Scotland Forever: Scottish Nationals 2025 report
Hello again! I realise once a year is not a great output for a blog, but I’m back and here to report after the second of the revived Scottish Nationals for Flames of War. This will be a straightforward article detailing my list, practise, and of course how I got on. With 28 players this year vs 18 last year, and many coming from further afield, it was a more competitive, and fun, tournament in my humble opinion.
The setup and my list
The tournament was set for 95pts of mid war action using the extended mission pack but none of the experimental mission rules (8” to contest objectives for the attacker and reserves as in the rulebook). It was organised by the lads at Vanguard Wargaming Scotland who, as last year, did a great job putting on the event. Dynamic points 2025 were also in play. Given the competitive nature of the event, I wanted to adapt a 100 points Soviet list I had used to great success locally in 2023 and 2024. The original list featured a hero motor rifle battalion buffed up with the ‘guards’ command card as my formation, but the real meat was 3 KV-1, 8 Valentines and 10 T-70 with guards. The list was a subtle as a brick, throwing 21 hard to kill vehicles at an objective with infantry to prevent a formation break and mop up bailed tanks.
This tournament presented some challenges and opportunities thanks to both the 95pts limit and Dynamic Points. First the issues, Soviet valentines and T-70s were now rather expensive for my taste, and the expected increase in medium tanks hitting the field made me iffy on so much AT7, so I needed to field an alternative. Along with this the motor rifles were soaking up points I would need for anti-tank and objective pushing threats, 2+ to hit in assault is great, but not so effective vs lots of medium tanks. Second then was the opportunities, T-34s had finally become cheap enough to supplant the valentines and solved my problem of tackling other mediums! As a result, after a fair bit of play testing, I ended up with the list below.
I must confess that I simply cannot make a flames of war list without some infantry in there. Locking myself out of a whole aspect of the game just seems wrong, and with the prevalence of firepower 4+ and 5+ weapons in mid war having infantry to pick up bailed tanks was a must to me. The list is similar to my oft victorious one of old (Pre Dynamic Points) but had fewer yet more capable vehicles, which led to a change in playstyle. A possibly glaring omission was anything above AT9, but given the steep points cost of the SU-85, it was something I’d have to deal with.
The rise of manoeuvre
The gameplan of the list is more subtle than its previous incarnation. In practice I was finding it difficult to attack into minefields and entrenched high AT guns. I was also having trouble in attack-attack missions where I had to hold my own objectives when simply wishing to go and roll over theirs with my men and heavy tanks, the infantry were being forced to defend while my tanks went on the attack. Thus, the two elements of my force weren’t working together.
A solution presented itself in the form of the manoeuvre stance. It would wrongfoot defenders by often denying them minefields and attackers by letting my tenacious infantry battalion defend with KV-1s on board from the start and T-34s & SU-76s ready to roll on from reserve and knock out enemy tanks. That was the idea anyway, now let’s see if it worked.
Game 1 – vs Leo’s Italian tanks & Armoured cars
As the lists had been published in the run-up to the event and first pairings put up the day before I had looked at Leo’s list and thought “yeah I can take that, seems straightforward.” I then found out I had lucked out for a first game, Leo was a top gent, but he had only played 5 or 6 games before tournament day, ever. As a result, I was fairly pleased when after picking manoeuvre to his defend, we ended up with no retreat.
Leo put in a great effort, his armoured cars were a royal pain, pinning my smg company all game after some botched assaults and chewing through a host of riflemen. On the left he had 5 semovente and his infantry platoon holding the forward objective and this is where I sent the heavy tanks. The minefields Leo placed were partially obscured by a hill so it was fairly simple to hide the KVs behind it as my also hidden rifle company cleared them. I threw my T-34 up the left to distract his 88s while the KVs then made their assault into his infantry on the objective. Despite the presence of my HQ the heavy tanks managed to make a right hash of it, failing to hit and breaking off on both turns 3 and 4. By this point the 88s were starting to have a go and Italian mediums were arriving. I was putting pressure on the heavy guns but the Italian cars were killing a lot of my infantry.
