Flames of War Tournament

I went to my first FloW tournament yesterday at "The Gaming Den" in London. There were eight players, three rounds with 1,750pt late war lists and no special characters seemed to be the courtesy. I wanted to bring a fully-painted list (no panthers) and I never seem to pass confident morale checks so I went with a Sperrverband from Grey Wolf. This is a Reluctant Veteran list as a Sperrverband was a blocking force formed of the hardest veterans consigned to hold back the Russians while the rest of the line fell back. These guys get cheap stuff while being veterans, have one platoon of Tank Assault 5 ersatz-pioneers, and count as fearless when assaulting tanks.

My first game was against a scary, confident-veteran American mechanized infantry list I'd played before in Waterloo. The mission was hasty attack so half platoons in reserve and I was defending.  I managed to hold one bridge quite nicely with pioneers in building but the left flank was his main attack.Two PaK40s held that side's bridge, but I put an observer in there and made that point a very smoke-able target. I held off a crazy assault with only one team and my 1st in Command remaining (who proved to be a bad-ass in assualt) and managed to pass my reluctant check there. He scooted past these and my first in command called in a heavy bombardment on his massed half tracks, ranging in on the first try, but he rolled 5 armour saves and lost none. With no reserves by third turn for me, that game was a hard loss.

Next I was up against a confident-trained Canadian tank company playing the dust-up mission (the fair-fight table quarters). His first 3 shots with stuarts managed to take out both my Pak40 AT guns in one go, which was freakish, but I mopped them up quickly with 5 panzer IVs. His shermans dicked about and slowly got popped at long range due to the veterancy of the glass-armoured panzers. Both of our corner-suprise reserves whiffed incredibly: my 3 StuGs missed all their 3+ shots on sherman asses and then bogged/burnt/fled. His M10 tank destroyers got one panzer IV and the remaining four sat and wasted them handily. It was a long and grinding game but my second infantry assault succeeded with two platoons to push him back and I got a narrow victory.

Third game was intense, fast, and fun. Up against 20 T-34/85s and 5 SU-100s (which are god-damn horrifying at AT16 and front armour 9). My pioneers began hopping up a string of central buildings while my PaK40s hid in some hedges. With the help of heavy artillery these guns brought down their 10 T-34/85s and left the road mostly clear for my StuGs to flank up an objective. I was feeling good, his other tank platoon bearing down on the objective needed to pass the pioneers in buildings. Smoked the tanks, noted the Sperr-pioneers' fearlessness in assaulting tanks, and rolled a 2. And repeated next turn down to the same roll, also a 2. As I cursed the uselessness of these supposed 'fearless tank-hunters', he quickly scooted onto the objective a turn before the StuGs could reach theirs and won a fun and narrow game.

That's quite the wall of text...haven't painted much over midterms but some sexy vermacht-vomit-vehiculars are ready for camouflage and detail painting:

Brummbar and some 8-rads. That back bastard needs a highlight.

The turret-men were spare tank commanders given  greenstuff torsos.