Day of Days 2012- Kiwi's Big Weekend Out

Well, over the weekend my 4th Armoured Kiwi's went for a wee outing down to Timaru, to try to take Italy. Coming along for the ride (or leading the charge) was the 22nd Motor Brigade, supported by the Royal Horse Artillery- In the form of 8 Priests!

My list was simple,
HQ- 2 Shermans, 1 with a 50 cal
Tank Platoon- 3 Shermans
Tank Platoon- 3 Shermans

Nick's had a little more finesse!
HQ with smoking mortars
2 Motor Platoons
Carriers with an ungodly number of MGs
8 Priests

Ok, so not much more finesse, but it had more than the 8 shermans did!

So how did the games go? Well, Nick and I managed to win the first game, and then we progressivly got worse and worse at rolling dice. Things like failing 8 out of 8 Sherman tank saves, frontally to Panzer III's (yep, that would be 8 1's and 2's) followed by him rolling ALL the firepowers (all 4+) made it pretty hard!

But, that being said, Nick and I gave ourselves the best possible chances to win each game, we just managed to NOT roll the dice we needed at critical points, and somehow we made it so that our opponents were able to do the opposite!

The most telling statistic? I played 4 games, with 8 sherman tanks each game. So out of 32 Sherman tanks used in the tournament, I had 28 destroyed. Not run away, actually destroyed. The remaining 4 actually survived the games!

Thanks firstly to our opponents Craig, Ian, Nigel, Dale, David, Tony, Stephen and Noel, I did enjoy our 4 games! Then a huge thanks to Craig for getting DoD sorted, I think we are on to a winning formula with what we have here, we are already tweaking things for next years DoD- Alamein baby!

Now, lots of photos of the weekend

All in all, a fun weekend. Next up? Tonight I will post about Achilles' first run around...

CP

New Zealand 4th Armoured Division

Well, here is my 1200 point force for Day of Days this year, the New Zealand Armoured!

Now, in keeping with the "Ironman Challenge"- I had to choose a force that was either mechanised or tank based. This all stemmed from Jamie pointing out the proliferation of "tough" infantry forces- and the players running them not taking any risks with the lists!

1200 points, in all it's glory!

So, for 1200 points, what do I get?

Company HQ- 2 Sherman M4A2, 1 AA 50 cal HMG
Tank Platoon- 3 M4A2 Sherman
Tank Platoon- 3 M4A2 Sherman

Company HQ- Tank numbers 15 and 16

First Platoon- Tank Numbers 3, 4 and 5

Second Platoon- Tanks 6,7 and 8

So that is 1200 points. To bring it up to the 1750 needed for Warclouds (if i go) I needed to add yet more stuff!

Sherman OP Tank (left) and an extra Company HQ Sherman- number 17

An M32 Tank Recovery Vehicle

'The story goes that the 4th armoured had only wheeled recovery vehicles on their Order of Battle, but the terrain in Italy demanded the need for something more capable! The 20th Armoured Regiment came upon a suspicious looking haystack in their advance in Italy, lo and behold an armoured recovery vehicle was inside, bogged down! So once the kiwis had pulled it out under sporadic mortar fire, they painted over the allied star and then it was theirs! Eventually the Americans wanted it back, but the 20th managed to keep it. Once the 20th had gotten theirs, the other armoured regiments got one through far more legitimate means!'

Three Stuart V Jalopies- Tank Numbers 4,5 and 6

The Stuart Light tank had been in service since the desert war, acting as a light tank, but by late war was relegated totally to a recon role. The 37mm turret was removed, to produce the Jalopy. This gave it better cross country performance (due to the reduced weight). Defense was kept with a 50 cal HMG, which the Kiwis put with a gun shield (borrowed in this case from a BF ACAV kit). 

Hope you like them! Need more stuff for Warclouds, need to paint more for Valleycon and then I did this last night....

This will be my infantry aces army! More on this over the weekend...

Having 3 flames of war armies on the go at once is a good idea right?

CP