Early War Escalation League (2)

Today we had our third meeting of the early war escalation league at Adler Hobby. This was our second gaming day and we were able to play two 800-point games. In addition to the games, store owner Gordon started us off with a demonstration on how to use Windsor & Newton's brush cleaner and restorer to revive old  and clogged brushes. Pictured to the left is a brush cleaning station with some of Gordon's 'snake oil' in use. I have to say this is some fantastic stuff and Gordon let us try it out on our own brushes and I was impressed at how well it brought brushes back to life, removing even the paint dried and clogged in the base of the brush's bristles. I brought a bottle home for later use. Good stuff

Here you can see my 15mm steppes house on a table beside some resin 15mm eastern front buildings. I think the scale is a pretty close match. My painting style is obviously significantly different than the one used on the resin buildings, but I was happy with the way the sizes matched up.  With a little more work I can probably come up with a few variants, enough to make a small village.


Below are photographs from the first game. This one pitted a German light panzer company against a French heavy tank company (sans Char-B tanks). This was a closely fought battle who's outcome swung from a 6-1 French victory to a 6-1 German victory based on the result of a single platoon motivation roll on the last turn. It's nice to see two forces so closely matched.







Below are photographs from the second game which pitted my German light pioneer company against the same French tank force. Since only three players had forces ready to play with we opted for two blue on red games.

This was a fairly one-sided game with me not doing so well. I had similar problems finding an answer to all-armor forces at this low point total as I did with 600 and 1000 point games with my late war Finish infantry company. Early on I had some success with my artillery, but when it came to assault time my one platoon of infantry was no match for two platoons of French tanks with their fist fulls of machine gun dice. Hopefully as the points escalate higher in the league things will shift closer to parity, but for now I'm still having trouble understanding how to play infantry vs. armor in this rule set.  I know it's effective, with the right player commanding the infantry, but so far I haven't obtained the necessary skill set to make it work. The good news is I'm very close to completing my 1750-point pioneer company.

After I finish the German pioneer company I'm working on, I'm going to start working on a British infantry tank company. I'm sure once I'm pushing an all-armor force, I will be able to better understand how it can be beaten by enemy infantry as I see this match up from the other side and receive the beatings I so obviously deserve.

This was another great day of gaming and an enjoyable way to spend a Saturday afternoon. If anyone is in the southern NH area and is interested in trying out early war Flames of War it's definitely not too late to join in. We're scheduled to continue playing 600-point forces for quite a while, and getting 600 points worth of troops painted up is actually a very easy task.