In April, Sam managed to finish a truly epic Bagration campaign, playing scores of games over many months. My hat is off to him. In an utterly unequal display, I played a single game that was 3 years in the making.
In July of 2023, almost exactly three years ago, I purchased a brand new Flames of War: Kursk starter set. I had always been more interested in the minis than the rules, since a friend had once built two full armies and used them for Bolt Action in 15mm, which was great fun. But now another friend was looking to get back into tabletop gaming and really loved the idea of starting a new game by splitting a two player starter set. We both did, and so after shopping around we settled on Flames of War. It just so happened that I worked for an online retailer at the time that gave me a hefty employee discount, so we were off to the races. The following month we decided it would make sense to get a Stalingrad box to round out our forces with some infantry and artillery, and suddenly our armies felt enormous!
I wish I could say that we painted furiously and got models on the table in no time, but being working stiffs and dads meant that hobbying tended to happen once every week or two over garage beers. These were great times, but not conducive to speed. And yet, we were able to keep moving forward. Years passed, my friend had a second kid, and yet we were able to keep plodding along. I eventually finished my Soviets (much to the shame of my buddy, who was working with substantially fewer Germans) and started working on terrain: Trees, hills and houses.
As our forces slowly came together we did play some small games. We would put a couple tank companies on the table to learn how they worked, and then one or two infantry companies another time, but that true culminating event, the huge match with all our painted forces on the battlefield took years. And yet, slowly, glacially slowly, we painted up our armies, and then one day, there was nothing left to paint. A Soviet Infantry Battalion of two companies, two companies of artillery, and one company each of T-70s, T-34s and SU-85s stood ready to do battle with a German Infantry Battalion of three companies, a Tiger, two Panthers, two Panzer IIIs, two Panzer IVs, two Nebelwerfers and three 5cm guns. Immediately we realized that our forces were extremely unbalanced.
This may sound funny, but we never did any list building with all our forces ahead of this game. We had played a few smaller games here and there, but neither of us had ever bothered to see just how many points we could actually field. We had both assumed that the boxes came with relatively balanced forces and never bothered to check. Both boxes came with these wonderful unit cards that had points costs on the back, making it easy to play pickup games, but crucially, I threw two huge monkey wrenches into the mix on game night: I had purchased a Bagration book for my soviets, and I had packed away the soviet cards I had received from both boxes. When actually calculating the total points we could field, we realized that the Germans had nearly a 2:1 advantage. This was a staggering realization, but we made due. We set up an 80 point game and let the Mid vs Late war play itself out.
To be honest, I can’t tell you if Mid vs Late War actually mattered or not. What I can tell you is that learning to play with my unit cards and then replacing them with a book I had not fully memorized gave me one enormous, glaringly stupid disadvantage that had a huge impact on the game. In the Bagration book 45mm and 76mm guns can be taken in many flavors, but there is only one specific entry in the book that allows them to fire indirect artillery salvos, and I missed it entirely. The mid-war soviet cards that came with the boxes, however, did have the salvo option and I had planned for this when deploying, not realizing I had purchased direct fire artillery instead.
In hindsight, this should have been easy to house-rule or figure out, but we were well into turn one before we noticed my mistake and I did not want to delay the game any further by flipping through books, so we played it as it was. The Germans set up defensive positions and I was ready to assault in true Soviet fashion. My tanks rumbled forward and scored two early kills on the flanks, leaving the Tiger alone to fend for itself. The thing about a Tiger, however, is that it is damned hard to kill and really good at killing. First my T-70s were routed, then my T-34s, and finally my SU-85s. The German infantry hardly moved, sitting tight in foxholes and weathering an absolute deluge of small arms fire. Without indirect fire artillery it was impossible to root them out. With my armor gone I bet everything on an assault on the beleaguered German right, where they had sustained the most casualties, but they were able to force my waves of infantry back with horrible losses.
As the evening drew on I decided to call the game. I had lost more infantry stands than the Germans started with, as well as all my offensive firepower. This match would go to the Germans, despite my best efforts. But the real victory for the two of us was sticking with this project for three years, nearly to the date, to finally get two fully painted armies on the board and a game under our belts. The German player now has a Bagration book as well, and I have dug my cards back out so we can play the game as intended. Whenever we are able to make that happen, I will report back. Until then, happy hobbying!
