Motivation test - FOW battle report

The last month has been on the busy side, family celebrations, moving houses and still working all but the statutory days. Is that an excuse for not doing much painting? Not really. Part of this was because when I did get drive to do some painting I couldn’t find my black spray-paint to undercoat some of my FOW troops. When I did find it I lost inspiration. I needed something to motivate me so Dan and I arranged to play a game of FOW last night. Unfortunately due to time constraints we didn’t get to play a full game but it was nice to get back into the swing of it again. And yes it worked, I have itchy fingers and am keen to get back to painting my Hell on Wheels’ army.

The table after set up. Unfortunately all the photos are a tad blurry

We set up for a game of no retreat, Dan defending with his fallschirmjager and I was attacking with his British guards. The table was something out of Lord of the Rings, rocky cliff faces, plenty of trees and a railroad track, they had railroads in LOTRs right? Not large amounts of terrain to hide as the defender yet not so great for advancing troops either. Dan hid one of the objectives behind the train station and I placed my objective out in the open. I set my troops up in two separate groups, one coming down from the side cliffs and another from the middle, Dan dispersed his infantry across the centre woodlands.

Half my troops ready for action! 

Turn 1

So turn one began, I advanced and rattled off some machine gun rounds, luckily I killed 1 of Dans, dug in gone to ground fallschirmjager troops. What are the odds, 6 to hit, 3+ infantry save then 6+ firepower test and there was no way I was getting a 7.

Dans turn arrived without reinforcements. Unfortunately I couldn’t get my cars, trucks and tanks into adequate cover as Dans PaK 40s were on the cliffs opposite the area terrain at ground level only provided concealment. Dan hitting on a 6 managed to blow up one of my tanks. He then rattled my armoured cars with machine gun fire from his machine-gun platoon in the nearby forest and unfortunately I failed a armour save (failing on a one) causing one to bail out although I think I destroyed it because I didn’t like it anyway… oops. Dan also moved his troops in the forest to the other side of the terrain.

Turn 2

Tanks moving in

Big mistake, I moved my tanks and cars up to the fringe of the area terrain within 15cm range of Dans troops and pummelled them with machine gun fire, only killing one team yet pinning them down. Then I charged in my armoured cars for an assault, the daimer dingo got bogged down but I under cover with Dans troops pined he was hitting on a 6+ as his anti-tank guns only had ROF 1, no hits. I successfully destroyed two teams and Dan failed both his motivation tests causing the team to fall back towards the objective at the train station.

After the assault

Moving towards the objective

Dan was crestfallen however he managed to unpin his troops but failed to dig them in. His StuGs arrived in reserved and moved up his left flank to destroy my 3ton trucks which I had not offloaded yet. Without being in machine-gun range he had to fire his main guns at long range and half ROF, all misses and his StuGs out in the open for next turn! The rest of his troops did some moving and shooting as I recall yet no hits unfortunately.

Dan's StuGs 

And then we called it.

Only two rounds in but it was a hoot. I think both Dan and I agree things were looking more in my favour yet I think there was still hope for Dan. The terrain probably wasn’t in his advantage either and setting his PaKs away from the action might not have been the best. However what we both agree is that FOW is a great game. As Dan describes it a true war game! The rules are admittedly rather complex but they do make for a highly strategic and thematic game. Achieving both is truly noteworthy of a great game. Now to get on with some painting!