us killed a platoon, Damian losing 2 bunkers and one FJ team. I lost about 8 Rifle/MG teams and a pair of Jeeps. So many 1s!

Game 3: Cauldron
vs. Steve MacLauchlan's IS-2 sledge hammer

Well, next up I ended up pulling Steve in Cauldron. Now, I really dislike this mission on a good day, but this was going to go down one of two ways. Either I would defend with a few bricks of FV (super Fearless with Cook in command) infantry, forcing a timeout during which neither of us would have much fun, or I could elect to Always Attack using Cook's A Bold Plan. For better or worse, I chose option B.

Simply put, it was an uphill struggle that my troops were ill-prepared to handle. Random deployment hurt pretty bad and my reserves were delayed too long. My list was also not ideal for reserves, forcing me to put three platoons away. Oh well, I knew that going in.

Steve played an excellent fighting withdrawal, so I was ground down pretty quickly for a 1-6 loss. Not much more to say here, but we did grab this snapshot of a scene that is perhaps the coolest I've seen in a Flames Of War game ever!

Results
Overall, Rob Sadler took the win with his British Glider Pilots (a lot of Market Garden lists were out in force today). Steve MacLauchlan and Mike Haycock took 2nd and 3rd, respectively. Damian grabbed the Sports vote, and Greg Lockton swept up the wooden spoon.

An excellent event, and I look forward to next year's DanCon!