Panzer in the sand - Fow AAR

Last week Tobias and I had another midwar battle in Flames of war.

 

We played a small 1000pts battle, and I wanted to try out what the Panzer IV was capable of.

At a mere 1000pts you don´t get that many Panzer IV Im afraid but I thought it could atleast give me a taste of them.

So with a rather special list I was ready to tackle the American troops.

The game started with my force on the table and half his force waiting as reserves. With only the enemy infantry on the table I felt pretty strong.

With full speed my recon armored cars managed to quickly take a closer look at the objective.

But it was a fools idea to try to capture the objective with a small fragile unit and the enemy infantry in their halftracks was on them in seconds and easily wiped them out.

Meanwhile my Panzer IV bombards the enemy infantry from save distance.

The enemy reserve enters the table, a small unit of the dreaded Sherman tank. They set one Panzer IV ablaze on their arrival.

My plan now was to regroup, make a sort of firing line and just shoot them to pieces. With this much firepower they will surly die.

The result was one Sherman destroyed, one bailed out and the last one kept his nerves and defiantly stayed on the battlefield.

Next round another Sherman platoon arrived and a sort of standstill happened.

Both my mixed Panzer IV tanks and his Shermans traded shoots against each other. But with mostly short barreled infantry support variants of Panzer IV I had real problem to pierce his armor and the firefight ended with lots of burning Panzer IV before my troops had enough and pulled back.

Darn it.. At first I really thought I had him.
My gamle with my armoured cars was a bad idea but I really wanted to see how far they could go,

Upon the arrival of the first enemy platoon that resulted in just on burning Panzer IV my shooting line with all my remaining tanks looked really good. But the dices didn´t match my plan. I just couldn´t pierce those tanks.
And then later with the arrival of another Sherman platoon I was starting to sweat.

So lessons from this match is that even doe the early Panzer IV with short barrel is a cool looking tank its in no way a good idea to engage a Sherman on equal terms. They was rather good at bombarding infantry so I guess they behaved as they should do historical.

Thanks for looking.

War in the desert - Flames of war AAR

My friend Tobias and I played two Flames of War games last Saturday and here are a small aar of one of the games.

It felt like ages since I last played Midwar in fow (my favorite) so this was lots of fun.

My German Africa Panzer force was up against an American Tunisia mechanized infantry company with strong tank support in form of Shermans.

 

My list was as following  - 1605pts

Cmd Pz IV E
2ic Pz IV E

3x Pz IV G
2x Pz III L, 1x Pz III J(late)

5x Pz IIF

2x 88 heavy AA guns with extra crew

Limited Air support of Bf 109E

(wrong tactical numbering for an Pz IV, I know.)

With only half our forces deployed at the start of battle and I got a clear sight of the dreaded Sherman platoon (those are some nasty tanks in midwar). 

I knew I wanted to try to take them out early, so the 88s was deployed to handle them as well as the Pz III to try to outflank and close in on them with my shorter cannon range.

Things started good with the 88s destroying two of the Shermans and bailing a third.

My Pz III didn´t do squat but the Messerschmitt nailed one Sherman.

The concentration of firepower against one unit started really good with only one Sherman left in that unit and he was bailed out.

I was allowed one reinforcement and chose the Pz II unit as I intended these for anti infantry duty and thought to keep the Pz IV off board until I knew where his next Sherman platoon would arrive so I could counter it.

The Pz III and my Second in command with his Pz IV have taken up fire positions behind a small ridge.

And opened up fire against the surviving Sherman that managed his bail out test and had moved backwards and taken cover next to his 2iC and one objective.

This resulted in a very strange happening, with four hits from my tanks he rolled four 2s resulting in a lot of bailed out results because of the range (6armour+1 for range +2 for the dice against my at9). And as he was rated as “confident” surly he would have to fail atleast one of the test and leave the battle…
No, not a chance… He managed to keep calm and remained on the battlefield.

Meanwhile on the other side of the table the Pz II platoon and my Commander in his Pz IV tank raced between covers to not give his 37mm gun any targets as I closed in on the objective and the enemy platoon guarding it.

In an attempt to get a clear side shot on the last Sherman my 2iC had ventured a little too far and when his reinforcements of four brand new Shermans arrived they could see no better target then my lone Pz IV tank…
At least I managed to take out that lone Sherman.

With an combined fire from my 88s, my Pz II and my commanders Pz IV I managed to take out the 37mm gun and the bazooka teams as well as inflicting some casualties on the American grunts to.

After the anti tank gun threats was neutralized I closed in and with gunz blazing I assaulted and routed the infantry.

This put me on top of the objectives but I knew I was to expect a enemy reinforcement before this game was over.

Now happened what I only could describe as a Napoleonic tactics… Arranging the troops in a sort of fireline. Oh well Flames of war is just a game, with some ww2 toys in it. 

The infantry reinforcement did arrive but didn´t do enough damages to push me from the objective.

A victory for the Deutches Afrika Korps.

Sand warfare (fow aar)

My friend Tobias ( at http://tobbesfow.blogspot.se/ ) and I had another midwar game yesterday.
I love midwar and I think Tobias is getting keener and keener to smacking some of my Germans in the desert.

German reports indicated that the Americans aimed at securing a small village before pushing further. The plan was to leave the village undefended so their scout troops wouldn´t report of any German activity and let them get close enough before the ´blitz´ was released on the unsuspecting Americans. 

A fast kampgruppe was put together by the now almost obsolete old models of Pz III and Pz II but supported by Messerschmitts with total air superiority.
The mission we played was Pincer if I recall correctly.

After some heavy fighting the forward forces of the Americans were broken and they retired. A victory for the ever so stretched German Afrika Korp.

 

 

  

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

Yes yes I know... Even more pictures of the luftwaffe... But I really like the look of my airplanes...
Please notice the pyramids of Kasserine (?)