Late War Training Mission

Not quite like the Denzel Washington movie "Training Day", Gordon and I got together yesterday to each try out our late war German forces. Since this was Germany vs. Germany, Flames of War calls it a 'training mission'. I had my Panzerkompanie that I've been working on and Gordon had an Panzerspähkompanie reconnaissance company with swarms and swarms of half tracks and armored cars. As the battle began I smirked at the puny thin-skinned armored cars from the perch high above them in my Panther tanks....

With no fear, Gordon gave my tanks the 'bum rush' and was on me like ugly on an ape right off the bat. I thought, sure I'll just start popping open these tin cans with my 'real' tanks. Then one of his Pumas blew up the first panther. Houston, we have a problem! Gordon contested his objective in my deployment area on Turn two and I was 'feeding in' PANTHERS to keep him from winning the game. Holy crapola Batman. This armored car company he had was serious business.


Over the next 7 or 8 turns we slugged it out with successive incoming waves and constant pressure coming from Gordon's swarm. Gordon was clawing at my soft underbelly and punching me right in the nose at the same time. Eventually he destroyed my entire platoon of Panthers and my rocket launcher battery had 3 of 4 vehicles bailed out. My tiny motorcycle recon unit, sent their cycles to the rear and dug into fox holes immediately and even then were suppressed most of the game. At one point Gordon's Hummel artillery knocked out a second Panther and the remaining one headed for home....the coward. That left me rushing my Wirbelwinds forward to contest the objective to keep from losing the game.

In the end I was just barely able to scrape out a narrow victory thanks to being able to rush Gordon's right flank after catching his 88 battery limbered up. All things considered it was a very close and exciting game. The armored cars gave me more trouble than I expected and almost more than I could handle.