I was beginning to sweat, but by piling on fire I was pinning the 88s and limiting their fire onto the KV-1s. Which after bouncing some long range hits on Leo’s turn 3 & 4 the heavy tanks remembered their job and rolled over the infantry, winning me the forward objective and the game 8-1. All in all, a fun first game and fair warm up. Props to Leo for making me sweat despite the gap in our experience, my infantry were way too close to breaking.
Game 2 – vs Rex’s captured T-34 company
After my win in round 1 I knew this game would be a different beast. Rex was bringing captured T-34s with careful and armour I would struggle to crack, along with a Dicker-Max assault gun mounting the whopping 10.5cm AT gun to keep my KVs humble. I picked manoeuvre as planned vs medium tanks and ended up playing escape on a beautiful snow board (shout out to Peter!). I deployed in a long line across the board to prevent Rex from using his 24” dash to skirt my forces and threaten the rear objective and placed my KV-1s on the front objective.
Knowing my reserves were immediate and I had 6 angry T-34 to arrive behind him Rex kept a platoon back while the other two and the Dicker-Max made an assault on my positions. The KV-1s ambushed to shoot at advancing captured T-34s as I had infantry ready to assault bailed tanks, however their guns failed to harm the German crewed tanks. Rex then masterfully used blitzes to allow the Dicker-Max to snipe at my heavies, knocking two out over 3 turns of fire. The pressure on the KVs allowed him to push up, and through brutal street fighting break my line.
I did kill off a T-34 platoon between KV-1fire, my flamethrower and plucky infantry assaults, but the issue was that due to the fearless morale of my opponent I was losing 2-3 stands of infantry per destroyed German tank, an unsustainable ratio. I needed my reserves to arrive but alas rolled nothing until turn 3, where a botched follow me and failed 2+ cross check to assault allowed Rex’s Romanian infantry platoon to hold up my mediums. When my T-34s and SU-76s finally made it through they blasted then Dicker-Max but it was too late, the costly assaults had stripped my infantry to the bone and the lone remaining KV couldn’t cover two objectives at once. Rex took an objective as I was pushing up the board from behind in vain: score 2-7.
Game 3 – Vs Jordan’s death or glory company
This was a matchup I didn’t want. Not because of the lists or the man, but because Jordan is the only person who lives close enough to me for regular practise games, and we had played each other to death in the runup to the event. What’s worse is that we ended up playing bypass on BtA’s own Mark G’s table, which had plenty of concealment but not so much LOS blocking terrain to hide my KVs from Jordan’s allied M10s.
Having played each other a lot, we knew the weaknesses of both lists. After my initial panic to cover off the back objective with an infantry company, my reserves arrived immediately and shored them up. My smg company attempted a bold turn 1 assault to knock out the 25pdrs but despite making it in failed their 3+ counterattack after only knocking out a single gun. The game then became very cagey, Jordan vying to get tanks into position while my KVs hid behind a building to avoid the M10s. Eventually all of the British tanks were on from reserve so Jordan made a big push, using his speed to bypass (it’s a well named mission at least) my central rifle company and threaten both objectives. We were playing quickly but still this push didn’t happen until turn 8, my T-34s couldn’t be everywhere at once and KVs were bogged down in the centre of the table, but I was nowhere near taking either of Jordan’s rear objectives either. In the end we timed out after 9 turns each, with one of Jordan’s platoons destroyed and two more with but a single tank remaining. I will admit here that it was almost certainly his win on turn 10 if all 2+ last stands were passed, but time was up on day 1. After 9 gruelling turns a 1-1 draw was all we had to show for it, much was discussed on the car ride home to Dundee…
Game 4 – Vs Mark T’s Shermans and rangers
Going into day 2 my ranking was not so hot. After being the no.1 player the year before at this stage I was a measly 18th this year with a record of 8-1/2-7/1-1. It was still possible to win the whole thing by some fluke, but I had adapted my goal to a top 10 finish.
After picking manoeuvre all of day 1, I looked at the terrain and Mark’s list and thought I’d love some minefields, so I picked defend. As a result, I was defending in no retreat and the terrain really dictated the game as a tough one to win for Mark. A large berm crossed the centre of the board allowing my KV-1 company to sit atop it and laugh in front armour 9 while pouring fire into the Shermans. My own laughter was soon cut off as the plucky yanks managed to bail two of my mighty heavies two turns consecutively, though to my relief my morale held and my dice decided to stop rolling 1s for armour by the time the rangers got into threat range.
