March 2012 is Portal Wargaming’s World War 2 Month.

A month dedicated to WWII Gaming both historical (Flames of War) & weird/fictional (Secrets of the Third Reich).

This week it was time to dust of my Flames of War German StuG Batterie. Model-wise I have about 4000pts worth, fully painted around 1500pts. This is because I bought and painted a 1500pts army after leaving Games Workshop as a Manager and took part in the clubs first historical wargame. I then bought a lot more, but as interest in the club turned to Warmachine & Hordes, so did mine…….OOOOH NEW SHINYS!!!

Portal Wargaming has a great selection of 15mm WWII scenery and our board tonight was set up for us by Edd Barfield & Gordon Snellgrove! The battle was going to be a 1800pts per side training mission pitting the German StuG Batterie against an Hungarian Infantry Army! This was set to be an interesting game as not only would it be my first game of Flames of War in over a year but it would be my first with the new rulebook! The new rulebook is superb by the way….it is set out in a very beautiful design and flows through the game smoothly with great photos and diagrams to explain everything…and I mean EVERYTHING!!!

As I was a Tank Company I would get the first turn of this game, my deployment was pretty shabby as I was too scared about clumping stuff together because of the amount of artillery I was facing off against! Having wave upon wave of troops flooding the enemy’s side of the board and the sparse deployment of my few tanks made me worried so I moved my StuG Platoons up to allow my Begleit Tank Riders to machine gun the troop platoon in the woods, with a successful sound of bullets ringing through my head I was horrified to see the “power armour”-like save that meant I hadn’t killed a thing!! My other platoon moved up and opened fire on an AA gun platoon but missed with all my shots, boo hiss. My Hornisse with their impressive range opened fire upon the AA gun and destroyed one of them, meanwhile my Tiger rolled up and destroyed a howitzer!

The enemy retaliated hard: tanks moved forward and opened up on the command StuG narrowly missing it thanks to cover and another tank platoon moved to open fire on the StuG first platoon. The troops in the forest dug in while another ambushed me near to an objective, the others took up positions within buildings ready to open fire! The howitzers opened fire raining hell down on my Anti-Tank Platoon destroying one of my Hornisse!

As the flow of the turn returned to me I was facing the fact the infantry are hard to shift and my Hornisse would have to move as the Howitzers had ranged in on it!! Tanks battled against tanks on the right flank, in the centre I destroyed the other AA guns. The Tiger destroyed the approaching armoured cars with ease, my artillery ranged in on a platoon of enemy tanks and destroyed one of them! The enemy then unleashed their anti-tank firepower on my StuG platoon 2 destroying 2 of them, my pioneers in a building came under fire from the ambushers, my command StuG bailed out and StuG platoon 1 had one of it’s StuG’s destroyed. The howitzers ranged in on my artillery but failed to do any damage!

My Begliet tank riders disembarked and made their way into buildings and my StuG’s battled on, the Tiger destroyed all but one of the enemy howitzers. Having moved up my remaining Hornisse had moved into range of enemy Anti-Tank squad and it’s tin foil armour failed to protect it…..as the turns rolled on my inability to hit was starting to grind against me and the sheer number of enemy left alive was daunting!

My StuG’s one by one were destroyed and the best my artillery could do was to bail out a tank. For fun my small pioneer platoon charged out of their building and charged at the ambushers in the other warehouse only to be gunned down on the way in!!

Time was called and I conceded! After a really fun game the smoke settled proving the downfall of the StuG Batterie would come at the hands of the outnumbering enemy, a sign that should have been observed before they were deployed into the Russian front!!!

A massive thanks need to be given to my opponent for an outstanding game with laughs and nail biting moments!! Thank you Wes Vickers!!!

Hope you all enjoyed the read and I conveyed the cinematic feel that the game gave us as we played!!

Scorpius_GLC out for now!!