The FOW Centurion Challenge - February Update

In episode 22 of Beyond The Foxholes I set myself the rather bonkers New Years Resolution to play 100 games of Flames Of War in 2015! Follow and track my progress as I attempt to conquer the FOW Centurion Challenge!

Hi all, Matt here with another update on THE challenge! February is a busy month in the UK FOW events calendar due to Corrivalry and Breakthrough Assault taking place and therefore plenty of games for me to get stuck into! So how did I get on...

Here is the first bundle of games I played, using mostly the British Armour from Overlord:

Corrivalry was certainly the baptism of fire for my British Sherman list. I really struggled in every game I played in actually (including the one game that I managed to win!). It was tough in the attack as I couldn't remove things quickly enough with 25 pdrs and Shermans (the vast amount of terrain on each table didn't help). It was even worse in the defence! I was rather unlucky in that I mostly came up against artillery park lists, including Jez's 2nd ID, or auto attack tank armies in mobile battles, but still it was overwhelmingly obvious that my list lacked balance. I spent most of my tournament watching other people play, (as my games were ending so quickly) & so it's back to the old drawing board on the army list creation again...

                                               Who fancies assaulting that?!

Corrivalry was a good opportunity to see how different armies work. I especially enjoyed watching the 'combined arms' infantry lists and decided that I'd like to try this myself with a new British infantry company for Breakthrough Assault 3! A good opportunity to paint up my PSC 6pdrs (which I shall review in the coming weeks).

And so a couple of great practice game wins against two competitive players helped rebuild my confidence somewhat following that heavy losing streak. I then took my new British army to Breakthrough Assault in confident mood of beating last years result (2nd from bottom!)

I started Breakthrough Assault in great fashion as you can see above, to the point where everyone was taking the p**s with their patronising pats on my head and telling me that I did, "really really well" and that I was in fact overachieving by miles! As mean as the guys were to me, I had beaten last years overall result in the first game and so they might have been making a point actually! 

Following the good games on Saturday I was set to enjoy my last two on the Sunday.. however.. the victory whiskeys on the night out certainly made focus and concentration difficult to say the least - what a filthy hangover! To make matters worse we played cauldron and free for all (who decided on those missions?!). Fortunately both of my opponents were great fun to play against and I was able to give them decent games, with respectable 3-4 losses in both. I finished in 10th overall, which of course led to further tongue in cheek 'compliments' from the guys. 

Lessons to learn:

- Must work out how to keep my supporting armour alive when playing infantry

- Practice night attack!

- No alcohol ever again! (This lesson may take a while to master)

Thanks for reading everyone. March is a much quieter month on the gaming front for me, so I'll make sure that I put some of my army lists up in the next post and review some of the pros and cons in each and the tweaks I plan to make.

All the best

Matt