Historicon Top Pics

H-Con is done and I'm still hungover.

But, I put my carcass into drive and cut 1200 pics from the weekend down to the top 30 or so. We've got Steve's last News From the Front podcast, army pics galore and all sorts of other bits.

Come on in and enjoy the pics.

We start with the Tale of the Suicide Chaffee's:

Round 2 of the double tournament, Ben and I face off against KV-88's, IS-2's and a horde of tiny little Russian tanks. Knowing there was know way we could take out the big boys from the front and only sporting 3 Priests for arty support I decided to go insane. Noticing that one of our opponents had to double time the IS-2 platoon command to get up to the rest of the platoon I zoom a platoon of Chaffee's around the flank, assuming that I'd loose the platoon, but knowing his was way more valuable I decided the trade was worth it.  

I kill 1 and bail 2.

Next turn he kills 2 of those plucky little light tanks then I take out another of his IS-2's. 

I take out a 3rd and he does the same. He's down to 1 tank and I'm down to just one and a bailed. His fearless dudes fail their morale check and run off the board. VICTORY! 

More after the break

Last round!

Ok I lost 5-2 in free for all against Romanians.  I didn't really feel like sitting back and drawing the tie like you can easily do.  And me and my partner were both middle of the board so wet agreed on just having some fun. 

I just happened to be on the short end of the fun. :)

I had a great time at the tournament. And blogging for the 5 of you that read this.  I'll be posting a bit more tomorrow and then it's vacation time.

Bruce and the Battlefront crew run a great tourney and kudos to them for hosting an excellent shindig.

The plot thickens!

Round 4, I'm in the top 20, but it's me playing Ben,  my long time gaming partner and roommate!

Dun dun dun!

7-0 awwww yeah

Killed otto  karius, pics and debts to come.

Nationals round 1, win!

I picked up a 4-3 win in a pinwheel of death encounter mission. It came down to the very end when a final assault by some Indian pattern carrier recce teams failed an assault and were pushed back just a hair away from my objective.

Phew!

Played against Cassino Gurkas

5th place is the bomb!

We got 5th! Out of 38 teams! Here's a pic of the top 5.

Round 3, win!

OP  Sherman makes the winning kill against a jadgtiger on turn 6! That was epic. (check the last picture)

Well we did it. We went 3 and 0, last round was fighting withdrawal work is on the attack and captured the 2 outside objectives both on turn 6.

We won 4-3 as Ben  couldn't seem to keep his poor little Stuarts alive vs. a jadgtiger and 4 Pak 50's.

They were running a jadgtiger and 2 sturmtigers and a mix of fearless and reluctant infantry.

Attackers must be aggressive in this scenario so we charged right up and the game went our way.

Best part is we played two really great guys Jessie and the dude who makes all the terrain for the store we love up in Philly. Well and gentlemanly played good sirs.

I don't think 14.9 will put us at the top of the table but it was a fun tourney and I'll let you all know how we did.

Suicide chaffees

Who wants to live forever!

Round one, doubles WIN

Woot! We picked up our first game 5-2 with 9 domination points against walkurie PDF and volksgrens.

The mission was the I-95 home brew blind domination, you can find the rules for it in the downloads section of wwpd.net

For the record jadgpanthers are terrifying against light tanks. But we ended up killing all 3!

Here be pics!

First blood!

Ben's TD's pop out and score two kills on some Pz IV's

Showdown & Showcase Comics Battlefront Team Tourney AAR

Hello Philly!

This weekend Ben, Mitch, Jim and I headed on up to the fabulous Showcase Comics in Philadelphia for a hot helping of Flames of War, team style.

A few months back Battlefront posted up on the Flames website that they'd be hosting a team tournament. Mitch invited Ben and I to join him and Jim for an epic multi-day throw down. And boy howdy did we have a blast!

Here's the set up: 6 teams competed over 5 rounds of 1750 late war games, 1 fair fight, 2 mobile battles and 2 defensive battles. The team with the best score wins eternal glory, and a neat plaque. Each team could only be made up of 1 army per nationality (commonwealth Brits were different than "mainline" and all the small countries were available as well) and you could only double up on one list type (mech, tank, inf etc...).

