Blake and Wayne's Doubles Tournament

Flames Of War

Blake and Wayne's Doubles Tournament

This year’s Mid-war Grand Tournament was only my second ever Flames Of War tournament. So I was excited to get a chance to play some new players and team up with a grizzled tournament veteran in the form of Wayne.

The first tournament I played in was not long after I begun working at Battlefront Miniatures; I didn’t know the rules that well and I was using an army Phil had loaned me. However, my opponents were very helpful with the rules, but I tended to stay away from doing anything I wasn’t too sure about like assaults. As you can imagine, I didn’t do too well and ended up coming second to last. Since then, I have been busy organising and running the Battlefront Grand Tournaments, so the Mid-war Grand Tournament would be my chance to redeem myself.

Wayne and I decided to field a Soviet force; and after much deliberation Wayne decided to field a Strelkovy Army while I’d provide the armoured might with a Medium Tankovy Company. We also choose to field our forces as Fearless Conscripts so our opponents would have to deal with a huge horde of Soviet infantry backed up by slightly smaller horde of tanks.

Armies

18th Rifle Corps at the Stutye Bridgehead
The Soviet bridgehead at Stutye, to the south of Karotyak, on the Don River was dangerously ignored by the Hungarians defending the area in the Summer and Autumn of 1942.

Strelkovy Batalon HQ
Flame-thrower Section (Painted by Casey) No attacks were launched against it by either the Hungarians or Germans, this would prove a fatal mistake. On 12 January 1943 it was the main route of attack for the Soviet 18th Rifle Corps. The attack would eventually break through the Hungarian 2nd Army. The corps was supported by T-34 tanks and Lend Lease M3 Stuart tanks.
Strelkovy Batalon (Fearless Conscript)
(Page 216, Eastern Front)
 
Strelkovy Batalon HQ
30 points
Strelkovy Company
3 Rifle Platoon
Komissar

305 points
5 points
Strelkovy Company
3 Rifle Platoon
Komissar

305 points
5 points
Strelkovy Artillery Battalion
4x 76mm ZIS-3 guns,
4x 122mm obr 1938 Howitzers
Observer Rifle team


250 points
15 points
Flame-thrower Section
80 points
Total:
995 points
Strelkovy Company (painted by Wayne)
Strelkovy Company (painted by Casey)
Strelkovy Artillery Battalion
Tankovy Batalon (Fearless Conscript)
(Page 188, Eastern Front)
 

Tankovy Batalon HQ
1x T-34 obr 1942


75 points
Tankovy Company     
5x T-34 obr 1942

370 points
Light Tankovy Company
5x M3l (M3A1 Stuart)
4x with AA MG

185 points
20 points
Tank Killer Company
2x SU-85

155 points
Limited Air Support (Il-2 Shturmovik)
200 points
Total:
1005 points

All five games were very enjoyable; Wayne and I work well together and I would often stop to talk tactics with him if a plan sprung to mind during the course of a game. Having two players worked especially well with the size of the force we took simply in terms of moving that many models around the table!

We lost our first game, Dust Up. It was the first time I had played the Mission, but since Wayne had written it, I was in good hands in getting to grips with the mechanics of the mission.

Next up were our Battlefront colleagues, Casey and Mark. We were holding our own in Breakthrough until Casey’s Aufklärungs halftracks showed up from Reserve and mowed down all of Wayne’s infantry in a hail of machine-gun fire.

Battalion Command T-34 obr 1942
The final game of day one was Fighting Withdrawal, which we lost due to the game timing out. We were the Attackers.
Tankovy Company
 Light Tankovy Company (Painted by Casey)
Tank Killer Company Day two was more successful. Up against the another Battlefront pairing, this time Chris and Dan; we were suffering under Dan’s Devastating Bombardment template from his Panzerwerfer 42 rocket launchers until we claimed victory from the jaws of defeat as Chris’ army broke before any of his Reserves had arrived. 
The last game was a grudge match against Sean and Victor; Wayne’s infantry horde simply ran over Victor’s Fallschirmjäger while my pair of Conscript SU-85s managed to hold the right flank for the entire game against an advancing Tiger and Panzer III N!
Tankovy Company
All in all the Mid-war Grand Tournament was a very enjoyable experience. I’d highly recommend the Doubles format to anybody who hasn’t played in a Flames Of War tournament before but have always wanted to give it a go. Teaming up with a more experienced partner definitely makes the tournament a whole lot more enjoyable.

~ Blake.

We’d like to thank Casey for lending us some of his Soviets because I was too slack to get everything painted in time (you can tell by the fact I still haven't finished basing by Strelkovy Company). Casey’s lent us one Strelkovy Company, a Flame-thrower Section and the five Stuarts. The Shturmoviks we used were borrowed from the Battlefront collection, so you can see them by looking at the online store. The rest of the models were from my collection.

~ Wayne
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