Flames of War Late War Armies

The boys wanted to play Tanks again today, so out it came.  They decided to gang up on me with US (3x Sherman 76mm) and Brits (2x Comets and 1 Sherman V) for a total of just short of 150pts.  I took the Germans and fielded 2 Panthers, 3 Panzer IVs and 2x StuG G’s (Yes I know in the photographs one isn’t a StuG G!).

If my eldest hadn’t rolled his comets up right in front of my Panthers and one StuG G it might have gone differently.

Actually I think this should be game 4, but I missed one out.  So my youngest is now the one begging to play Tanks so on Saturday I got the table out and we played @85 points a side with my eldest picking up the Germans and my youngest taking some US, whilst I took some Brits.  Yes, since I last played a unit of Comets have reached the painting table!

My eldest has been begging to play the full flames of war since our last game of tanks – I have the Hit the Beech starter.  We’ve put some more paint on the Shermans and now need to put on the decals and then do some weathering on them.

I decided to limit our game of Flames of War to just tanks, to minimise the rules I was introducing to my son.  The Germans are a little short of tanks (I need to purchase a few more) so I set down to work out how many points we could field and then matched the Americans to that.

Germans (Me)

• Panzer IV Company HQ (2x Panzer IVs)
• Panzer IV Platoon (3x Panzer IVs – only actually had two so had to sub something in).
• Panther Platoon (3x Panthers – only have 2 so used a Jadgpanther to round it out).

Americans (My son)

• Sherman Veteran Company HQ (2x Shermans)
• Sherman Veteran Platoon (5x Shermans)
• 76mm Sherman Veteran Platoon (5x Sherman 76mm)
• M10 Tank Destroyer Platoon (2x M10s)

We also don’t have enough space for a full 4’x6′ board so we played on a 4’x3′ board, which fits on the dinning table.  I have the TT Combat tiles for a 4’x4′ board but they don’t hold together well to sit 6″ off each side of the dinning table yet.

Looks like I forgot to take a photograph of the end of round 2.

The Panther tanks took out the M10s and the 76mm Shermans managed to knock out one of the Panzer IVs, leaving that Platoon down to one tank – thankfully he didn’t want to leave.

So my sons wanted to play a game of Tanks last week and I’m just getting round to posting the pictures up.  I tried to take one at the end of every turn.

He elected to play 100 points and picked his German forces of two Panthers and one Jadgpanther, with my youngest I took the Americans and took two 76mm Shermans and two 75 mm Shermans.

So this week I got on with painting the church from the WOW Buildings Kickstarter.  Again it is painted with the brown stone and dark blue tiles.  The Ivy growing up the sides of the tower actually conceal a slight error on my part with the join between the tower and the main body of the church.

Having had a zoom hobby session with 3 of my best pals I cracked on with painting the railway station that I had printed.  Having spent time looking at buildings in France (I admit I’ve travelled through the Pas de Calais a few times this year, and not Normandy) I realised that the stone used was browner than the greys we find in the UK and that roof tiles were generally darker.  So here we go the first building painted.

So my son wanted another battle of Tanks today, it’s been a while I know.  He wanted to play 100 points and selected a pair of 75mm Shermans and a pair of 76mm Shermans.  To oppose this I sent out a Panther, Jadgpanther and a Panzer VI.  It came down to one Panther vs one 76mm Sherman, unfortunately for my son his crew had bailed out of the final tanks and so I had a clear and free shot.

He played really well and I missed out on using Blitzkreig more often.

Whilst I’ve had the school’s 3D printer at home this last 2 weeks I’ve been busy printing, some of which you’ve seen already.  Today I’ve had to pack it up to go back to work, so I thought I’d put out everything I’ve printed with it, having used up over a kilo of filament (a couple of failed prints in the mix) I have this lot:

Now I need to get on with painting them up, a bit of preparation first though with the walls needing a good sand and in some cases a bit of filler.  I’m going to use my airbrush to prime with vallejo primer and I’m hoping that will fill some of the lines that I miss with the sanding.

So my son has asked for a rematch, in fact we played twice this afternoon once with him commanding the Panther and once with him commanding two Panzer IV’s.  I think I need to play on his side against someone to improve his tactics, but I can’t do anything about dice luck.  He still enjoyed himself, as did my youngest who moved my Shermans and rolled my dice.  More 3D buildings/ruins hit the table today and the road network is expanding, next to print the roof for the one building and then we had better start painting them.

I purchased a couple of Sarissa Precission buildings at the same time as Hit the Beech and we have built and painted them, but two buildings a Town do not make.  I backed a couple of Kickstarters from WOW Buildings and am currently working on printing the rest of the damaged town out.  So far I have completed the Town Square area and a couple of bit of road, buildings and more road ways to come.

So my son wanted to play Tanks, to be honest he has been asking for a little while.  This morning we played two games using the scenario from the rulebook.  He took the Americans and I took the German, a combination of him learning and my dice rolling meant that he lost both games.  Fortunately he wants another game, but he wants to play the Panther.

I could have posted a while ago about the progress with this, the Hit the Beach set is all assembled and joined by a unit of M10s and a unit of Priests.  Thanks to the deal offered on Tanks by warzan we also got some more shermans, another Panzer IV and a Panther and Jadgpanther.  I have also tried 3D printing a Panther.  Only need to assemble the last Panzer IV, but my son is now an expert at using the side clippers.

We moved on to painting last week.  Some of the shermans had been undercoated with Humbrol Dark Green spray paint, we gave them a wash of Army Painter Army Shader to provide some depth.  Today we painted the details on the tanks so they now they are ready for decals and then weathering.  The next batch of Shermans have been undercoated as has one of the Panzer IV’s.

So around the time of the bootcamp I went to Broadside Wargames show in Sittingbourne and picked up the Hit the Beach starter set.  I recently sat down and built the Shermans (3 x 76mm and 5 x 75mm) and my currently 8 year old (soon to be 9) wanted to help with the building.  Well I rush based the infantry last week so that I could play a game with them on Friday.  On Saturday my son pushed to want to play the game, we agreed (my wife not being keen on him getting too involved) on him starting with painting.  So we sat down outside to build the Germans.  Lesson number one was how to use the side clippers with the sprues to cut out the tank parts.  I did the glueing.  By the end of Saturday we had assembled everything in the box.  Next is on to the painting and getting him to be careful in how he uses his brush.