Standby.....GO!

This is it, the last of my three part series on Historicon 2013. 'Sitzkreig' is the new thing taking over Flames of War posts far and wide. It seems a lot of people had issues with people taking too much time during their games and now the community is looking for a way to fix it. That subject is for another post, for now I will close out this post with coverage of my games and my own thoughts on how Nationals went from my perspective. My first game was against Russ from CGR and we had a busy and great game! He really pushed with his forces and really put his Panzerspahkompanie German list to my limits, the 82nd really had to fight them off and keep the enemy from capturing their objective. Everything from Infantry, Panzer II's and Marders, this list had it all and was tough to fend off.

Looking back on this game a week later, I think I was luck with my deployment area and it worked out that I could only allow Russ to get to the objective by pressing hard against the dug in Airborne platoon. The Anti-Tank guns were able to suppress the incoming armor, and there was a lot of it! I got a lucky roll early in the game and was able to range in on a column of tanks and blew up three of his Panzer IV's. That was a big boost, as then my Sherman and Firefly platoon that came in on the secondary objective in the Reserve area, only had to deal with one Panzer IV. Russ had no choice but to trade shots with me a few times and we both went to the end, never losing that one Panzer IV to enemy fire. The Sherman and Firefly that were engaging it never hit it to take it out. Back to gunnery school for the guys in the platoon. My other tank platoon did not fair as well, they bogged a few times and got a little bottle necked and Russ was able to capitalize with Marder shots, nearly wiping out my platoon.

These two games were just plain tough! Steve was really patient with me and knew I had my hands full moving across open terrain, the threat of air attack and constant artillery kept me from getting an entire platoon across the board, they assaulted one of his observers and moved into the woods with intention of taking out his Nebelwerfers but we ran out of time. Dave kept me busy with his Canadian list, his use of devastating bombardments time and time again was enough to rattle the fillings out of my teeth! I was aggressively defending two objectives and was able to hold him off the right side of the table. He came at me with everything on the left, Shermans, Archers, Buffalo's, and infantry. We literally went down to time with his platoon commander carrying on the assault all by himself as a last ditch effort to win the game. I held my ground with four remaining stands and came out with a single point in this close loss.

Russ closes in with all the armor he could muster!

Really nicely painted Audie Murphy.

Get off the road!!

Beach landing display board.

I love airfields, this one was excellent!

Hard to taxi through a cratered runway!!

Rob and Dennis plan their next move at the I-95 Doubles

Cool rocket effects!

M-57 Anti-Tank guns cover their 82nd Airborne brothers as the Germans move in!

Now that it's all over for the next little while, we'll likely be looking at heading down to Fall In, being held in Lancaster PA. The ten hour drive was a long one, but worth it for this great event. I'll be busy in the next little while getting some battle reports ready for the Overlord campaign and deciding on whether to prep  an Early War army for next year. I'll likely get some more posts done in the coming week, hope you enjoyed the series!