Flames of War - Early War in the Far East

Earlier tonight I had my first forray into FoW Early War. I learned a number of things. 1) As I've always known, and despite what everybody has always told me, horsemen are badass. 2) As I've always known, and as everybody has always told me, conscripts do suck. 3) KV-1 tanks are dumb. Not because they are unkillable, but because the in the one possible circumstance in which they might possibly die, they will roll a 1.

I didn't take pictures of the game for the entirely valid reason that I forgot to. I put some pictures of cool shit that is tangentially related, so that you perverts don't get bored.

The whole war in a nutshell. The Japanese knew what was really going on.

 So I played against Jordan, one of the guys in my school's gaming club. He's been playing Flames for about a year now, but very regularly, so he knows his stuff. He'd played some games using a mostly proxied Russian heavy armour list out of Barbarossa against his main opponent in the club who was using a French Foreign Legion out of Blitzkrieg.

            Its safe to say that Jordan is becoming increasingly less impressed with his dipshits, who don't actually know how to aim a turret, nor, it seems, how to load AT shells when firing at tanks (or, for that matter, how to load HE shells against softies). It was pretty impressive. He failed almost every single firepower test he was called upon to make, resulting in what I deemed to be a heroic effort by my entirely proxied Japanese.

My list was built out of the Cavalry company in Rising Sun, which features fearless veteran horsemen wielding heavy machine guns. Kind of cool, even if they can't actually shoot the damn things while mounted. That's ok, the commander is such a badass that his sword was probably passed down his family for generations, and he's so good with it that he can slay four motherfuckers even while rolling a 2!

I had two squads of four of these guys, plus the aforementioned badasses, with a squad of 9 infantry, three medium (read: fucking small) tanks and two tankettes (read: tractors with machine guns), backed up by two of each heavy machine guns, rapid-fire AT guns, and field guns.

Type 94 TK tankettes. Their main weapon was a machine gun.

Although I thought those field guns packed a decent AT punch, going up against heavy tanks should have taught me better. Fortunately, Jordan rolled a one both for his company commander in a Valentine (the only roll which could possible kill him) and for his KV-1 when he tried to charge. So, it turns out that a sword is pretty good at killing tanks, because when his idiot crew got bailed the artillery commander managed to capture the whole tank. What a hero.

His list was pretty hilarious actually. 8 BT-7 fast tanks, which have shit for armour but a pretty impressive gun, 3 Valentines plus one for his commander (who got sniped just within close range of my field gun), a single KV-1, four Katyushas, and like 20 conscript riflemen with a few maksim machine guns.

The Valentine. A badass in early war, but mediocre by 1941.

The terrain was pretty evenly set up, with a few buildings in the centre and forests and wheat-fields around the outside. The table was a bit weird, being 5x slightlyunder5, rather than the normal 6x4. We rolled up the Hasty attack mission, which elicited a groan from Jordan, as he knew he would have to put 3 of his 5 platoons in reserve even as the attacker. He placed his rocket-launching-trucks, peasant-mob, and valentines heavy tank in reserve.

My objective went on one side with my field guns, while his two went on either edge of the table. He removed the one next to my objective (which was my master plan), and my infantry covered the far objective while all my cavalry, the HMGs and the tankettes waited for the opportune moment to strike.

His first turn consisted of moving his solitary KV-1 at the double towards my objective on my right flank, which was covered by my heavy guns with no infantry support. I laughed outright when I learned that it was Unreliable, and had he rolled a 1 would have been out of commission until he could roll a 5+ on one of his next turns. He passed, thankfully, but my witch-sense began a-tingling and I knew those 1s were just around the corner.

His BT-7s dashed at the infantry on my left flank, where my light AT guns had immediate-ambushed as per the Hasty Attack scenario. His goddamn MG fire got through my well prepared fortifications and slew one of my two guns. Not a great start for me, and I was ready hoping already by this point to finish this one quickly and maybe have time for a second game.

My counter-attack left only a single BT-7 dead and another two bailed. His KV-1 then began its long list of total failures, as his loaders apparently put their loaves of bread into the main gun instead of shells. Needless to say, his shit was fucked, and the high-powered gun failed to work for the rest of the game. The BT-7s forgot to attack and instead stood still and hammered at my Type 89 Mochi tanks which had broken cover, but despite scoring four hits, and despite having only to penetrate the equivalent of a papier-mache carapace, he got zero kills. Obviously, we can't blame this on Schindler shells, but I'm sure the Soviets had similar types of saboteurs. Being from the Steppes, though, they didn't know how to write so the stories never came back to us.

My heroic tanks began their slugging match with the obviously superior BT-7s, but being masters of the art of war managed to gain the upper hand fairly quickly. After two more turns of back and forth, my commander was still alive and his were forced to test platoon morale, which, being cowards and obviously not believing that Uncle Joe would save them, they promptly failed.

Look at their flags! So patriotic. They're waving to you, saying hello.

By this time the rest of his shit was mostly on the table but my reserves had not yet arrived. Being fed up with blasting my guns with flour and bits of the loader's arm, his KV-1 tried to charge my artillery. Being useless, the tank failed to kill anyone and fled when the arty commander waved his sword menacingly at them. But, because somebody somewhere was probably executed for that travesty, he tried again the next turn. My defensive fire hit him (on a 2 of course) and he promptly rolled a one for his side-armour save. His armour was too good to allow that to kill him, but his tankers had had enough by this point and scrambled out of the massive machine. The artillery commander, disgusted with such cowardice, murdered them with his fucking sword. Awesome.

At this point, his infantry had charged all the way across the whole table to support the KV-1. It was dead, but they were not, so he formed up in a line-of-battle and advanced towards the objective. My cavalry rode in to save the day. Both squads massed up in the corner woods, alongside the TK tankettes, for the final charge. And what a glorious charge it was. In the initial charge, not one horseman failed to kill his mark. The Soviets, being cowardly, as they are, tried to fall back, only to be readily encouraged by the enthusiasm of their local kommissar. Their bayonet attack killed every member of the first cavalry squad except the commander. The second squad counter-attacked and together, the six of them trampled another six bases.

 

After that, it was a few turns of mopping up. My lone 89 tank survived by charging through the central village and hunting those vulnerable katyushas, despite taking, by himself, a total of 5 more hits (and lets be clear: the Valentine's guns come within a whisker of not allowing me any save at all, but every single one of his shells failed to do any substantial damage. At one point I had to roll 3 motivation tests at the same time to stay in the fight and passed all of them. What a hero).

Despite the Japanese victory, the company was not unbloodied. Both light AT guns were destroyed, with their commander seppuku-ing in shame at only killing a total of one light tank. The commander who led the first and most glorious cavalry charge died in a storm of rifle-fire as the last few socialists took revenge for the piles of corpses he had created out of their comrades.

In the end, a 4-3 victory for the Japs.

Early war is really cool. Not only is the points total lower for the period, but everything is a little bit more expensive and a damn sight less lethal to boot. This was my first time playing veterans in Flames and I had to say I was really impressed. Also, fighting against conscripts really gives one a feeling of true superiority, as one can mow down dozens of the enemy while only taking token losses. This has really put me in the mood to flush away a few hundred dollars.

One for you sadists that managed to get through that whole post.