Vacation Games

Hello everyone,

Last week was a pretty busy week for my country with the failed coup and resulting state-of-emergency. Anyways, before that, I was on vacation for two weeks and had the chance to play many games, including four Flames of War, one Black Powder and one small-introductory Hail Ceasar. I had also arranged to play one or two Trial by Fire (WW1) game but that was interrupted by the failed coup...

You may read the summary game reports and see some pictures below,

And... next week, I will be launching my free online book: Trial by Fire - Rulebook. This will be a World War I land warfare ruleset designed by me for over a year now. We are collecting 10mm miniatures for this ruleset but the rules can be adjusted to any scale.

For more information about that: Trial by Fire Rules Blog

Flames of War Game 1
Late War, Soviet Red Army Hero Tankovy (Me) vs German Police Company
Mission: Hold the Line, Result: German Victory
My long-time German playing friend Levent this time went with an interesting list; a Reluctant Trained German police force. But their support were reliable with Panters and tank hunters. Basically, I infiltrated my T-34/85s to a good firing position and got ready to assault an objective with T-34/76s (who had Tank Escorts) and my Tank Rider infantry company. The assault went well but I was unable to kill the panters so they took out my tanks one by one. It was disaster for me that right after the assault, panters shooted and destroyed nearly all T-34/85s. Now it was time to get the job done by my infantry but they were repulsed by very lucky defensive fire from Germans. After that time, German  reinforcements started to pour in and there were simply not enough Soviet tanks to get a victory.

Flames of War Game 2
Late War, Soviet Udarny Strelkovy (Me) vs German SS (Fearless-Trained) Infantry
Mission: Counter-Attack, Result: German Victory
We are gaming with Levent again. this time he has lots of infantry with many anti-tank guns and just a few StuGs on reserve. I was the attacker, I again infiltrated and this time, he managed to roll a 6 and took the first turn so I had to endure enemy fire before moving. Anyways, I tried to move towards the far objective as fast as I can with one of the Strelkovy groups and stormed the enemy defenses with the other group. The attack to enemy sector went well at first and I was able to defeat the first enemy infantry platoon but next turn, my infantry took immense fire from enemy guns and artillery. My Scouts also helped the fight on that sector but my close combat rounds were now unlucky. The rush to far objective failed as German reserves arrived on time my troops got shot on the way. So that game also ended in defeat for me.

Flames of War Game 3
Late War, Soviet Red Army Strelkovy (Me) vs German SS (Fearless-Trained) Panzer Group
Mission: Cauldron, Result: Soviet Victory
I played this game with a friend whom I did not play for long, Afşın. I was the defender and he tried to capture objectives on my side with his randomly deployed platoons. Random deployment always make things uncomfortable for the attacker and this game was no exception. He could not launch a coordinated attack to my infantry lines and was delayed a lot. He finally had to send his valuable panters to assault my infantry (with sappers inside) and lost all of them. That's when we ended the game.

Flames of War Game 4
Mid War, Soviet Red Army Mixed Tank (Me) vs British Infantry Company
Mission: Dust Up, Result: Draw
I played with a good friend, Deniz and against his Tommy in an unhistorical game. I tried to do my best with my Strelkovy and KV heavy tanks covering my objectives while my T-34 and Razvedki groups assaulted the objective at his side. Well, the summary of the game was he rolled just "excellent" gun saves. Whenever I hit his anti-tank guns or artillery, he saved the hits, or when he rarely did not, I failed to roll for firepower. He then destroyed a lot of my tanks in return, it was getting late and we were both not capturing any objectives soon. We decided to leave it there with a draw.

Black Powder Game
Napoleonic British (Me) vs French
Result: French Victory
This one, I played with my young but brillant friend Mustafa. We have fairly good painted 10mm Napoleonic armies so try to play Black Powder whenever we have a chance. We just deployed our forces to both sides and went with a "field-battle" style game. Basically, there was my Highlanders at my left side, faced by his Line Brigade. My Line Brigade was at my center, facing his Old Guards. My Guards Brigade and Cavalry were at my right side, facing his Grenadiers and Cavalry. My plan was to hold his larger Line Brigade with my Highlanders, that plan at least worked. The other part of the plan would be to outnumber the rest of his force by my Line Infantry and Guards. Well, that went awful.. My Guards did little to contribute the fight to hold off the French cavalry, as the British cavalry in turn did not move at all for almost the whole game. That allowed the French to concentrate their Grenadiers and Guards against my Line Brigade, which was soon crushed. A decisive victoire pour La France et L'Empereur!

Hail Ceasar Game
Introduction Game
I have convinced one of my friends, a very good painter and modeler to play Hail Ceasar. He is collecting a Persian army and while he does that, we played a demo game with my 1/72 Carthageneans. We gave no speacial rules to units where both sides has 1 heavy infantry, 1 medium infantry, 1 small skirmishers and 1 cavalry (me) / 1 elephant (Fatih). It all ended very quick. He just smashed into my lines and routed my heavy infantry. Again, my cavalry did not perform a single move (what the f*ck!) and when he also sent his elephant against me, I had to concede defeat.

And that's it, vacation games with many losses :)

Anyways, all the games were very enjoyable, thank you all my friends! See you next time!

(Below pictures are from Black Powder game and FoW Game 1)