Dunfermline Wargames and Roleplaying Fellowship (D.W.A.R.F.), 17/09/16
Fifty miles from Glasgow to Fife
I usually start off these posts by prattling on about how far the journey is from where I live, to where the event is being held. Last week's journey out to Dumbarton was about an hour and a half travel and a relatively short distance of eighteen miles; Saturday's journey was a little longer, almost two hours of travel, including waiting for transfers, and fifty miles away.
Many of you will think nothing of getting up around six in the morning, making such a journey and then making the same back home; but for me in my regular schedule for travel and University it was a slight shock to the system.
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| At least the views were nice, crossing the Kincardine Bridge |
So, that was the journey, fifty miles from Glasgow to Dunfermline, thankfully on quite a luxury coach.
Registration and the participants
For this tournament I only had one list in mind: 'B Squadron, 15th/19th Hussars'. This list contains my favourite tank of the war: the Cromwell, in abundance. The other advantage to this list is having all of my anti-tank assets grouped into one platoon. The high points cost of the Challenger makes for small platoons, even so I still ended up with a six platoon list, and one that I thought wouldn't do too badly. you can find a link to my list below.
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| My force, ready for transport between tables |
With eleven other players, it was going to be a good tournament. So, here's a list of the other players and what they were taking on the day:
Frank Keast - Former owner of Worlds at War in Livingston, Frank has been playing Flames of War for about as long as I have, but is best known for his painting service:
Panzer Schule. Frank was fielding a German
Sicherungskompanie (Security Company), but with an added point of interest: The Armoured Train!
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| An imposing set piece model, the Armoured Train is a lovely piece of kit |
Bill Shiel - Bill is always a joy to play against, despite his dice luck always being firmly against him, he's never let it get to him and always plays with a pleasant attitude. Bill was fielding Hermann's finest: A Hermann Goering Panzerkompanie.
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| Though mostly Panzer III's of various Mks, the force was supported by a fearsome Elefant |
Richard Cunningham - I have not had the pleasure of meeting before and was nice to finally put a face to the name I've seen mentioned often. Richard was fielding the small, elite Commando Troop.
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| Supported by plenty of artillery and a breaching group, Commandos are a force to be reckoned with |
Greg Barr - Greg was TO for the day and was forced into action through a small number of call-offs, thankfully he had an American Mechanised Company on hand to take to the field to even up the numbers.
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| M3's following up advancing Shermans full of eager G.I.s |
John Lynch - I've had the pleasure of playing John at last year's Operation Blockbuster event, and his army was similar to the force I faced off against that day. He took the elite Fallshirmjager, a formidable force, especially in defence, but always adaptable to go on the attack.
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| With Nebelwerfers, mortars and HMGs, the FJ are a difficult force to dislodge from foxholes |
John Stevens - John is another player I've not had the pleasure to meet prior to this event, but he came to my rescue half way through the tournament when my tape measure gave up the ghost and the end clip snapped off. He loaned me one to allow me to continue. John was fielding an American Armoured Company.
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| With a load of 3', 76mm guns on show, John's company was ready for armoured clashes |
Greg Fyfe - Greg is a long time friend and a constant attendee at the various tournaments that are run throughout the year at Stirling. Greg was also recruited to Team Scotland this year and was in Athens for the ETC, giving a good showing of himself. Greg (unsurprisingly) was fielding a Soviet Infantry Batallion in the form of the Straf.
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| A massed blob of infantry being fired onto the objectives by Katyushas and SU-122's |
Martyn Bolton - Travelling up from Wales for this one, another member of Team Scotland, Martyn brought Soviet tanks. Sadly, I didn't have a lot of time to talk to him, nor had the pleasure of a game against him, hopefully he'll come back up for future events and I can find out more about him then.
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| Sadly I didn't manage to get a picture of his wonderfully painted army, and only managed this snap of his amazing artillery platoon |
Paul Duckmanton - Paul was my opponent in game two, he is a lovely chap and we had quite the thrilling game which I'll talk about later. Paul brought a ton of armour in the form of Panthers, Tigers, Jagdpanthers and Panzer IV Js.
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| A fearsome sight of so much armour rolling over the field towards you |
Laurence Kettle - Laurence has been a semi-regular attendee at the tournaments in Scotland and generally plays Germans of a sort. He's a very competent player and this tournament was no exception. This time round Laurence brought the Reluctant Trained Panthers to the table.
