Tanksgiving 2014

Today's post is mostly going to be a photo dump. Tanksgiving was great, with our organiser, Jono, really pushing the boat out with mince pies, crackers and prizes.

The format was a series of battles focusing on Tank and Mechanised companies (it's really all there in the title) with an eye to fielding as many vehicles as possible, not that this stopped some fielding extremely infantry heavy lists.

I was running my newly formed Armoured Recce Squadron.

I heart Challenger A30's

Alex walked away with best painted for his Panzer Kampfgruppe

And the other armies were suitably impressive

...If not always for their paintjobs

Stu's Soviet horde

The other Soviet horde

The less horde-y Soviet army

My first game was against Alex's Kampfgruppe. Pleasantly (for me at least) this went the same way as our practice games, with my Challengers' semi-indirect 17pdrs raining fire down upon his units.

While miraculously escaping return fire unscathed

However, it was a close thing. The thing about fighting Alex is, as we progress, I always feel he learns from me, while I mostly bum around doing the same things. Don't fight the same opponent for too long lest you teach him your art of war and all that.

My second game against Kai was an unmitigated disaster.

Early game; note cheesy tide of cheese rolling across the board

Poor set up meant I was bunched up for his air support, and had the wrong units on the board. His Jumbos strolled nigh-invincibly towards me, with only a lucky couple of Challenger rounds really doing anything. Meanwhile, his Super Pershing lurked in the centre of the board daring anything to show itself. With its powerful gun and impenetrable armour, only a flanking manoeuvre would take it out, Something which came to late, allowing him to roll onto the objective early on, before my reserves could be brought to bear.

Much to my surprise I managed to pull off a legitimate win against Stu's massive Soviet blob.

Although again, by the skin of my teeth

The game did include one oh shit moment, when his infantry blob began its advance on my depleted armour.

Luckily my 2IC managed to flank the assault, murder the Spetsnaz protecting the objective and sit there for the win.

Even with two wins under my belt I wasn't able to secure a spot in the top three. I lost out due to the way in which we scored points in a tie breaker, one point for each destroyed platoon, losing out on the next place up by 1 point.

All in all a greatly enjoyable day.