Tabletop Republic FoW Late War Tournament
A few of weeks I attended a One-day FoW LateWar Tournament at Tabletop Republic.
I decided to use my trusty British Churchills in Italy list which had done well in previous tournaments at Battlefield Hobbies.
Event was 3 games using the standard missions - Free-for-All, Dust Up and Encounter (not using any of the more complicated deployment rules)
Game 1 - drawn against a Finnish Army made up of two commands, one Infantry and one Stug Tanks playing Free For All.
So army was spread cross the table holding both objectives, I had placed the majority of my force on the right flank, so opponent deployed his Stug force opposite
Churchills with M10 Achilles backed up by 2 25 PDR guns
Game started slow with neither of us causing many casualties (except for me gunning down Finnish Infantry), all looked good until my opponent decided to rush all his infantry at me to shoot as many Panzerfausts as he could, needing 6's to hit I thought I'd be Ok.
Then his dice went hot, 5 out of 8 Panzerfaust rockets hit and bailed my tanks, then again needing either 5 or 6's to hit his Stug's fired and 10 out 16 shots hit - in return I could only roll 1's or 2's for saves, suddenly my CinC Churchill, both Churchill Squadrons and the two Sherman Tank Squadrons were either destroyed or bailed out!!!
Leaving his Infantry to charge in and capture the tank crews
At the end of the turn I had only one active core tank unit (single Sherman tank) left.
Game Over - Lost 1 - 8 could not believe my eyes!
Game 2 - drawn against Stu and his SS PanzerKompanie in Dust Up
In this game we start in opposite quarters, knowing that Stu had 4 PakFront 88 Guns that could cover large areas of the table, I chose the corner I though I could get plenty of blocking scenery in the way
View from Stu's setup - me hiding from the 88's, in reserve was a Panther Squad and Panzer IV squad.
Game started slow waiting for reserves to arrive, as soon as Stu's Tanks arrived I started angling M10 Achilles and Sherman Fireflies to knock out the Panthers while the rest of the guns aimed at the Panzer IV.
My Reserves managed to hide behind woods and fields making Stu need 6's to hit which his PaK's managed not to roll.
As Game started to get to the end of time, I was one move away from attacking his weakly defended objective (having killed the two defending 88's with artillery fire) and Stu nowhere near his objectives as I had too many guns covering the advance.
Result Draw 3 - 3
Game 3 - drawn against John Randall's Finnish army with a Tank Company with a mix of supporting troops in Encounter.
John's forces were strung out across the table, while mine where more to the left flank as John had placed one of the objectives he need to take in the middle of the long table side - reason: he had a large group of Finnish Infantry in the centre with an idea of jumping from one building to the next to win.
Forgot to take a photo of setup, so below is picture near the end of the game
From the start I was able to get line of sight on all John's deployed tanks and started blowing them up, his reserves arrived on his left flank miles away from the main battle.
He did manage to destroy two Churchill Squadrons, but I managed to knock him down to one squadron of tanks and break him
As to his Infantry attack, they managed to get within 10" of the objective but had spent 6 turns pinned in the central buildings surrounded by my tanks.
Win 7 - 2 to me
At the end of the day, both myself and Stu had ended up on 11 victory points but I had killed far more units over the three games and so got 3rd place:)
