Flames of War Tournament Report

This weekend Jed, Molgrimmar and I played in a Flames tourney which included members from Carleton's tabletop gaming club and RMC's wargames club. The format was Late War 1900 points, with six rounds (which became five by sunday). Awards included Best Painted, Rule of Cool and Best Sportsman.

It all went really well - everybody seemed to have tons of fun and nobody's army got dropped on the floor. Molgrimmar's army won best painted, obviously, while I came within a single victory point of winning the whole competition.

I brought a Soviet Heavy Assault Gun Battalion from Red Bear. Two groups of three ISUs, one squad with Bunker Busters and the other with anti-tank cannons. A large artillery battalion provided the core of my support, while a squad of engineer-sappers and a few recon riflemen provided me a some nice infantry backup. The most intimidating element in my list, apart from the six assault guns and the IS-2 commander, was the ten OT-34 flame tanks. These bastards died in every game except the very last one, but killed so many motherfuckers that I think I will keep taking them from now on. They provide so many bodies that my opponents' anti-tank guns can't deal with both the heavy tanks and all those flamers. Light 45mm AT guns and a couple katyusha light rocket mortars rounded out my list.

The List:

140 HQ - 1iC IS-2 w/ .50cal AA mg.

355 3 ISU-152 w/ .50cal AA mg and Tank escorts.
360 3 ISU-122 w/ .50cal AA mg

225 8 Sapper-Engineers w/ supply truck
245 4 122 obr 1938 Howitzers, 4 ZiS-3 field guns w/ observer and two anti-tank rifle teams

300 10 OT-34 flame tanks
120 5 Recon Rifle/Mgs
95   4 45mm obr 1942 anti-tank guns w/ anti-tank rifle team
60   2 13-16 Katyushas.

1900 points, 8 platoons

The rest of the players had a nice spread of lists, although most were playing infantry. There were at least two German infantry lists, one mechanized, and one armoured (the armoured being Kingtigers, which I thankfully avoided playing). There were no other Soviets, and only one or two american lists. Surprisingly, several British companies and one Italian company rounded out the tournament.

Game One: Dust Up
Those Brits have some nasty rules up their sleeve, including Churchill flame tanks, which have a nearly impenetrable front armour. I only managed to kill one out of the two my enemy was playing, and that only after several rounds of huge fucking AT guns volley firing at point blank range. On the other hand, the firefly and sherman escort were all destroyed when my T-34 reserves showed up behind them and their cover.
The second squad of ISUs with bunker busters and tank escorts arrived the next turn and began to advance against the British 57mm guns on the objectives. His list was actually an infantry company, but was only rated trained, which meant that my huge guns, with only one shot each, actually had a decent chance of hitting each time they fired. In general, nothing that they hit survives, so after a few turns his defense crumbed to nothing and I took his rear objective. I got a small scare when his commandos arrived in my flank, but they were quickly bombarded and pinned for most of their fight. They did manage to charge a church I had occupied, destroying my light gun platoon entirely, but lost one or two bases doing it, and after that ran out of steam. He also forced my flame tanks to rout, and as I only squeezed in eight platoons (companies in Soviet terms) into my list, he got maximum points despite the loss.
Score 4-3 victory for the Soviets.

Deployment for the first game. This was a fair fight, meaning we both had reserves coming in on the long table edge. Note the church in the middle and the river bisecting the table.

My opponents reserves for the first game. Those Churchill
flame-tanks are nasty business.

Game Two: Surrounded
My opponent was the German armoured Panzergrenadiers, meaning that he was still defending against my tank list. This hurt him badly, as his main anti-tank support was his two tiger tanks - I was also surprised to learn that he had no PaK40 AT guns. He had some nebelwerfers for artillery, a bunch of dismounted infantry, StuGs, some von saucken guy and a couple of flamen-halftracks. Also, fucking sweet Pumas for recon. I deployed one squad of ISUs on either short table edge, with the artillery and light AT guns joining one group and the commander, flame tanks and infantry with the other.
Being surrounded sucks balls, lemme tell you. His force got a few good flame tank kills in the first turn, after I had charged them up, but he then decided to flee out of his prepared positions when he realised that I was close enough to set them on fire in my next turn. This allowed me to machine gun one infantry squad at the same time that my ISU-152s on the other side of the table advanced against the other objective. My light guns failed against his nebelwerfers, who only smoked all game anyways so that was just null.
The really exciting part was the heavy tank show-down. His tigers had one chance to cripple my ISU-122 but failed pretty badly. In response, I moved the three assault guns into his rear, and got one kill - my IS-2 commander took a point blank shot and annihilated the other one. With that, he practically lost his capacity to resist my onslaught. His infantry made a good show on one objective, killing one ISU-152 with a panzerfaust, but in the end I just bombed him from 5" away so that he couldn't repeat that heroism. He also managed to rout my flame tanks with his StuGs, but didnt manage to kill the last of either my recon or my sappers.
Score: 5-2 victory for the Soviets.

Game Three: Hasty Attack
I played this game against Molgrimmar's Sperrverband. His list was a solid German infantry company, the gimmick being the tank-assaulting pioneers with some badass panzerfauster character. His armour support was Panzer IVs and StuHaubitzen, and he had powerful 15cm artillery. His deployment was a little wacky, as I got to remove one of the three objectives in his deployment zone after he deployed all his infantry on it. The other objective was only defended by his arty and his ambushing PaK40s, which spectacularly failed to kill a single tank all game. My assault guns simply advanced slowly, leapfrogging and blasting his stationary guns. He made a heroic attempt to take my objective with an infantry charge across an open field, but was mowed down by the T-34 machine guns as they arrived from reserves. The Panzer-IVs similarly failed to do any damage at all, until he flanked me and killed a single ISU. All the panzers died as retribution for this offense. By the end of turn 4 or 5, he had lost all his AT guns, most of his artillery, and most of his armour. His StuHs arrived from reserves and killed my engineers, whom I had foolishly rushed forwards to assault his remaining artillery. All of them died, but he conceded immediately afterwards.
Score: 5-2 for the Soviets.

