Kurskgiving!

On Friday at Legions Hobbies we got together for Kurskgiving…huh?

The battle of Kursk was about the biggest armored battle on the East Front. In FoW terms it occurred during the Mid War period, so in our game you assemble a Mid War list of tanks only that totals 750 points. It was not restricted to East Front armies as we have many players who concentrate on other areas. This was to be a free-for-all battle on an 8 foot by 8 foot board. Players would choose a 1 foot wide setup area with order determined by drawing normal playing cards. The turn order for shooting was determined the same way each turn. The only restriction was that on the first turn only you could not target your nearest neighbor. You would accumulate the points spent on the tank you eliminated for the victory total. All normal nationality and special rules would apply for your choices, and each individual tank could be from any list.

Ferdy hides from his “friends”….

My list:

1 Ferdinand 390 points
1 Marder I 75 points
2 Hornisse 275 points
—————–
740 pts . All Confident Veterans.

The plan was that the near invulnerable Ferdinand (16 front armor, 8 side/rear armor) would keep me in the game long enough to get some points before I was taken out. The other three “tanks” have nice guns but paper thin armor. I hoped the ability to “stormtroop” would keep them alive. I had three of the magnificent long 88s with 40″ range. I hoped I could “reach out and touch” my friends before they could do the same to me.

This is a fun event with lots of suspense over turn order each turn and trying to keep up with the scoring.

Different strategies govern what people buy…Howard chose a horde of Russian light tanks…lots of shots with very little armor. Some took Panthers and Tigers. Shermans of course for the Americans.

We were happily surprised to have 20 players show up! This would be “down and dirty” pretty quick. My position was near the upper right corner in the picture above near a village. The biggest close threats were big Mark who had a Panther, and Stephen with some scary Russian SU85s and KVs. I made a “Ribbentrop and Molotov” non-aggression pact with Stephen and tried to hide from Mark.

My Hornisse whiffed on a long range shot at some Shermans and then promptly failed to stormtroop, so of course it was killed by Mark’s Panther. This was to be my luck pretty much for the whole game. Nobody could shoot (I did bail a lot of targets) or stormtroop. The other Hornisse was similarly killed a few turns later. The Marder went down a turn later.

But the Ferdy, lucky Ferdy, remained till the end. Along the way I shrugged off three ass-shots from Panthers/Mk IVs (sorry, Mark!) during the game, so I felt part of my strategy was valid.

Unfortunately the second part was the fail part..I couldn’t kill any big targets! For an example, over two turns with Ferdy I hit Howard’s paper tankettes four times, and rolled 1,1,1, and 2 for FOUR BAILS!

Several other turns I lined up for promising shots, but my targets were killed by the player going right before me. I was one of the last two players alive along with Jim N., who finished in second place.

After all the smoke cleared, Howard was the big winner with his Russian Horde and spent his winnings on more toys at the store.

Thanks all who played in this fun game, and special thanks to Tim and Ben who did the grunt work running the thing….