Welcome back to Flames of War Friday. My local club's Operation Market Garden campaign began last weekend so its time to see just how the Mighty Ape 11th Armoured performed and we'll also be taking a look at the upcoming Flames of War: Great War.

Operation Market Garden Campaign begins!

Campaigns are a fantastic way to get players in your neighbourhood or gaming club playing more games and to get new people introduced into the hobby. For those who aren't familiar with campaigns, in essence you get a bunch of players together to participate in a series of tabletop games which are linked either by a narrative, a map or a historical event.

The results of each game will influence how the campaign progresses, with players capturing new territories, gaining reinforcements or new abilities for their troops and ultimately one player or side will secure an overall victory.

The Firestorm campaign which my local club, T.C.O.W, has just begin is a strategic map based campaign which recreates Operation Market Garden, as depicted in the outstanding film A Bridge Too far. The Allied forces have to secure key bridges throughout Holland with paratroopers and hold them until their ground and armoured units can link up.

Meanwhile the German players are attempting to cut off the vulnerable supply lines in order to halt the Allied advance.

Game One: How not to use artillery support

When it comes to playing FOW I'm very much still finding my feet, which means for me the campaign is a great way to learn more of the rules and gain experience playing against some really good players. Unfortunately this will no doubt hamper the Allied progress as my British Armoured are yet to make any form of advance.

Still, things were looking a little more positive than in the pre-campaign round as I was matched up against Gavin's KG Knaust list, primarily comprised of infantry with some anti-tank guns and Tiger I in support. I was lucky enough to receive 2 units of British artillery for support.

The mission was Breakthrough, which required me to push my forces diagonally across the board in order to secure objectives on the far side, where my reserves could also come onto the table to try to contest.

I had some early success and destroyed an 88 in the first turn but I made the mistake of being too tentative with my paratroop platoon and held them back instead of pushing them forward into assault. I also wasted too much of my artillery trying to take out the last 88 and on dug-in infantry, underestimating just how resilient they can be.

This enabled Gavin to pick off my tanks with anti-tank fire from the flanks and wipe out my reserves when they arrived, scoring a 5–2 victory.

So what should I have done?

Used smoke from my artillery and tanks to cover my paratroop assault into the closest German infantry units and bombard the flanking anti-tank guns to suppress them. This would have allowed me to concentrate my forces through the other flank and move on the objectives.

So this week I'm off to study the rules for smoke bombardments and check out some battle reports to see how other, better players use British tanks.

Overall Results

Two of the other Allied Generals scored close victories, with the Red Devils capturing the bridge at Nijmegen and the Welsh Guards pushing forward towards Valkenswaard . However elsewhere things are looking dire as most of our armour is struggling to get out of our deployment zones.

Flames of War: The Great War Coming Soon

To commemorate 100 years since the beginning of the First World War Battlefront are introducing their latest era for Flames of War; The Great War. This new rules set covers the end of the war, 1918, when new technologies, tactics and strategies began to break the deadlock of trench warfare.

As in regular Flames of War the focus is upon battles at the company scale, so aspects of trench-fighting such as long preliminary bombardments are incorporated prior to the beginning of the game. The missions are also structured so that only the defender deploys within fortifications which stops the game from being static.

The initial release will comprise of both British and German forces, including infantry units, artillery and tanks and there are two great value 1500 point army deals; Blitz's Battle­group and Mitchell's Ma­ruaders.

Since we've been having some stock delays due to the recent distribution changes for Battlefront we're not yet taking any customer orders, as we don't want to keep people waiting. As soon as we've got confirmation of our stock arrival we'll let you know.

In the mean time check out this gameplay video from Battlefront to see it in action.

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From the Hobbies Gorilla