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Tuesday 17 September 2013

DICE-DEVILS do it again!

A fantastic battle report from everyone's favourite Canadian Flames of War Group!


Just look at the battlefield, it's great! A rail-head, some small German villages, some Bundeswehr units holding out, with a huge amount of Soviet Armour pouring forth.



I am blown away by the contribution of these guys to this project, and also their support and on going suggestions.


Marders moving in to Position to use their MILAN's!



When I'm a bit fed up of it, I take stock, have a look at what these guys are doing and a couple of the other sites out there and I feel re-energised to carry on.








I would recommend you go to their site and have a look at the videos.....Their FOW WWII stuff is also a great read!

http://www.dicedevils.com/

7 comments:

  1. I like their AARs and I don't play FoW. If you watch all their vid from the beginning you can see how their group grew and their collections grew.

    I do have a question about the rules. This is not a veiled criticism (cause this topic often comes up as a criticism), I'm genuinely curious. Also understand that I've observed games and skimmed the v3 rules.

    Why are the tanks grouped together like they are in the majority of the photos I see of the game? Does it have to do something with morale or unit cohesion? Is there a disadvantage to having your tanks spread out?

    Thank you.

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  2. Great Question, well asked...I wrote you can essay taking 15mins then hit backspace accidentally and lost it before I hit publish...

    Essentially in FOW you are a Company Commander (Major/ Senior Captain), with a Core Combat Company under your Command with additional assets from Battalion and Divisional Assets. You command sub-units, Platoons of between 1-5 units, there is a Command distance between 4-8 inches depending on their skill - Conscript > Trained > Veteran.

    You can spread out your units, to stop Aircraft strikes or Artillery bombardments decimating your platoons. But when moving forward, you tend to concentrate your forces in a "Schwerpunkt" because ranges of guns is key, when firing over 16 inches it is +1 to hit, so when you hit an enemy platoon you want to kill it outright, and not trade fire, and that means concentrating your forces.

    Also when concentrated, you can put recce units around your forces and protect them hidden or ambushing units, which is much harder if they are spread out.

    If you are fighting defensively spread out is generally better (not always!) and in offensive concentration is generally better.

    It's great at simulating that 2km x 2km bit of the front where the tips of the spear hit each other... If you want to discuss this off-line I'm more than happy... Hit me up at mwnciboo@gmail.com :)

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    Replies
    1. I hate it when I decimated long typed answers!

      But thank you. This explains it well enough. Makes sense well enough.

      Thank you for typing out your answer a second time. Thats dedication to your readers.

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  3. Nice looking game. I will as you recommend check their web site. Back later.

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  4. To be honest, they were crammed together purely because we had 4800 pts on a 4 by 8 board! Also, for ONCE Rob didn't take any Off-Board M109 Paladins. In Flames of War, if there is no Arty or Air, I usually put my tanks very close together. I have found that if you spread out, the enemy can use LOS blocking to isolate and snipe platoon commanders, and then your platoon isn;t going anywhere. Then I group my units together so that I have volume of fire. I was hitting most of their guys on 5's or 6's due to range and cover, and they were hitting back on 4s and 5s (due to training), so I needed the concentration of fire in this case.

    Now Im torn on whether or not to repaint a tonne of my stuff to the Syrian/Egyptian/Iraqi paint jobs for the upcoming Flames of War supplement!

    Dennis

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    1. I'm all over the new supplement...I'm going for Jordanians not sure if they fit in this blog so whether I would start a new one, or just done a supplementary post? Anyway I'm going for 8 Centurions (2 tank HQ, 2 platoons of 3, Mechanised Platoon (3 squads) and a half battery of 25 pdrs (3 guns). Total points 990 - As we have all agreed to play just 1000pts until it takes off!

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  5. Keep it for this blog. Don't split it up, despite the name!

    ReplyDelete