2016 Retrospective

I started 2016 with a long list of gaming goals. In the event, the realities of life meant that most of the items on the list ended up either annotated "2017?", or simply crossed off as unlikely to ever happen. That makes this post a rather short review of my achievements for the year.

As we're out of town for the holidays, the photos in this post have to be repeats of ones from earlier in the year, rather than anything new.

The Flames of War competition at ValleyCon was the first event of the year, and as always it was an enjoyable two days. The location was excellent, the comp had a great format, and I played seven games with people I hadn't met before. The majority of the army hasn't seen the light of day since, but the infantry that I painted for it did form the basis for a mid-war event in December and my army for VC17 next month.

The Brandywine refight in March was another fun day spent with a bunch of great people. I had painted up two battalions of 28mm Perry Continentals for it, which was a nice change both in colour and scale from my usual painting, but to be honest I was glad when I finished them. Afterwards I acquired another painted battalion, and enough leftover sprues to make a fourth, so if any other AWI games come along in future I will be able to contribute a full brigade.

A highlight for the year was supposed to be Warmachine Mk III. I preordered the rules and spent quite a bit of time touching up my collection in preparation for it, but I have still not played a game of it. Part of the reason for this is a feeling, of course without being backed up by the experience of trying it and seeing first hand, that my unit-heavy collection needs a major revamp to make workable lists under the new edition, and the infantry that I had so lovingly repainted no longer have a meaningful role. It's still there in the background and there are a few other kits I wouldn't mind getting simply because they're amazing models, but to be honest I can't see myself playing it in competitions again, and at this stage there is no WM on my 2017 list.

One goal of 2016 was to pick up another system, and to that end I bought a second hand army of Italian Wars Florentines for Impetus, played a couple of games with them and quite enjoyed it. I had planned to add some light cavalry, start repainting the figures, and then play in V3 in May, but all of that was pushed back into next year at the earliest.

One thing that I have actually started, however, is picking up Team Yankee, and in 15mm rather than 6mm as I had originally intended. I don't plan on going overboard with it (I'm still not totally convinced about the scale) but the Battlefront kits are beautiful, and the idea is to build a couple of 60pt armies, starting with the Soviet starter box that I have bought to paint over summer.

The major news regarding 2017 is the upcoming release of the 4th Edition of FOW. I have mixed emotions about this. Version 3 is a good game, and it sounds like Version 4 makes major changes to it that are in line with the "TY is a closet open beta for V4" school of thought. Some of these changes sound refreshing, but others have left me wondering. Very little is certain at this early stage, but I do fear that 4th Edition will do to FOW, a game that has been a passion of mine for the last 15 years, what Mk3 did to my interest in Warmachine.

So, to summarise, what are my aims for 2017? In approximate order of priority:

1. Finish my ValleyCon army. I still have the portees, carriers, transport and objectives to paint. It seems like a lot when listed like that, but it's not difficult painting so should be achievable with four weeks to go. I also have to paint a platoon of Panzer IIs for the list my son will be taking. I had hoped to put together a new table of terrain for it, but that doesn't look likely to happen.
2. Flames of War 4th Edition. I have a decent quantity of 8th Army and Afrika Korps for a 1942 setting, and hopefully there'll be a fair amount of interest in giving it a go. I want to rebase the British teams I have to match my early war infantry, with the goal being to be able to play any Mediterranean setting from 1940 to 1944 just by using different vehicles and gun teams.
3. Team Yankee  - extension to 60 points of Soviets through the addition of Shilkas and an infantry company in BMPs, and getting a game or two, as there are a couple of people locally looking at trying it in 15mm as well.
4. Finishing off a number of other odds and ends for Flames of War - a squadron of Comets, various Shermans, M10s and Matildas, and the last few units for my LW Gebirgsjager. There might end up being a new army in there, depending on what competitions I am able to make it to during the year, but nothing planned at this stage.
5. Getting around to adding that Italian light cavalry for Impetus.

