Te Horo Hootenaney - mini FoW doubles tournie

Took part today in my first FoW tournie! A doubles affair, that was a friendly set up, with a view to welcoming Paul into his new home, and to helping some newbies get to grips with the rules (me included), which then also turned into a V3 transition for all involved though some of the players, had been playtesters here in NZ for the new V3 rules.

The theme was eastern front, so Germans vs Russians for the most part though there was one Yank team in; lend lease and all that ;-).

Paul had pre set up the matchups to avoid any blue on blue encounters, and pre picked the three scenarios. These had been chosen such that the missions would allow all armies to deploy all their troops from start of the game so no messing about waiting for reserves for anyone.

Thus, with 12 players we had six doubles teams, that played a round robin over 3 different 6 x 4 tables.

Game one for all was Fair Faight, then game two was Fighting Withdrawal, and finally game three was Surrounded.

Points were scored for each team and totaled up at end to see which team won.

Heres some pics from the day;

Big thanks to Andrew Shepherd, my doubles partner for helping me (putting up with me!) through the games. Also thanks to all our very sporting opponents and those I met though didnt get to play against; Bob, Mike, Jason, Che, Damien, Brett, Daniel, Andrew, Mark, and of course Paul for hosting, and his good lady Tina for putting up with us all, and providing drinks and a pizza and snacks throughout the afternoon.

Bob, very kindly donated some FoW goodies for the winners too.

A great day, and good to meet a load of FoW players, though as usual after these events, I felt my head was in a bit of spin! Still lots learned I think.

Oh, me and Andrew or "Shep" as he's known, came joint last, but for the saving grace of a last minute dice off ;-)

Each player had to make a legal 900 point list, so an HQ and minimum platoons for the chosen force. I think approx 50pts could be swapped between players as required. So total forces were 1800pts per side.

I ran a Con Vet German force from Grey Wolf; Gepanzerte Panzergrenadiers; HQ with 2iC vehicle swapped out as a 251/10 with 3.7cm gun, and an Anti-tank team, plus two full combat platoons. All command teams were Panzerfaust. I also squeezed in a small platoon of 3 Panzer IV H's.
'Shep' ran a Panzerspah force; so a Panzer II L Luch as HQ, plus three platoons of 3 Luchs, a platoon of 3 Marder III M's, and a platoon of 3 Panzer IV H's.

So we had a small quantity infantry, lots of lightly armoured vehicles and small tanks and medium tanks. But no Artillery - and I think thats what hurt us. We could cope quite well with mowing down enemy infantry quite well, until it dug in. Though by then Shep was usually close assulting the infantry with his Luchs at every opportunity.

I think this tactic perplexed me a bit as I couldnt help but keep thinking of them as Recce, which by definition should have been performing that role. I never expected him to assualt with them. But he's a far more experienced player than I, so must have known what he was doing. And to be fair with these attacks we got very close in all our games to capturing and objective fairly early on, only to be beaten off as game progressed.

Our medium panzers duked it out with the enemy T34's and held their own for the most part. In second game we struggled a little against enemy aircraft. And in third game we had a hell of time trying to assault a whole pile of dug infantry, artilley and AT guns, plus more T34s...

A true baptism of fire for a days playing.

I think the main thing I learned was my forces are a bit one or two dimensional at best... I really need to get some artillery assets painted up, as this will help with pinning. The V3 rules which I feel everyone was in favour of, proved that defensive formations are a tough nut to crack, especially with infantry!

As an extra note, you'll notice a couple of youngsters in the background; my son Chris and Bretts son Rhys got to have a fun day of it together too, enjoying the boardgame Memoir'44 among other things.

As a final note, there was a joint win for Brett and Mike, with Paul and Bob, and again this was diced off for the hell of it at the end, with Brett and Mike emerging the final victors.


Update 20/2/12
Full results, thanks to a heads up from Paul:

1st – Mike and Brett – Americans  12pts (Overall winner by dice off, typical Yankie showoffs!)

2nd – Bob and Paul – Soviets 12pts (Best Allied Generals, a moral victory)

3rd – Mark and Andrew – Allied LW Romanians with a tiny bit of help in the form of 8x T34/76 - 11pts (making it a clean sweep for the Allies)

4th – Damien and Daniel – Germans 10pts (Best Axis Generals, mounted a stirring late charge for the title)

5th – Scott and Shep 6pts – Germans (avoided the wooden spoon by dice off)

6th – Jason and Che 6pts – Germans (bringing up the rear due to a dice off, but played hard and in great spirit)