European Team Championship 3 – After Action Report
By Benny Christiansen
and Helge MacIntyre
Flames Of War, as well as many other games, are being played and all nationalities can attend with a team. Many countries send the best of the best. In these articles, we follow the Danish Team, lead by Helge MacIntyre.
We managed to get a short interview with Helge and Chris Jackson, the captains from the US and DK teams at the ETC. In these articles, we give you a glimpse into the ETC 2018. The largest Team Tournament in the world.
The event is over, and Helge has kindly taken the time to describe the event from his perspective:
The Team
I am home from ETC 2018, and what an awesome event. I was there with a group of the best Danish Players, facing off with the best players from 20 countries. That is 120 of the best FOW players in the world, meeting for three days of intense gaming. I have previously written about my team, so a short introduction is enough here.
Kristian Lyngvald played the well painted (and well based) Japanese infantry list (photo below, they are coming out of the jungle). This list won him the prize for the best-painted army and no doubt also helped pull our combined lists to an ETC 2018 Best painted team.
Anders Jespersen played a well put together German mechanized force, the backbone of his force, was the SdKfz 251 Halftrack, supported by AT guns and an 88mm Bunker Flak as well as several other platoons. Anders is very gifted, and he managed to pull home five victories. This helped him rank as the second best player in the tourney. That is an amazing feat amongst 120 of the best players in the world.
Jesper Graff our in-house Lawyer, played a very interesting combined French force of both an infantry formation and a tank formation with lots of the Renault R-35 tanks. The R-35 should probably be named MVP, of all units at ETC 2018. They are tough little bastards, and they were everywhere at ETC.
Christian Bonde fielded a huge conscript force of Motostrelkovy infantry.. the strength of the Motostrelkovy is that they are allowed two tank platoons, and Christian choose a KV-1 and a platoon of 9 T-26 as his tank support, making his force good in defence with 40+ infantry teams and very aggresive aswell with 10 tanks of varying qualities, this solid formation only lost twice during the ETC.
Morten Schmidt played German infantry. He had the most thankless task, as he would be my prefered first matchup, and therefore most often fighting in defensive battles. He did this brilliantly and only lost two battles. He kept his lines well defended, and achieved three draws and even managed a win.
I played the T-28Soviett medium tank formation, with 14 T-28 tanks. They were supported by six artillery tanks (Bt7a), five flame tanks, two Katyushas, a KV-1 and the Sturmovik. My force had no infantry at all.
”Your list seems weak, how are you going to make that work?”
One the first night we went out with the Scottish team and one of their guys said to me: ”Your list seems weak. How are you gonna make that work?” I was rather concerned by that remark.. Had I missed the meta completely, or did he just not understand my playing style ?
Dining and wining with the Scottish Team on the eve before the battle begins!And so it begins
DAY 1 In our first game we were up against the Scottish team in the Free for all mission. I went up against the worst possible enemy, a force of Matilda I and Matilda II’s. Only my KV and my Sturmovich could penetrate the thick armor of the Matildas. My opponent, however, faced a similar challenge. Only his four Matilda II tanks could harm any of my tanks. My KV succeeded in killing off a Matilda II platoon (it bailed a tank making the unit end in bad spirits) and I won the game with about 15 minutes left.
For the Danish Team, our combined score was two victories, one defeat and three draws.
Costly battle against Romanian army from team FranceNext, we met the French team, in the Rearguard mission. Our poor dice rolling, combined with the skill of the French players gave us with only one victory this round. My T-28 tanks assaulted infantry and pushed them off objectives. This secured our team one win.
Friday had been a bad day for team Denmark, only three victories in 12 games. This had us a 16th place. But our team was not in bad spirits. We prepared for the next day by eating together, with no other teams. This allowed us to talk the day through, and discuss strategy with the new players.
ETC is also about the friendship across borders and long distancesThe War Rages on
DAY 2: We faced of against Team Serbia in the Counterattack mission. The Serb Guys are experienced and good players, whom we have enjoyed playing before. The Mission is not my favorite. I find it terribly unbalanced, clearly favoring the attacker.
Because this is one of the toughest missions I choose a defend card for myself. I know this mission well and feel that if any one on our team had a chance in defence it would be me. I went up against a huge gun line Strelkovy list, with a KV-1 at its spearhead. Luckily my IL-2 Sturmovich swooped in and destroyed the KV tank. The rest of the game was cat and mouse. My tanks hid behind forests, and stayed away from the big AT-8 guns, and took pot shots at the infantry. In turn 6 assulting, my tanks finally assaulted the infantry and pushed them all away from the objective, securing me the victory. The rest of the team had another 2 wins, making the match end 3-3.
