As I alluded to in my last post I have a huge medical crisis at the end of February and nearly cashed in my chips. Happily things look good but recovery has been painfully slow. And slowly painful. :-) Today I finally got together with some of the gang for an exploratory game of 4th edition Flames of War. I've been anxious to give them a try so we went to the ever hospitable Adventure Games and set up a 1500 point late-war game.
We kept it small because some were on a short timeline and my endurance still has a long ways to go. So three Germans and three Soviets split up the 1500 points. Our side had a force from a PDF with five Tiger I, two Hetzers and a funky little infantry kampfgruppe with a Pak40, two HMGs, four PzGr. MG stands, a tank-hunter and the command stand. The Soviets had five JS-II, four gun batteries of 152, 76 and 57mm guns, plus two infantry units.
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| Starting positions, Germans defending. |
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| Turn two and we're already down 40% of our Tigers. |
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| Those Soviet 57mm ATGs are wicked. |
The last picture requires some explanation. For maybe three turns these three tanks dueled. The Soviets couldn't hit and the Tiger couldn't make a firepower roll. So when we quit after about six turns they were still facing each other.
It was a tough day to be an infantryman as both sides suffered. The 57s were run off but three Tigers had died. The Hetzers weren't going to do much against the JS-IIs to I figure we were losing. But people needed to leave and my endurance ran out so we called it a friendly draw. Nice to roll dice and nice to be among my buds once more.
First impressions of 4th edition: the learning curve is going to be a lot more than I expected. Artillery had better survival chances. Infantry that get hit with a bombardment have the choice of moving or dying. Casual players are going to have a tougher time keeping track of all the little changes to their vehicle stats and capabilities. Most of the changes are subtle, but there are a LOT of them. Looking forward to the next test game.
Glad to hear that you are feeling better,Tony
ReplyDeleteHappiness to learn you are throwing dice and out and about gaming Michael. Best wishes, Bill P.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the write up and most importantly welcome back!
ReplyDeleteYou're completely right that for early war / late war the updates to the source books are many and small such that it raises the changes of an error here or there often just a pip or so.
It finally got me over the edge and I've started to spring for the lists on forces.flamesofwar.com which I had totally sworn was a money pit to which I was going to avoid at all costs. Sigh.