TCOW Fury!

I haven't seen Fury yet, but I am positive it didn't have much in the similarity with the Flames Of War game I just played last weekend where I ineptly led 15 tanks and one jeep in to the light and cruely allowed one survivor jeep to deal with the fallout...

It was club day at TCOW last weekend and there was a lot happin'n! Warmachine, Flames of War, Drop Zone Commander, Kings of War, and Saga all made it to the tabletop. I brought a 1600-point late-war list of US tanks from Remagen and my Saga Vikings and Normans.

Un-Fury!
I got a game in with Jonathan this week. Hot off the heels of FlamesCon, Jonathan rearranged his Market Garden Grenadierkompanie to make it entirely trackless, with three platoons of infantry, HMGs, mortars, heavy infantry guns, a battery of 15cm howitzers, and a platoon of PaK40s. My list was from Remagen and contained:

Tank Company (9AD, Confident Veteran)
HQ: 1x Jumbo, 1x M4A3 (76mm)
Tank Platoon: 3x M4A3 (late), 2x M4A3 (76mm)
Tank Platoon: 2x M4A3 (late), 2x M4A3 (76mm), 1x M4A3 (105mm)
Calliope Platoon: 2x T34 Calliope
Cavalry Patrol: 1x M5A1 Stuart, 2x Jeeps

I wanted to try out the Calliopes I had just spent hours assembling. The look magnificient and they pack a punch! I'm also a huge fan of the M4A3 (late) chassis. It's all about protected ammo!

The game was Counterattack and I had to cross a river to get to the exposed position. I decided to go for it and force the gap. I would have worked, I wager, if I had simply stuck to the plan. Instead, I did everything I could to undermine it! I sent the recon on a way too wide of a march, split my tanks up, and placed the Jumbo and Calliopes on the flank that wasn't really going to move or capture anything. Brilliant, Mike.

Anyway, the game went fast and Jonathan kept up the pressure. There was no recovering from the horrible mistakes made at the beginning, but through some luck I managed to eliminate an infantry platoon and the 15cm guns. Jonathan focused fire on the advancing Shermans and wiped them out with the PaK40 ambush (where'd that recon go? Oh yeah, I sent it out into the middle of no where...). The second platoon pushed in to try and contest the other objective, but the cross fire between panzerschrecks, PaK40s and 15cm SiGs was too much to bear and that platoon was destroyed enroute.

The Calliopes were fantastic. They only failed to reload on one turn, but they were being bombarded by smoke anyway, so I used them as machine-gun tanks to support the failing left flank, where they promptly got eaten alive. Oh well, 80 points for a massive template that pinned a good number of platoons down would have been worth it, should I have actually competently attacked!

Jonathan had 10 platoons, so it ended up as a 2-5 loss for my tankers. My take away was to focus better. You almost need to play like you're playing Germans. Focus firepower, maneuver, strike...

Saga!
The club is getting jazzed on starting up Saga. I brought along my Normans and Vikings which have seen far to little action for my tastes! Jonathan and Greg borrowed them and played a game while I stayed on hand for rules questions and explanations. The guys had fun, with Jonathan's Normans charging into Greg's bloodthirsty Vikings. The result was a warlord kill when Jonathan's leader just could find enough bodies to throw in front of Greg's axes.

I'm inspired to break out my Danes and keep working on them for my third army. I've got a lot of Dark Age Warriors that I'll do up as a relatively generic batch of warriors, so I'll have a crack at them soon. The guys are gearing up for Crescent and the Cross games, so I may also need to expand my Normans into the First Crusade...

So, that was it! Lots of other games were played and I'll leave you with a couple of more photos. In the meantime, thanks for stopping by!