Battle report FOW @ The Cavs 08/07/10

I gave one of my planned lists for Tempest in August a try vs Keith at the club tonight. Keith fielded a HQ T-34/85, a coy of 5xT-34/85s, coy of 5xT-34/76s, three 82mm mortars (who says no one take these things, we both had them!) and full sappers.

It was a 1000 pt 'No Retreat'. Since I was running H&S Tankovy and he was running FE2 Tankovy, I got to be attacker.

It was hilly terrain using the club's big hills. We (I) rated those as 'difficult' going, which proved to be quite consequential for the game.

Keith chose to defend on the side of the board that allowed him to park a line of tanks along a ridgeline near the front. I put my objective right up on that ridge, using the typical HTL/NR layout (defender puts his in teh middle and the back while the attack puts his on one or the other side, as close to his deployment area as possible, with an eye to not giving perfect terrain to the defender.

Obviously Keith obliged and stacked his tanks up on the ridge. He then put the Sappers in ambush, smart lad. That left T-34/76s and mortars in reserve.

Of course, the hills were a trap.... I deployed on the other side. The plan was simple: Decoy panthers and T-34/85s would infiltrate and engage the defending T-34s in a firefight while the T-34/76s with tankos would just double right up the other flank and attempt to beat enemy reserves, or at least tie them up. Mortars, well mortars would tag along for this mission. I pretty much forgot to fire them the one turn where they could have done something.

The first firefight destroyed a defending T-34 and bailed another.

Then Keith had his turn, rolling a 5 and getting reserves right away... ruh roh. Those T-34/76s and tankos were too juicy a target to ignore and he brought the tanks on to deal to them, while popping the ambush on my forces in the centre, just over 4" away. The volley from Keith's tanks decimated my tanks, scoring 9/10 hits. I then proceeded to take off all the tanks and tankos, because I got confused by all the proxying and thought they were T-34/85s. Nope, just '76s, so all but one of the tanks went back on the table, though only one tanko team lived.

Then Keith failed the tank terror to assault my tanks in the middle.

Now, it was my turn, in the 'shooting at Keith phase', I killed a T-34s and bailed a couple more, forcing a morale check on the coy holding the front obj, he passed, the only key motivation check he was to do that for the entire game. Then I shot up some of the tanks on the other flank. In the middle, it was mgs all round for the infantry there.

In his turn, Keith elected to keep up the shooting on me. However, in my next shooting phase, I caused the last casualty needed on the tanks guarding the front objective, and they broke. Now Keith was in a bad position, those hills were traps and his other tank unit had wasted time exchanging fire with my '76s, all that was left was to try and walk the Sappers over, to contest the objective while he tried to pull something out of the hat. It took me two more turns, but I shot them all dead, giving me 6-1 and Keith the win, since he was the only Soviet player at the table who wasn't leaning on Panthers.

Neither of us were taking that game too seriously but it was a good test of our lists. I think mine was fine, it is nothing too spectacular, but has something for different situations.

The local lists I fear are Jason's IS-85s, 7 IS-85s with either a 'God of War' battery or Sappers in support or Dave E's Sperrbervand, which he did well at NATCON 2010 with. Reluctant Veteran lists are a beast at this points level. I get to try my luck vs him next week.

But this is meant to be a WOTR blog, so: Martin has a huge map laminated from the WOTR boardgame and intends to run a WOTR-Firestorm (inspired by the FOW firestorm sets) in a few weeks time. It will be a campaign with good and evil sides and the added dynamic of the Ring itself. The good side has the option to pull heroes out of the Fellowship and use them, but that slows the Ring's progress to their goal. The Evil side can pull Nazgul from the hunt and use them, in battles, but that reduces their chance to find the Ring themselves. Should be very interesting. He also sold me another Ringwraith as well, the army grows larger.