After some tough negotiations our team decided to run the following:

Me: Panzergrenadier Lehr (Earth & Steel)
       HQ with 2x Panzerschrek
       2x Full Panzergrenadier Lehr Platoons
       Panzerpio Lehr with 5 tracks and 2 stuka zu fuss tracks
       Full Lehr Heavy Mortar Platoon
       3x PaK 40's
       6x Puma's
       3x Nebelwerfers
Ben: 51st Highlanders (from the PDF)
       2x Cmd Rifle
       2x Full 51st rifle platoon
       Full 3" mortar
       2x 4 team 6 lbr platoons
       3x Churchill Crocodiles (of righteous fire +5)
       Recce 3x Diamler 2x Humber
       8x QQF 25 Lbr. Arty
       4x BL 5.5 Arty
       AOP
Jim: Tankovy (Red Bear)
       HQ T-34 '42
       10x T-34 '42
       5x T-34 '42
       3x ISU-122 w/escorts & Rat
       4x SU-85M
       6x Hvy Mortars
       4x Katyusha's
Mitch: Canadian Armored Rifles (Market Garden)
       HQ Rifle Team
       2x Rifle Platoons w/Kangaroos with .50 cals
       3x Uni Carriers 2x .50 1x Piat
       3x 6 lbr
       Landmattress battery
       2x Sherman V 2x Firefly w/.50's
       2x Sherman V 1x Firefly w/.50
       Heavy Mortar Platoon

I'll talk through the tourney and show you a ton of pics if you click on that link!

Showcase Comics 1780 Late War AAR

Look sharp... but act dumb... 

Well hey there dear reader (I imagine there's only one of you, and it's my mom). This weekend I had the opportunity to travel up to Media, PA with my homie Ben and get some great games at a most excellent location.

Showcase Comics and Games hosted a 3 round 1780 point late war tournament at their Granite Run Mall location. First off, they have a great store and if you're on the I-95 corridor here in the mid-Atlantic you are doing yourself a disservice if you don't go at least once.

They've got a great selection of comics (if you're into that sort of thing), 40k, Fantasy, Warmahordes and my baby Flames of War not to mention a slew of other games and fun. The store has great decor as well, a space marine stands guard out front while Genestealers crawl out of air ducts on the ceiling. Fun stuff.

The gaming loot is excellently sorted by army and type and they had a 20% sale on pretty much everything over the weekend, so: Wallet 0 -- Showcase 1.

But on to the gaming!

So, for the tournament I decided to get experimental and go with Kampfgruppe Hummel out of the new Bridge by Bridge Market Garden Compilation. Here's the list

HQ: 2x Tiger 1E
Combat Platoon 1: 4x Tiger 1E
Combat Platoon 2: 2x Tiger 1E
Support 1: 4x 250/9 recce
Support 2: Full Pioneer Platoon (Each round I took 3 flamethrowers)
Support 3: 3x Nebs
Support 4: 2x FlaK36 1x 88 Anti-Aircraft

It came in at 1780 exactly and 6 platoons. Here's some pics:

After the break I'll break down the rounds:

Barrage Con!

Well hello there Throck's and Throckette's! This weekend Crazed Loon, me and a buddy of ours headed up to beautiful Harve De Grace Maryland for Barrage Con 16 to participate in the 1575 LW Tournament held by the fine gentlemen from I-95 gamers.

It's about a two hour drive up I-95 from Throck HQ and it was, I must say, well worth it. First of all, most importantly, and I can't stress this enough.

There is No Museum in Harve De Grace Maryland.

They Just want you to think there is. 

I'm telling you, they're cagey. They really want you to not think there is a museum, and there isn't, despite their attempts to convince you that it's there, do not believe their lies. It's not a decoy, it's simply not real.

Although, the Blues Brothers have taken up residence... I always wondered where they went after the movies...

A little worse for wear, but still keeping it real. 

But you're not here for the travelogue are you! You want to hear about all the war gamey goodness and see a ton of pictures of games in action. Well, I aim to please, so let's get down to the nitty gritty. First off, here's the list I took:

Late War Tourney at Dropzone Games with tons of pics.

(I finally set up the google follow thing, so you know, follow me!)

Hey all! On the heels of my 2 win 3 loss drubbing at NOVA open a couple of weekends back I decided to pick my self up, dust myself off and head out to another tournament.

