Flames of War pics - Panzers & photoshop...

Wargaming is an addictive thing as you all know, (and if you don't know maybe you're too far gone already) so in order to make sure we don't "max out" on one game system we put ourselves about a bit - flirting with something new or calling back to old fave on occasion.

Flames of War is one of those games we "maxed out" with and subsequently dropped for years. We even closed down Child's Play our popular 2 day doubles competition  variously held in Bath, Sheffield, Evesham and Westbury, possibly even Preston once?

However, like the tarts we are it's always nice to call back to an old flame when the weekly grind loses some her its shine. So with a series of big and toughly fought Napoleonic General de Brigade battles over we decided to run out some panzers and Russian tanks around the steppe one evening.

The battle pitted Russian and German armoured forces clashing around a series of farms and light industrial units somewhere on the vastness of the eastern front. The game was fun and very low key, here are some atmospheric slightly fuzzy B&W shots to enjoy...    

PAKs deployed near a farmhouse behind mines and barbed wire.
Peter pig 15's, possibly Command Decision guns, Faller plastic farmhouse.   

Mixed force of panzers move out to take on the various Russian tanks.
Battlefront & Command Decision by me for the club's collection.

SU76's leave the road.
Cracking models and crews by Tony.  

Sturmoviks view of the battlefield.

What manner of monster is this?
KV85's batter through a wood, tough cookies indeed.
Battlefront toys painted by me for Rich.

T34's assault German grenadiers in a wood, risky business. 

SU76 tank destroyers nose around a farm.

A Panzer 1V scans the horizon for enemy tanks and sees...

...only this rubbish, nothing to worry about - especially in Soviet hands under FOW rules!

Now these are more like it. Various marks of T34 tearing across the steppe.
Great shot of these tanks by Tony from various manufacturers.  

Soviet infantry advance in support of the tanks.
Shells and rockets fall near German positions, not! 

Rocket launchers and crew.

Those SU's again, this time from the rear, looks like they have brewed a panzer or two on the crest. 

Panzer Grenadiers debus to support these panzers.
Most of this is by me, club infantry mostly based by Chris.

Armoured engineers move into the workshop compound.
Smoke from burning tanks all over the place. 

View from a Stuka.

 Finally a few table wide shots of the whole thing in full technicolor!

Starting positions.

Lots of space and quite a lot of toys much of sadly not in the close up piccies. 

Same shot a little later.

Much later

A very relaxing evenings play, some big moves and no big guns - a fine mid-war bash. In fact we enjoyed this so much we decided on a Normandy game for our Christmas all dayer, photo report to follow. Hope you enjoy this trivial interlude as much as we did.