Dabbling in Flames of War

Once again I'm behind on my posting but I have been gaming plenty.  This time it was my friend George who was nice enough to run a game of Flames of War for me.  All I had to do was play!  And life is good again..  Flames of War is one of the games I sort of missed out on.  Every time I saw it played there were wheel to wheel Tiger tanks and that sort of turned me off.  Playing this game with George turned out to be a lot of fun with reasonable forces on the table.  All in all the system is not perfect, but not bad at all.  Fairly smooth to run and easy to play.

Some of my Shermies making contact with the enemy.

I opted to go with an overload one flank strategy and here are my Stuarts and armored infantry making a break across the river.  Unfortunately I found some hidden AT guns which made mush of my Stuarts.

So things came to a screeching halt with my infantry bailing out and looking for cover.

Meanwhile, my Shermans were supporting this assault but there were lots of sneaky Krauts holding them up.  Note the Stugs hiding in the distance.

The overall situation.  Looks kinda bad.  And my artillery was not doing squat as usual.

George's Stugs just waiting for the right moment to counter attack.

I was really getting bogged down and the situation was getting worse by the die roll.

Then George started bringing his lads over from the non-engaged side.  Time for something drastic!

I finally opted for the all out assault with my Shermans driving straight into the buildings.  Those German infantry were really pissing me off and I figured if I couldn't hit them, maybe I could simply run the over.  Plus, if successful, this would give me the added bonus of getting his Stugs in a cross fire at close range.

Well what can I say!  I finally had a little luck.

IABSM Weekend Bliss

Well, I think this is a record for me on delinquent posting.  My work is killing me and I have not wanted to sit down and blog lately.  But I'm still gaming plenty!  A choice between slacking on gaming or blogging is no choice at all.
We had a great gaming day this weekend as Brian W. was gracious enough to come down and run a IABSM (I Ain't Been Shot Mum by Too Fat Lardies) scenario for us.  I walked out of the house with absolutely nothing to carry, and all I had to do was show up and enjoy someone else running a game for a change.  Life is good!  Here are some snaps from the action.  WW2, Eastern front, 1941.
I am a big fan of TFL but have not had much opprtunity to play the WW2 game.  I had a lot of fun.

The German players brought a motorized column up in too tight an area and I was thinking "oh baby".  But then my lousy dice rolling kicked in and I missed my chance.

But then my lousy dice rolling kicked in and I missed my chance.  Here is one of my 45mm AT guns missing the easy target as usual.

So then the Germans decided it was time to dismount and they headed for cover!

I kept dreaming about an artillery strike but it was not in the cards.  The deck hates me!

And so the opportunity quickly fades.

The German armor shows up.

My partners T26's begin the armor duel with the Panzers, and we get off to a rough start.

But his hidden AT gun goes into action and starts to give the Panzers some payback!

Meanwhile, in the woods the infantry battle is heating up.

Due to an incredible stroke of luck on my mortar fire deviation, we begin to hammer the German infantry in the woods relentlessly.  This was one of those incredible events in IABSM which is hard to duplicate.

Three turns in a row, I roll a dead hit on my artillery deviation, which put three squads in the artillery fire effect each time!  It is best to spread out a little in this game!

Just as we thought things were going ok, the inevitable happened.  A JU-87 showed up and began terrorizing Mark's armor platoon, as well as everone else in the area.

Then the pesky Germans decided to try a blitz flank attack with their mechanized units.

At the same time they made a heavy push in the center.

One of our Russian platoons was completely wiped out but the heroic big man survived to fall back and fight another time.  You can spot him to the left, giving the Germans the bird!

But then things simply got worse.   A German assault engineer with a flame thrower pushes another Russian platoon back from the building, and killing our beloved hero in the process.

The situation on the Russian left is critical.

My Russians on the right are still hanging tough, but too many Germans have been freed up to reinforce the assault.  It is just a matter of time.

My last bid for glory!  My Commisar goes berserk and charges an MG-34 single handedly, and wins!  And then unbelievably he duplicates this same feat again in a moment later!

But during this time the Germans have put even more pressure on the left and the Panzers are moving in to mop up.

The Russian left is finished, and so is the game in the next couple of turns.