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| Love or hate based tanks, you can't deny that the high quality of painting makes Laurence's army stand out |
Richard Hardy - Richard is another member of Team Scotland and is well known across the UK in the Flames of War circles. Richard is another player who makes it along to almost every tournament we run up here, and even ran an Early War tournament at the start of the month. Richard was fielding the closest thing to Germans he will ever, a Finnish Sturmi Battery.
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| StuGs, PaK40's, but not a German in sight |
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| Ignore the Bolt Action players in the background, their toys are too big |
With all players ready to go, we launched the first round...
Round One: Breakthrough
We started the day with an old favourite; Hold the Line. I like this mission as it forces the defending player to redeploy early on in the game and try to hold out against the advancing enemy before their reserves come in, and be ever wary of the enemy reinforcements coming in behind them.
I was drawn against Bill and his Panzer III's, the pride of Hermann Goering clashing with my speedy little Cromwells on a table with not a lot of open terrain. This one was going to be interesting.
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| The riflemen of the KLSI ready themselves to grab the objectives |
The most fearsome thing on the table was by far the Elefant, and it was something I was pondering for a long time how to take out. Parking my Challengers on the table early game would have just given Bill an idea of how to position his Elefant to avoid the high AT guns.So instead I deployed a platoon of Cromwells, the Humber scout cars and the infantry in preparation for the coming storm.
The plan was to have the infantry advance quickly to the objectives and dig in arounf them to hold both until I got more reinforcements to help shore them up. With one of the Cromwell platoons hiding behind some buildings, ready to fall back towards the objectives should the Elefant get too close.
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| With sunlight in their eyes, the Cromwell crews prepare to take shots of opportunity |
The game began and tanks rumbled forward, with the little platoon of German 222's sitting hull down on a hill ready to lift any Gone to Ground I might have the luxury of having. My deployment denied the lumbering Elefant any shots in the first few turns as the Cromwells and Panzers traded a few ineffectual rounds.
The game opened up though on turn 3, with Bill getting no reinforcements in his turn and his shooting being a little woeful, mainly bailing out (little FP 4+ pop guns letting him down). In my turn however, I noticed the Elefant had moved forward just enough to do some damage, and so I acted, the Challengers making their appearance on the flank.
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| Opportunities like this happen once in a lifetime |
The rest of the shooting phase resulted in a few knocked out Panzer IIIs, and then we came round to the important rolling: The Challengers taking their shots at the Elefant, two hits later and the mighty beast was felled to the powerful 17pdrs.
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| You miss 100% of shots you don't take |
The rest of the game didn't fare much better for Bill as Cromwells and Panzers circled each other in the fields around the objectives. My Sextons showing up, and even they managed to survive a hail of fire from the Panzers, a couple being bailed, but none being knocked out.
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| The pioneers and Panzers fail to capitalise on the leaderless Cromwell platoon and end up paying the price |
Bill almost sneaked a win, by a solitary Panzer sneaking onto the other objective. Thankfully, I not only managed to knock him out, but the Sextons went Assault Gun mode and charged into safe distance. And with that, the game was over. It should have gone so much better for Bill, but the little 50cm guns with their reduced firepower turned far too many penetrating hits into bailed out tanks and not enough destroyed. In fact at the end of the game I only had two Cromwells and a Challenger knocked out.
Result: 6-1 to me
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| Match ups for game one: Results sheet will be at the end of the report |
++ Lunch ++
Round Two: Surrounded
With an impressive start to the tournament, I was in high spirits going into the next game. It was announced to be surrounded, and with a large amount of armoured companies, it was going to be interesting to see how this played out. I was drawn against Paul and his heavy tanks, and of course I ended up defending.
So now I was faced with the daunting task of somehow holding off a large pincer army of heavy, impenetrable tanks bearing down on my positions.
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| Tigers and Jagdpanthers on one side, Panthers on the other |
The only thing I could do was ambush with my Challengers, as the table we were playing on had little to no cover in the middle, bar a field and a hill. Needless to say the table brought a few mutterings of dissent from players throughout the day.
So the panzers advanced and the only thing that prevented a massive destruction of my force turn one was utilising cover and managing to claim Gone to Ground, resulting in either no shots, or the few that were fired missing. My only losses in turn one were two sacrificial Sextons.