Hopefully I'll have more success keeping to these (slightly more limited) goals than I did in the year just gone. So, happy new year, and thanks for reading this blog. All the best to you for the year ahead.

Thoughts on "Remember December"

The club Flames of War event on Saturday was an enjoyable day. Full results can be found here, so I'll just focus on a couple of thoughts coming out of it.

I lost all my games, and only managed to avoid the wooden spoon thanks to my son winning his final game, relegating his opponent to last place in the process. It's fair to say that the Motor Company proved difficult to use. At 1000pts and having so many points tied up in the tanks, and with the small infantry platoons having a lot of firepower that is not available if you move, I didn't feel like I had many options to win as the attacker. And I ended up having to attack in all three games. I needed three infantry platoons, I needed the light mortars for an extra stand, I needed more carriers to give that mobile firepower, and I needed medium mortars for smoke and to give me another means of getting a pin. Basically, I needed a full Rifle Company in order to pull off what I was trying to do with a small Motor Company, and that directly stemmed from my decision to take the Shermans at the expense of all of those other things that I needed. But would I drop them in order to retool the list? Probably not.

One particularly good outcome of the day was Simon trialling a scoring system that completely abandons the official Battlefront victory point scheme based on broken platoons. It's a process that began back in the days of Version 1, by adding +2 points for a win to try and spread the table and reward winning a bit more. I don't know whether that practice continued and evolved through the years or if umpires generally reverted to using the official system, but at ValleyCon this year the rankings were determined by wins, with the VPs only acting as a tie breaker. Simon has now taken that to the next logical step, where it is the points value of the broken platoons that matters. The argument against this has always been the maths involved, but honestly it wasn't that hard to go "I lost 155 + 155 + 95 = 405 points". Still a little bit of tweaking to do, but the concept is good and the day was a good opportunity for it to be tested. A scheme like this pushes the definition of a "competitive army" far beyond just something that is able to win 6-1, and I fully support the change.

Armies for "Remember December"

I have completed painting my army for tomorrow's 1000pt Flames of War event, "Remember December" themed on Italy in 1943. I've played a couple of test games to get a feel for the list, and it's not quite as gloriously bad as I had thought. Yes, half-on/half-off games with delayed reserves are going to be a particular problem, but the Motor Platoons, while small, each put out as much firepower as a full sized Rifle Platoon, and are hard to assault due to being ROF 2 when pinned down. The Shermans are good, provided you can keep them alive, the carriers provide 12 dice of mobile machine-gun fire that could be useful if applied at the correct time and location, and ROF 3 AT 10 anti-tank guns are always going to be dangerous. As a bonus the company counts as Infantry instead of Mechanised, so it's possible I won't end up spending the whole day having to attack.

My 14 year old son will also be playing, which is nice. It's his first FOW event, so he's a bit apprehensive, but we've played quite a few games and I think he should be fine. The main thing he wants to get out of the event is enough confidence to play FOW at ValleyCon. He's taking a German Grenadierkompanie, using my late war Gebirgsjäger models.

German Grenadierkompanie (Tunisia and Italy) - North Africa (2016 Revision)

Company HQ, 45 pts

Grenadier Platoon, 3 Squads + Panzerknacker, 160 pts

Grenadier Platoon, 2 Squads + Panzerknacker, 115 pts

Grenadier Machine-gun Platoon, 135 pts

Grenadier Anti-tank Platoon, 85 pts
   2 x PaK38 + Transport 

Assault Gun Platoon, 340 pts
   2 x StuG III G

Rocket Launcher Battery, 120 pts
   3 x NW41 + Transport  

Total Cost: 1000 pts

The list is pretty handy, certainly a lot better than mine. Six platoons, cost-effective artillery, lots of firepower.

Hopefully I'll remember to take lots of photos tomorrow, and will post here how we get on. It should be a great day.