AAR – Dreamers Vault – Twin Cities December EW tournament

I played in the Dreams Vault Flames of War December tournament this past Saturday. As has been the case the size of these tournaments continue to grow as the Flames of War community in the Twin Cities rebuilds itself. We do have a facebook group

Thankfully between the Battlefront support and Dreamers Vault giving us a new home to play and be able to buy actual stuff, it makes for a great venue and most importantly, there is still room in the store for the event to grow. Keith Gilmour was the TO and had organized for 7 tables to be set.

For the event I swizzled my French list I had taken to the EW Nationals at AdeptiCon this year. I had lots of list regret mostly centered on the fact I didn’t have tons of time to paint the new French that are in my paint queue but bumped due to my Team Yankee painting, but I did at least do the minimum so I had proper 76s this time around.

Panhards and Laffys for my core tank killers, with 20mm AA, 150s, 76s, 3 platoons of infantry, a platoon of mortars, and a platoon of HMGs with 25mm ATGs and 3 carriers for that extra desperation shot for emergency situations. Confident trained, but I figured respectable.

Compared to my AdeptiCon list, I had Somuas (no Panards), and less infantry. With 10 platoons this time around it helps in those situations where you’re starting with only half of your forces.

Still in the list regret category, while the Laffy is good with it’s 9 AT against armor, it’s not the punch of a German 88. Likewise more armor for more battlefield maneuverability helps a lot, yet with most French tanks being single man turrets that extra +1 is hard to swallow. The Char is a great choice, but mighty expensive. Such are the trials and tribulations with picking a list.

Game 1

In the first round I played Keith Gilmour. Our two forces have squared off against each other now 3 times. Here, AdeptiCon and prior so yet another rematch. With Pincer as the mission I was the defender against his German armor horde. With one Objective in the town and the other on my far left flank next to the woods I figured this was going to be a race between needed reinforcements and Keiths ability to strike hard.

I put my Laffies in ambush and away we went. Keith brought his 8rads down the middle, and Pz IIIs with two platoons to the left and one to the right.

I sprung my Laffies who were able to take out one platoon in short order. That shut down anything on the right side but now I had to really worry about my left flank.

Keith came in hard and fast going for the assault. While I was able to brew up a tank here and there, it just wasn’t enough. In addition given the AT 2 of French infantry, not so great in assault against tanks.

So down at the end I was able to get infantry and my Panhards on table coming from the left. Keith was contesting so I had to act very very fast. It pretty much came down to a die roll as I assaulted into tank platoon that was on the objective. Literally all I had to do was kill one tank … one tank, but I failed my counter, my men deciding they’d had enough assaulting German armor and that was the game, a 3-4 loss.

Game 2

Next I played Jason’s Brits, a fortress company, the Tobruk strongpoint with the Cauldron mission.

Of any mission being matched up against that force, what a double hammer to have to face. Straight away I gambled and kept my anti tank assets off going for infantry, HMGs, my two artillery platoons and last the mortars.

Jason having a gazillion miles of trench and wire had to play in a little box but thankfully he left two doors open. First with the machine gun nests, they covered his right flank well behind the wire, but left a blind approach for my platoon especially mixed with smoke, which was why my mortars were on.

Luck was with me and with my reinforcements early I started to bring on infantry to press Jason’s left flank. A feign I know but it lured him to spread his platoon in the front out and draw it closer to my mortars which could direct fire into the trench. Jason started to take some casualties but likewise he was able to knock out a few of my HMGs that were trying to keep him pinned. Alas hard to do against fearless…

Meanwhile Jason was able to get his Matildas on which of course rolled up on took out my 76 guns.

My Laffies came on as did my Panhards. With shots to the rear the Matildas thankfully were dispatched quickly.

Coming down to the end and nearly out of time, I went in for the assault and once more close to victory, but Jason had 7 dice in defense as I came in, and he rolled the 5 hits he needed to push back my assault. Had I got in, there was only one team I needed to take out and I would have been on the objective and with a reasonable chance to actually hold it uncontested as well as opening the door for my attack from Jason’s left flank.

A 2-5 loss, against a really well put together force by Jason. It was a heck of a very hard game and a very hard nut to try and crack.

Game 3

Last I faced Chris Grau’s Russian force, a collection of Matildas, Valentines, BA64s (IIRC) and T26s with some Russian engineers. A city fight that was fairly out in the open but against way more armor then I wanted to see. The mission was Encounter.

I took advantage of the terrain to put infantry in rubble to cover the objectives on my side. My problem was I didn’t have an easy way to quickly get to the opposite side and even then, I needed to focus and take out the armored platoons one by one.

So first the Laffies made quick work of the BA armored cards.

On the opposite side of the table I ran my infantry over to try and secure the objective facing the Russian engineers coming on table.

On my left flank with the Matildas marching in, I decided to feign hoping I could dash and get behind them with enough Lafffies to actually take one or two out.

Unfortunately that little Russian biplane came down, hit every truck and killed every one of them…

While a loss, I figured I could get the Pans out and hold the objective anyway from the rubble. No HE Matildas aren’t that scary…

So with that the left flank went stagnant and I didn’t get a picture of Chris’ T26 horde spoiling my fun to seize the objective. I was able to between artillery and infantry fire and Chris failing to dig in, make fairly fast work of his infantry, but those T-26s were not something I could start to deal with until either more infantry moved in and/or the Pannards got over there.

So we called it as time was down to a couple of minutes there wasn’t point going another turn as neither of us had any arrows left to root each other out, a 3-3 tie.

All in a all a fun tournament with close losses and frankly my force did better than I thought it should have especially going up against 3 different lists, all of which I wasn’t  equipped to deal with.

Here’s the overall results from Keith.

Player Nationality Army Battle
Chris Novak German Pioneers 17
Jim Bodine British Jock Column 16
Brian McLaughlin German Leichte Panzer 15
Rick Davis German Czech Panzer 13
Patrick Barkuloo British Jock Column 11
Keith Gilmour German Leichte Panzer 11
Charles Hiner Russian Inomarochnikiy Tankovy 10
Chris Grau Russian Inomarochnikiy Tankovy 8
Jason Hobbs British Tobruk Strongpoint 8
Bernt Suggerud French Fusilers 8
Tom Gall French Fusilers 8
Bill Wojahn German Czech Panzer 7
David Ekstam French Compagnie de Combat 7
Walter Hard Polish Peichoty Company 3

Next event is January 28th and will be a Team Yankee escalation ‘tournament’. Very much looking forward to what will be a fun time.