Games Today

Two very interesting games of Flames of War today, both 1000pts Early War against an Italian Carri Company, to try out ValleyCon ideas. I proxied my British armoured car list, as I was really keen to see how they went against light armour.

The two games were Fighting Withdrawal and Dust Up. They could have gone either way, but both were won 4-3 by the British thanks to a bunch of lucky dice rolls.

A few lessons:

1. 1000pt games are quick. Each one today took about an hour.
2. In Dust Up, it's an awfully long way for your reserves to go if you need their help to shore up the defence of your objectives.
3. Fearless Veteran 18/25pdrs are excellent. They take up just over a third of my points, but so far they've been a great investment. Just make sure you dig them in as soon as you get the chance...
4. Don't bother trying to use the armoured cars' AT Rifles to take on anything above Armour 1.
5. M13/40s are good. Not fantastic, but solid. The 3/2/1 armour, 24" range, AT 6 and five MG dice are gold. They are hampered by their variable skill/motivation ratings, slow speed and lack of decent support options.

One aspect of ValleyCon that I didn't mention in earlier posts is that, unlike other FOW tournaments where placings are based on total Victory Points, this time placings will be determined by the number of wins, with VPs only being used as a tie-breaker. I think this is fantastic and would love it to be done this way more often. There's a whole bunch of units that you never see fielded at tournaments because they're such an easy VP, and a lot of lists that never seem to be used, largely because they have no chance of winning games 6-1.

Overall, I was very happy with the way the list played. It has a variety of options for handling half on/half off deployments, a core of solid AT, and lots of fast MG platforms. I've managed to pick up a platoon of the armoured cars (thanks Tom) and my CHQ, so can start working towards painting them up. I also have the infantry and artillery. Unfortunately the other two platoons of armoured cars and the portees are still on backorder, but there's still three months to go, so I'm not panicking just yet...