The Red Army in Autumn

Coming up in October this year there is a wargaming tournament down in Lake Geneva - Autumn Wars. On the Saturday they are running a Team Yankee event, Tankers Delight. This has provided the incentive to pull out an army I have been slowly working away on for some time - a Soviet T-72 battalion. 

Unfortunately the tournament army requirements aren't to my preference; lists are 120 points, of which at least 90 points must be tanks with front armor 9 or above. The organizers are clearly MBT fans, and want to see big formations of these running around. But I'm keen enough to play a TY event that I'll forbear. 

Sitting down to organize a force that meets these requirements, here in where I'm at right now; 

To meet the minimum MBT requirement I'll either have to buy more T-72s, or add a formation of T-64s or T-80s. At the moment I'm thinking a list something like this;

T-72 Battalion

• T-72 HQ (5 pts)
• T-72 Company of 8 (37 pts)
• T-72 Company of 8 (37 pts)
• T-72 Company of 6 (27 pts)
• Motor Rifle Company in BTR-60s (medium, 10 pts)
• ZSU-23 Platoon of 4 (4 pts)
• 2S1 Carnation Battery of 3 (5 pts)

This comes to 120 exactly, and also puts me comfortably above the minimum MBT requirement. 

In terms of what models have will have to acquire and finish painting, I'll need 13 more T-72s. Of the models I have now, the artillery are finished, and all the vehicles are basecoated. The infantry are assembled and primed, but that's it. 

So a decent amount of work to do. That's OK, I've got a couple of weeks to get everything finished. 

Tempest 2012

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.

War of the Exodites: An Epic Tournament

Last sunday I played in an Epic: Armageddon tournament, hosted by the Christchurch Wargaming Club in Woolston. Most tournaments tend to have competitions for half a dozen different games all run at the same time. But since EA is a more niche game, we've found it best to run it by itself, so as to not force people to choose between Epic and a more popular game.

This weekend's event ("War of the Exodites", organised by Tim) featured six armies. And quite an eclectic mix it was too. The forces involved were;

•  Imperial Guard Steel Legion (Jonathan W, AKA me)
•  Imperial Guard Steel Legion (Johnathan P)
•  Ork Ghazgkhull Warhorde (Mark)
•  Eldar Fir Iolarion Titan Clan (Tim)
•  Imperial Guard Harakoni Warhawks (Kevin)
•  Eldar Iyanden Craftworld (Andrew)

So two experimental and one developmental army list in use. My own force (written up an hour or so before the event start) was centered around the new pride of my army, a Reaver Titan. Now I normally field two Leman Russ companies as my main "hold the line" units, and the rational part of my brain knew (even while I was painting the model) that the titan should be replacing one of these. Unfortunately this rational part of my brain was elsewhere that morning (I blame St Patrick's Day) and I decided to field both the two tank companies and the titan. I knew fielding this many expensive units would bring down my activation count. What I didn't click to, until midway through my first game, was that the Reaver (at 650 points) costs exactly the same as a Leman Russ company. In other words, destroying any one of these three units would give my opponent the Break the Spirit victory condition! I had rolled a critical failure on my Design Army (Epic) skill check.

My first opponent was Andrew, with his Iyanden Eldar. Despite not having played a full game a of Epic before Andrew defeated three players who usually rank highly in local competitions, to end with 3 wins from 3 games. His army, featuring several formations of Wraithguard in Wave-Serpents, proved to be highly effective, particularly against the armour-heavy lists that Tim, Mark, and myself had all decided to field. But Andrew also played it well. He used his higher activation count to full advantage, kept pressure on me at all times, and made good use of firefights to break and destroy enemy units.

My titan, flanked by two Vulture gunships

Andrew's wraithguard swoop in to attack my tanks

Andrew's units still advancing, keeping up the pressure

My second game was against Kevin's "Harakoni Warhawks". The Harakoni list is an experimental variant of the Imperial Guard, representing an elite infantry formation that drops in by grav-chute. It has some similarities (tactically) to drop marine lists, in that there is the tradeoff between units initially on the board holding ground, and and units available for drop assaults. This was a hard fought game (and closer than the final victory conditions suggest) but in the end Kevin won on turn 4.

Grav-gliders unleashing their rocket pods on my tanks

My command company on the receiving end of a drop-assault

My last game was against Johnathan P's Imperial Guard. It is always interesting to play somebody with the same army - there is no better way to appreciate the merits of a unit than to both field it and face it. Johnathan's army shares many of the same units as mine, but he plays with significantly more infantry - two foot infantry companies with support weapons, as well as a Stormtrooper unit with Valkyries. This game started very badly for me - Johnathan wiped out my infantry company with his first activation. A Leman Russ company moved foward, fired, and where there had been a full mechanised infantry company there was now a single infantry stand. Early into turn 4 I offered to conceed, and Johnathan accepted.

Two Imperial Guard armies facing off

My tanks engaged in a firefight with Johnathan's infantry

Cheers to Tim for a well-run event, enjoyed by all. I managed to spoil my own fun a bit by very poor list design, but it was still good to roll some dice and see some well-painted armies. So now my goal is to plot a more reasonable army that makes use of my Titan. Cunning plans are forming in my brain... more in a future blog post...