Game Four: Encounter
This was against the Italian company. It was a confident trained bicyclist army, which means that most of the infantry are recon. It did him no good at all. This fellow was also very... methodical... which made our deployment last as long as the entire game being played on the table beside us.
His list included a full four PaK40s, stolen from the Germans, as well as three PaK43s, which make extremely short work of my heavy assault guns. He also had two batteries of medium 10cm guns, and a bunch of weak speedy shit like motorcycles and armoured cars. He was the only player at the tournament to bring no armour whatsoever, and he suffered from the immobility.
The game began with him taking the first turn, despite deploying six platoons to my four. His PaK43s took one volley at my ISUs and managed to kill one and bail another one. I thought I was really lucky, until his artillery bailed the same guy again who failed his motivation check. Losing two heavy tanks before I get to move is very disconcerting, although in return I killed two of his PaK43s. The other, being immobile, was left on its own for most of the game. I at-the-doubled the last of the ISU-152s behind a hill, and began my slow advance on his left-hand objective.
He had deployed his infantry in lines, all across the table, which meant that he could not get half of either platoon within range to assault me. This resulted in five or six turns of me sitting on his objective, killing the one or two bases I could see through the forest at a time. He finally mustered all his army for one big attack and failed his 4+ motivation check for tank terror.
This game was frustrating for me because the guy played really slowly, but was as much of a power-gamer as I could ever find. He had crushed his first three opponents 6-1 but I couldn't tell how, given his list's immobility, until I actually played against him and realized that he just cheated quite a bit. He made up rules, and quoted untrue shit with absolute confidence, but mysteriously forgot every single rule that went against him. Every one of his infantry and command models was the same, with no distinguishing features, and when he moved models, he would move them back and forth three or four times, so that he could finagle just the right angle or range - which, during my own turn, I had pre-measured and made sure could not happen.
The game was just a grinding battle of attrition, and at one point, seeing that he had lost, he asked to call a draw. I flat out refused, telling him that he had spent an hour and a half deploying and had no grounds at all to complain about running out of time, given that he played so slowly. Everybody else went out for lunch, and I literally finished the game as they walked back into the building.

Score: 4-3 victory for the Soviets.

Game Five: No Retreat
 This was a great game against a great opponent. He was playing British armour, with ten or eleven cromwells, a couple centaurs, universal carriers, M10 tank destroyers, and some sort of turretless Stuarts. He also had some great air support, which by itself killed two ISUs. His list was very powerful, given that everything moved so fast (those cromwells have medium tank stats but move as light tanks) but the scenario and to some extent the dice when against him.
I won the first roll of the game, as he rolled higher than me and got to attack into my gunline. My sappers, artillery battalion, and heavy ISUs all deployed across the narrow, four-foot front. His first turn, he shot nothing but smoke. All my ZiS guns that could see him were covered in puffy white cotton, and he advanced fairly carefully. My artillery got a decent bombardment and killed one M10, but in his second turn he got a lucky shot and killed my observer. Given that he was smoke bombarding my artillery every turn, the big howitzers spent the rest of the game twiddling their thumbs.
I ambushed the ISU-152s first turn and killed two cromwells, and in return he killed one with the M10s. But by this point he was right on top of me.
Now this next part I have never seen work successfully until this game. He smoked my Zis-3 point blank, and then charged it with two cromwells. One bogged down, but he had pinned my artillery battalion with his air support so my one shot missed. He then ran over my gun and forced the commander to get the fuck outta there.
The rest of the game was a fight in that middle wood, as he poured in the rest of his cromwells and his mounted infantry, and I countered with my T-34s and heavy tanks. He ended up killing all but a single ISU-122, with my commander fleeing the field with the last of the 152s. However, by the time his force was totally spent he had only forced one of my platoons to flee, so that I got a convincing victory.
Score: 5-2 victory for the Soviets

Overall the tournament went really well for me. I was actually the only person to win every single game I played, although I lost by a single victory point to the Italians. Nobody had much of an idea of what to do against the heavy assault guns, and when I had to defend, my proliferation of artillery and anti-tank firepower left me immune to the normal tactics of my opponents. The large number of high-armour targets meant that my opponents always seemed to be on the back foot, trying to salvage a minor defeat instead of going for a victory. In most of the games I played, nearly all of the ISUs died, although my commander never even came close to getting blown up, only retreating in the very last game.
I got no 6-1 victories at all, meaning that I was probably not cautious enough, especially with those flame tanks. There are alot of them, sure, but my enemy only need to kill half and disable one more, and then they are testing to flee on a 4+. The fact that the enemy gets to reroll failed firepower tests also means that most AT guns, with a 3+ firepower, generally kill at least one every turn. They are numerous but vulnerable, and I paid for my overconfidence in them every game.
All the guys were great to play against, with maybe a single exception, and I was really very inspired by how sportsmanlike everybody was. Prizes were provided by the RMC Wargames club, and included some bocage terrain and a couple world war I tanks.

I didn't manage to paint everything before the tournament, with the most obvious omission being the howitzers. I did manage to paint at least the tank escorts on my ISUs, and my ZiS-3 field guns. I think the sandbags work well - they are just wood filler squeezed out of a tube.

  I hope Molgrimmar and Jed have some comments, or post about their own games.