Flames of War tournament results + lots of pictures!

Today was a blast. I think Flames of War has a great system going on. My first 4 games went smoothly and I feel like the mechanics are a good representation of WWII combat - basically they work as they should; which is I think a contributing factor to my success at the tournament. I didn't really need to know every single little rule to know that *this* should be able to do *that*, etc. Speaking of success, I went 3 wins 1 loss :)!! which placed me right at 4th place, just enough to qualify for the regional. Not bad for my first day of playing!

As the internet purports, FoW is indeed very similar in many respects to 40k, thus if you have a good grasp of 40k I think the learning curve is not too steep. If you have some knowledge about WWII military history/units then the game should be even easier to pick up. (EG: I don't need be familiar with the exact rules to know that my panther can totally trown that sherman tank). The game designers have indeed done a good job making rules that properly represent the historical units.

Here are a bunch of pictures (click for larger image) that I took today. All the armies were very well painted. The guys really inspired me to touch up my current force.

 2x Tigers I used for objectives. I can't take credit for painting the closer one from the store shelf!

 My army gets a break during intermission.

 Soviet Tankovy force.. I would have loved to go up against this army >:)

 US mechanized army - Played this army and it was a close win.

 German w/ a captured T-34

 Soviet infantry army with 5x KV flame tanks. Played vs this list and barely won. Flamethrowers are nasty..

 Another well painted mech US list

 And another...

 Some gorgeous airborne (brits by the looks of the Typhoons?).

 Canadians were also represented!

 Waffen SS

Battle in progress

One of the tables... The terrain (as you can see) was simply excellent.

Unit performances... Well, firstly I was surprised by the Toldi light tanks. They are really worth their points. I also think that the 40mm gun upgrade is massive. I don't see how you can pass up on that. 

The Panzer IV/70's and Panther... Well, the PaK42 is simply crazy good. Without even fielding a king tiger I can already tell that it would be overkill. Allied tanks rarely even get to Armor 10, and are more often in the 6-8 range, so the AT 14 of the PaK42 is perfectly suited to deal with any armor thrown at me. Who knows, I could be wrong as I have only played 4 games..  But even the mighty IS-2 has just 10 front armor, still quite vulnerable to the long 75mm.  8 front armor is respectable on the tank destroyers, and the 10 front armor on the panther is simply hard to deal with for allied players and even axis. My first game my command panther bounced a few hits from an 88 - and survived the battle. In fact, in all 4 games my panther didn't get knocked out. I think that alone is a testament to its durability.