My return shots from the Challengers were limited, as Stormtroopers took the Panthers on my right flank outwith the desired 32" range. Instead they picked off a couple of Panzers, and through a stroke of luck managed to kill all bar one, including the Company Commander. Paul passed the Warrior Save, and while this kept his Commander alive, it meant the loss of a platoon. At this point I was satisfied to go on and lose 5-2. but the best was yet to come.
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| Panthers and an 88 combine to cause the Challengers problems |
Though through a lucky round of shooting the Challengers were felled by 88s, Panthers and everything else Paul could throw at me, I was determined to cause a little havoc as some Cromwells went on a jaunt across the table, wheeling round some woods in Paul's deployment zone. While the other platoon of Cromwells held on by hiding in cover as the heavy armour advanced, the other got into position and eventually wormed their way into some interesting positions.
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| Cromwells punch well above their weight to cause havoc amongst the Jagdpanthers |
The Cromwells forced the Jagdpanthers into a sticky situation, being unable to engage one side without revealing their rear armour to the other, the Jagdpanthers were cut down one after the other by some very lucky shooting (helped mainly by the Trained rating of the beasts).
With the small victories secured the larger one ended up being a little too much of an ask, with my fourth platoon going down and my company breaking from the field, handing the win to Paul.
In the most quintessentially British way possible, I managed to make the best of what looked like a complete stomp, into a game to remember/
Result: 4-3 to Paul
Round Three: Encounter
To end the day, we went back to basics with Encounter. This simplistic mission can end up being highly frustration (spoiler warning: it was). With Delayed and Scattered Reserves, a player's battle plan can end up being turned on it's head in short notice.
So coming out of last round feeling good and thinking that facing massive German armour was behind me, I was deflated when it was announced I'd be playing Laurence's Panthers. Despite them being Reluctant Trained, having Armour 10 driving towards you is still a difficult thing to deal with.
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The side of the Panthers I wish I had shots on
I have to be honest, I lost the game during deployment when for some reason I deployed my Humber Recce covering one of the objectives and leaving the Challengers in reserve. In my head, I had visions of them rolling onto the table onto the flanks and wiping out Panthers on their advance to the objective. Sadly, that was not to be.
I have no pictures from this game as I was too engrossed in being destroyed to take any.
To my surprise and utter horror the 5-platoon force I was playing against still started the game with 10 Panthers on the table. Two platoons of four and the command platoon bringing another two. The three reinforcing platoons a small Wirbelwind platoon, pioneers and a platoon of four StuGs.
The first couple of turns weren't too bad, with my Cromwells hiding in a field denying the Panthers easy shots and only one going down a turn until my Challengers arrived.
The Panthers had advanced down my right flank and middle, leaving a slight gap to the left and another on the right the Challengers could go roaring up should I get a middle or right deployement from them. But fate is cruel and the Challengers showed up on the left flank. Long story short, EVERYTHING showed up on the left flank, the Challengers trading shots (poorly) with the Panthers, managing to take a couple out, but for the most part being a little toothless with Semi-indirect fire letting me down,
Eventually my defences got over-run and the Panthers were victorious, but not before I picked off a platoon for a loss.
Result: 5-2 to Laurence
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Results and Wrap-Up
With that, the tournament came to an end. I spent the last half an hour watching Richard Hardy and Greg Fyfe play, with the Finns spending their time whittling down the blobs of Straf every turn.
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| Coveted prizes, including the 'wooden spoon' trophy for last place |
It was an enjoyable tournament all round, with only one or two frustrating moments when facing down German Heavy Armour. DWARF club always put on highly successful tournaments like Operation Totalize and they are always well attended.
And now the important part; the standings and results:
In a surprising twist, it ended up with Richard and Laurence tying for first place and even the tie-break of platoons lost being completely identical. So congratulations to Richard and Laurence on their victory.
I placed a respectable 6th in the table, being unable to turn the last game into a better result forcing me down the rankings a little.
Finally, there was also the painting contest which is voted for by the players, and the winner this year was:
Frank Keast, with his
Sicherungskompanie, very well done to him.
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| A larger size to appreciate the army in its entirety. |
So as usual, thank you for reading. DWARF club have an event coming up in November, Winter War, which every year raises money for charity. This year the money is going to:https://bloodwise.org.uk/
http://fairybricks.org/
A pair of noble causes.
Thanks again, and I'll leave you with a few pictures of the event. Check back for my report on the Tanks OP2, which took place the very next day in Stirling.