Defending in Counterattack against Soviet Gun LineFor the last game of the day was against team Switzerland in the Bridgehead mission. The guys from Switzerland are great guys. But, this day, their luck was up. My opponent in this round played a French infantry list. My tanks crushed him in a rather uneven match. The rest of our team did well. We only had one loss, and four wins.
In the evening we went out with team USA; these are really some great guys, I talked alot with Criss Jackson the US captain, who proudly showed me pictures of his little AFV. Yes, he has a real life Bren Carrier back home, and it works! We had a great night and hoped to meet each other in the field of glory the next day.
This is the end
DAY 3: Final day of the ETC competition!
In the first round, we meet Italy in the Contact Mission, The Italian Guys are good players and shrewd tacticians. They were a good matchup. But, they sacrificed their Japanese infantry against my tank force. That force could not shoot through my tanks’ heavy front armor. That left all the hard work up to the Nikuhaku teams (Japanese close combat teams equipped with explosives). They ended up fighting fourteen tanks with top armor 2, and my tanks had rear MGs. Despite my win, the Italian team managed to get three wins, to our two wins.
Final Round
We were now in 8th place, but there were not that many points between us and the top teams. With a good round, we might be able to reach our goal, a top-5 spot in the final score.
Round 6 was dust up. This is a mission where you risk a draw if you play it defensively, I told my guys not to play defence. We had to go full on the attack to reach a good final spot. Our opponent was Portugal.
We seem to have developed a tradition that we play the team from Portugal at least once in each ETC. This year was no different. Our opponents the last round: Portugal. We have played these guys for the last four years. We really like these guys and have a lot of fun playing against them.
I ended up against a big Strelkovy army with two Matildas and 10 45mm AT guns! Again my KV dispersed the Matildas (it really did good in the games against those British heavy tanks) and my artillery and Sturmovich combined with T-28 tanks and flamethrowers killed of their guns. This cost me some tanks.
But when all the enemy AT guns were dead, my T-28 tanks started their assault in earnest. The went for the infantry again and again with only one loss to a Soviet unarmed pioneer team. The Strelkovy army was ground down and I secured my sixth victory of the ETC. The rest of the Danish team also did well. They added a further three wins and one loss.
The games were at its end and it was time for Laurels.
ETC Winners 2018 – Russia! Congratulations!The Results are in!
The first place with 19 Victories went to the Russian team. They had done a really impressive job, and fully deserved that victory. Congrats to team Russia!
In second place with 18 victories was team Poland. A really good team, who are always in the top three.
In third place (also with 18 victories) were our friends, team France (in no small amount due to the 5! points they got from us !)
In fourth place with 16 victories and 165 points was Team Italy. Great playing you guys.
In fifth place, with 16 Victories and 163 points was… Denmark!
We did it!! We ended up in the top 5 Hurray! We also got the prize for the best-painted armies, and Kristian got the prize for the best individually painted army.
As the last feather in our hat, the individual leaderboard (which show the players who had scored the most Victories and points) showed Anders in second place with 5 wins and 43 points (scored in the 1-8 system)
The 1st place individual score went to me! I had six victories and 45 points! I was very happy. My list, which our friends thought was weak even before the first dice had rolled, ended up being the most successful list of all the 120 lists being played at this year’s ETC.
That night we celebrated with Scottish and French team members till early in the morning.
This has been a fantastic ETC for many reasons.
- The Venue in Zagreb is probably the best we have been at. It is Air conditioned and a very big area for all the games
- Our personal and team achievements have never been better
- We have begun a new era with Flames of War V.4, and it worked very well
- We connected with the fantastic friends from abroad and had a marvellous time. I cannot thank the ETC Organization enough for putting this event together again. The referees worked against time and odds and did an awesome job. They are the best. Thanks for their efforts.
Also a big thanks to all our opponents in our games. I would also like to thank my team for putting up with me as captain year after year, They have to listen to my plans and tactics, and generally follow my suggestions.
A last a very dear thank you to Maria Jespersen (Anders Wife) who accompanied us (along with their two kids.) She helped immensely, by bringing us water, getting all of my papers together, and helping us with moving dice, armies and the baggage-train that always follow a team on the march. She was invaluable.
Below you see the Danish Viking Victory Dance. It dates back a few years and is generally used to show off skills and coordination-ability.