AAR: Bolt Action Tank Wars! Danny's Host Game!

       Danny needed an excuse to use some of his German armor. Since he had gotten into Bolt Action, he had bought an array of tanks, including U.S. Armor. In fact, I still have quite a few of his plastic tanks to build for him. It just seems a little hard to motivate when I have other projects. There does not seem to be a rush on this. Anyway, up to this point, only six of his tanks have since wargaming combat. One Panther I borrowed for last year's Historicon for a convention game. So Danny had set up a happy little table for a full onslaught of clashing steel! We brought over a large portion of my wife's British armor. Though, the Germans did win out in this game, the quote of the game  has to be: "The Ferdinand Tank Destroyer should be awesome, because it eats up a lot of points!"  That thing could not do anything until the last round! Either way, here was the game shot at Danny's house!
     

AAR: Tanks! Testing Out the Rules of Battlefront's Tank Game in 28 mm.

      This month seems to be the month of tanks. I am sure that that is not an official thing, but we have been playing a lot of tanks. A lot of it has to due with some wargaming laziness. I have been trying to finish up a multitude of projects, so I have the month of June free for my Historicon project. I have yet to start the board, which reminds me why I planned it out as far back as November. This laziness works great with tanks recently, because I can easily set up on current commission projects with a minimum amount of pulling out miniatures. I know I am not the only one guilty at this! Also, there have been a bunch of Tank games we have stumbled across. Quite a few WWII games have been released in the past year of two. This is probably why the theme for this year's Historicon is "The History of Tanks."
  Anyway, our friend, Bill brought over the games Tanks that Battlefront wrote. I had not looked into it much assuming it was just a ploy to buy more tanks from them. I our case based off of this game, we could run a 20 man tournament with just our collection of 15mm tanks. When I started playing Flames of War, I made it a point to collect the 9th Panzer Division: that is the whole division! Yes, I would not need that many tanks in any game we can think of. Of course, we expanded from there. However,  I had the table set up for picture for a client, so we decided to test the rules out in 28mm. The board was suppose to be for Gilford Courthouse for the American Revolution. Same thing!
    After playing the game twice, I concluded that this was the X-Wing/Wings of Glory of Tanks. The rules were stupid simple for the core game. There was some elements of Flames of War such as armor saves, and some of the special rules like the British Semi-Indirect rules. The Wings of Glory comparison comes from the damage rolls of 6's where you draw cards from a deck of cards that can range anywhere from being on fire to bailing out. The X-wing part tends to be on movement and the various cards you can specialize your crew with. We did not mess with the specialized crew cards yet. We just want a good test run of the core rules. I thought they were fun and easy. My wife did not seem as convinced. Maybe, it was not bloody enough for her. Anyway, the pictures are from the first game where I played against Bill. I do not know what happened to the other pictures of the game Tim and I played. The game might be even quicker at 15mm on the 3 x 3 board they suggest. Who knows!
   

AAR: Tank War: German Panzer Block Party

       Nothing says "Yes" to us like a simple tank battle. Even though, we like battles with infantry and support, tanks are always a fun way to kill each other on a Saturday afternoon. In this case, Danny and I decided to face off and defend the town against large force of British tanks. This seemed somewhat balanced with 18 British tanks versus the 10 German ones. Some people would call foul on the Tiger I tank and seven Panthers, plus two Panzer IV's. However, my wife, Kalissa is not afraid! She decided to make us work for our victory. The score was one British disabled tank left to our seven! Out of all of the hits, it is amazing that she did not kill more tanks than she did. I am amazed I killed as much, since I was not rolling that well. Anyway, below are photos of the destruction. Enjoy!