Our usual Wednesday night meeting took an interesting twist. I was playing Don wha had decided to forego his usual Russian horde in favour of a German scout car list so it was to be a blue on blue match as I only had my Germans with me.

My list can be found in the earlier article and Don’s was as follows:

Core

Scout car HQ.

5 units of three scout cars.

2 units of two 8Rads

Support

4 x Marders

1 x 8.8

2 x Ferdinand

1 x Tiger

We played annihilation and both worryingly looked across the table to try and figure out how we were going to break formations (I think I was slightly more concerned as Don had an awful lot of scout cars and no matter how well I hid or dug my infantry in, he had tons of machine guns to keep trying to gun them down).

These were definitely armoured cars and not Panzer II’s

First turn was a bit of a none event with me going first and counting as moving, too few shots at range resulted in not much apart from a lucky shot from the 7.5’s taking out and armoured car (not a Panzer II).

Don had similar luck on his turn with the Marder vs Marder contest not amounting to much due to range and cover. He rather sensibly decided to car park his scout cars behind any hills he could find.

Turn 2 was still a cagey affair, the only advantage for me was that artillery was free to fire so the mortars got ranged in on the 88 and the Nebs had a crack at the Marders, all with little success. My 7.5 half tracks pushed forward and tried to start whittling down the scout car horde. My infantry also dug in on either side of the table to try and cause Don some trouble later in the game.

Don hit back on his go, destroying a Marder and a half track but we both largely continued to roll badly so fatalities were low.

Turn 3, or as I like to call it, throwing caution to the wind rolled around. Deciding that I’d have to go and try my best to inflict as much damage as I could on Dons scout cars. The Marders and Ferdinand rumbled forward meaningDon couldn’t hide behind the hill anymore but put both units in harms way themselves.

On the left flank the half tracks made another couple of kills but more poor dice rolling prompted Steve (who had been watching the game) to offer me some new dice.

To Steve’s credit, the red ones did seem luckier.

Don was, again, not so lucky with his dice rolls with his bailed cars refusing to remount and only causing a few of my half tracks to bail as well.

Turn 4 and, armed with my new dice I again set about causing as much damage to Dons scout cars while trying to ignore the fact there were two Ferdinands and a Tiger roaming around.

The 7.5 halftracks continued to do some damage but it just never seemed enough so the Ferdinand and my one remaining scout car had to get involved although I could see what was coming from that move. On the right flank my Marders did some damage but again they were awfully exposed and I dreaded what was to happen with the return fire.

One massive piece of good luck for the turn though was the mortars killing off Don’s 88.

Don got back as expected and a blitzing pair of Ferdinands now had rear shots into my own but thankfully failed to damage it.

On the right flank my Marders we’re taking more punishment and eventually Don finished them off.

Turn 5 was the end game. I was running out of things to do any damage to Dons scout cars and he was on a few last stand tests.

I moved my Pak 40s into an offensive position as a last ditch option for turn 6 if needed. The real test was if my Ferdinand and scout car could kill off the remaining scouts they were targeting. As the smoke cleared one 8rad remained which meant Don still had 3 platoons (although 2 of them were on last stand tests if he didn’t manage to remount some).

On his go, the Ferdinands took their expected shots and killed mine along with the heroic single scout car who had arguably kept me in the game.

It was now all down to last stand rolls. Unfortunately for him, Don got very unlucky and with two units fleeing the table, the game was mine.

I don’t usually enjoy playing blue on blue but I had a real blast with this game. It was one of those games that swings with every turn, with one player being on top and then the other which Flames of War seems to do so well.

We both had a great time but it would seem we both need to get new dice.