Once the T-34 and SU-76 arrived it was a shooting war. There was some assault action with Mark’s smaller ranger platoon and my smg company mutually annihilating each other. I was struggling to penetrate the good front armour on the Sherman, as they similarly encountered the tenacity of guards T-34. In the end Mark had to move to contest the objective having lost one of his Sherman platoons, it was this turn it all fell apart for him, losing 1 tank attempting to assault my infantry in a wood, and then the rest of his company as SU-76 blitzed onto the central berm and my other tanks swung around for flank shots. Mark’s armour dice all failed at once and in one volley the game was over, burning Shermans leaving nothing within 8” of an objective and an 8-1 Soviet victory.
Game 5 – vs Morten’s Folgore
I had brought things back from the edge of disaster placing wise, then was about to have my most enjoyable battle of the weekend. Close, hilarious and challenging in equal measure. Morten was a quality opponent and very sporting, he even rolled randomly for his stance! Being the coward I am, I stuck to my guns, and we ended up with manoeuvre-defend. The mission – Killing ground.
We played on a desert table with a large area of open ground right were the objectives had to be placed. Morten had semovente (of both kinds) in reserve and deployed his anti-tank guns with a view onto the objective and folgore paratroopers covering them from an infantry assault. My right flank was an utter disaster, as a single Mortar strike killed 5 of 8 rifle teams and sent my company scurrying back to the buildings in my deployment as Italians chased after them – these Italians would later knock out said riflemen, my 45mm AT guns, and my SU-76 battery.
My left flank was host to the real action however. Using a hill for cover the KV-1s and T-34s pushed up, out of sight of the lone 88 and 7.62 guns. My smg company were once again bold and fought furiously with the folgore platoon there, killing all but two as semovente arrived in my flank from reserve. They were the short gun variant and Morten killed but a single T-34 for his trouble. The return fire was brutal, and although I only succeeded in bailing 4/5 semovente my infantry were there to assault and finish them off.
After this my infantry held back, as my formation was looking ropey, and it was down to the tanks to take the objective. After pinning the 88 the T-34s made an assault and destroyed it along with the some pesky folgore. Meanwhile KV-1s did what they do best and pushed towards the objective while bouncing long range AT12, and some short range AT10 from the long semovente, threatening the objective which thanks to SU-76 bombardment was only held by three Italian teams. Morten missed his chance to win when he only knocked out one of the KVs the following turn and I had both them and two of my T-34 in range to contest. I still had to win it though with the clock ticking. In the end this was achieved with both KV-1 and T-34s assaulting in that order. The Italian morale held off the heavy tanks thanks to their fearless HQ, but they could not manage the same when the medium tanks rolled in for a 6-3 Soviet victory.
The long and short of it
In the end after a cracking two days of action I came out with 25 points and 7th place, of 28 players, overall. I’m pretty chuffed with that result! Although I came 2nd last year this year’s result felt just as good due to the overall higher calibre of competition including many folks from overseas.
Reflecting on my list the infantry were a weak point, almost losing me games 1 and 5 and being the decisive factor in my loss game 2. Despite the ‘guards’ morale being awesome my men were often mowed down when moving or in combat thanks to their green skill rating. In future a mixed tank battalion backed up with a storm group may prove more survivable and focused. As always, the missions were key to the outcome for some of the games. In game 4 the mission + table layout made it hard to lose. As for game 3, my opinion on bypass is that it is a mission almost destined to end in a draw at tournament level, where both players can shut each other out of winning. Reserves, as always, played their part too, allowing Rex in game 2 to mount up the pressure before my mediums could come to the rescue!
I never actually faced the dreaded Lee spam, though in my opinion Rex’s captured tanks were just as tricky. It was fun to see a variety of lists and as last year it didn’t feel as if anything was totally overpowered from my perspective. A big thanks to all five of my opponents, particularly Morten having come across from Denmark. Congrats to the winners and perhaps I’ll venture down to UK Nationals and see if my Soviets can perform as well with even heavier tanks in late war.
Post Comment