This time, joined by one of my partners in crime, Crazed Loon, we headed out to Dropzone Games a new "destination" store in the hinterlands between DC and Baltimore.

It's bigger than that. But here's the front room

It's a little shiny, but Ironheart Artisan's is
their own local goodness. 

Dropzone is set in the ashes of the old Games Workshop Battle Bunker, which was a huge store, so we figured it would be a large space but I have to tell you we were wow'd when we got there. In the front room alone there were at least 12 6x4 tables, and there were 2 other rooms in the back, one with 4 and one with 7 tables. And that wasn't all, there were at least two other large spaces they are planning to expand into. In other words,

this place had a ton of space. Enough, in fact, to accommodate not only our 18 man tournament, but a Kings of War tourney as well.

Even though they've been open about a month (I think) they had a ton of really quality terrain! Clearly the owners have put some epic work into the thing. Mad props to them (do kids still say "Props"?)

And wait, there's more. The guys actually do their own casting of bases, movement trays, and smoke markers (for us FOW folks!). And they do it in house. Check them out online at Ironheart Artisans

Needless to say, I was quite impressed. They've also got a ton of FOW stock and a good start on some Warlord Games stock.

If you get the chance, GO TO THIS STORE. It's worth the trip. In fact, I think it might be the location of the next Throck of War tournie, if they let me and I get my ass in gear.

But what about the tournament? To start, they had a cook out, which is awesome. Grilled meat and wargaming always go well together and props on them for thinking ahead on that.

The event was a 1650 Late War 3 round, 2 hours a round, tournament with 18 players. Luckily, the play field was much more diverse this time around, with plenty of German, Russian, American and Brit players to go around. This made me very happy indeed. However, the two hour round was a bit short I think.

NOVA Late War Tourney: Capstone 3

The only reason this is here is because
I saw it today and it looked cool. Enjoy.

(YEAH I KNOW, I'm a little late on this one, I was travelling for work then we lost power last night. I'm sure those of you in MD share my hatred for Pepco.)

Welcome to the third in my capstone series of posts. The purpose of these is to explore, six months in, how I'm finding Flames of War in terms of hobbying, list building, game playing, and rules mongering. Part 1 dealt with the list building. Part two (amongst multiple other hobby posts) dealt with the building and painting and now, in part three we get to throw down for real!

Last weekend I had the opportunity to go and get trounced at NOVA open at a 1750 late war tournament. And I have to say, to start, that all of the people I played against were pure gentlemen. This is the first time, and I've played and lost in many tournaments in my time, that I've been in a tournie where I actually wanted to keep playing the game when we were done.

There's something about the other systems I've played in the past (mainly Warhammer/40k and Warmahordes) that are so fiddly and "gotcha" that I just get annoyed. And while I'll get more into system comparisons in the last capstone post, I think it needs to be mentioned, that the Flames of War rules really strike a solid balance for tournament play with just a few exceptions.

There are a couple of reasons why I like the concept of tournaments: You get to play other people than your normal group, you really get a solid handle on the rules, you get to (occasionally) win cool stuff. Now, in previous systems tournaments it's been the people who have turned me away as much as it's been the rules, the meta and tricksy nature of the games. This isn't to say that there are great and fun people playing other games, it just seems I always ran into that minority that would rather win at the cost of personal acrimony rather than play the stinking game with the guy across the table from them.

NOVA Open, Early War Fun

Can you see what is wicked cool,
possibly "metal" about this pic?

Kay, so, I'm on the road today. Up in good ole NYC. For those of you who were wondering, yes it's hot a sweaty here as well.

WWPD did some great picture dumps (here and here) today of the NOVA Open fun, and I thought I'd join along with my second dump.

This is the early war pic-o-rama. I was lucky enough to get to be the ringer for this. My first early war games ever, in my first tournament ever! Despite all of that, I couldn't keep from winning one game (SORRY KEVIN! I didn't know the laffly's would hurt that much!).

As I'm on the road I'll keep it short and to the point. It was a small tourney, run by a great dude, your friend and mine Scott of Itty Bitty Soldier fame. He and the NOVA folks ran a great series events with extra awesome prize support. So I say HUZZAH! to them.

Without any further ado, I give you the early war pic dump.