This Sunday was the annual Tempest wargaming tournament, held at the Shirley/St Albans Working Men's Club. Normally a Queen's Birthday Weekend event, Tempest was held a few months early this year, and other bookings at the venue restricted it to being a one-day affair. The organiser (the hard working Stephan S) opted for 1100 points MW playing 4 games (possibly 5 time permitting, although this was always optimistic). This format was clearly well received, with 16 people turning up on the day.
My first game was a Free for Fall against Jamie's panzergrenadiers. Jamie is a regular FoW opponent of mine, but this was the first time I had faced his Germans. And he had clearly been reading the transport rules, using his "summon halftrack" ability to its full. This was a great game, impossible to call until the last turn or two. Jamie's Tiger and PaK's dominated the open spaces, but my light tanks and Nimrods managed to zip around to a concealed position near an objective. It became a race; could Jamie's Tiger kill my Pz IVs before my light tanks could kill his infantry? A few lucky shots from the Pz IVs came oh so close to killing the Tiger (which would have been essentially game to me) but on the last roll failed Firepower. In the end the Tiger won the day, killing the Pz IVs and clearing the path for a panzergrenadier platoon to sieze an objective. The final result was a 6:1 win to Jamie.
My second game was against Dave D's Tankovy, with me attacking in a Surrounded mission. This gave me a problem. My army had only one unit that could (maybe) stand up to his T-34's - my Pz IVs. Having to split my army into two sides, one side was going to be vulnerable. As I expected my T-38G's died against his T-34's... but they were able to hold them up for much longer than I expected. The combination of Veterancy, concealment, and long range let them survive for a few turns, but unfortunately not quite long enough. On the other side of the board my panzer IVs and infantry had failed to kill his SU-76's (how hard can it be to pass one, single, solitary FP test!) which delayed my assault on the objective. His T-34's were able to turn around and support the other flank just in the nick of time, denying me the objective and the game. Dave won 5:2.
Game 3 was against Nathan's Carri company in another Free for Fall. The desert table had a lot of very wide open spaces. With Nathan fielding a Lancia 90mm as a cornerstone of his force I had two choices - charge and hope massed main gun fire could take it out, or hide and try to make it irrelevant. I went with the aggressive approach, and it almost worked. Almost. Yet again I could not pass a FP test to save myself. Although I knocked out his Pz IIIs (and in hindsight I might have been better off pulling back after that) the Lancia dominated the field, and in the end Nathan won 5:2.
My 4th and last game was defending against Rick's British Heavy Armour Squadron in a No Retreat mission. At 1100 points, playing a company of medium tanks is (as
Sir Humphrey would say) "courageous". With an entire army consisting of 11 units (8 Shermans and 3 Carriers) Rick had to make the most of every tank... although in fairness, each of those Shermans were a match for the strongest unit (the Pz IV F2) in my army. But my Ambush with Panzer IVs turned the game. While Rick preventing me from getting flank shots, a close range barrage knocked out a platoon of Shermans. Two turns later, the Veteran panzers firing from concealment finished off the second Sherman platoon, while the Nimrods had finished off the carriers. With just his HQ left Rick failed a company motivation roll, and it was a 6:1 game to me.
Tempest was the first FoW tournament I have attended in a long time (since I don't have a LW army, and on principal avoid strict Axis vs. Allies events), and it was great fun. While I'll probably give the next Christchurch FoW event a miss (LW, not interested), Conquest is doing an
El Alamein theme which sounds like it could be a lot of fun.
