Flames of War - Late War Russians vs Germans

Following the 40K Carnage game, despite winning the game I found I was rapidly losing interest in GW generally (their current business practices annoy me) and 40K specifically (I don't like where the current game is at, and the confirmed reports of a new edition less than two years after the previous one were the last straw). The answer lay in returning to the world of 15mm miniatures; the first game I did since that decision was a 1500pt Late War battle using Flames of War, my Russians vs Ethan's Germans. I took a standard Strelkovy Battalion with armor and artillery support while he took an Armored Panzergrenadier Company with artillery support and a lone Tiger-I. We setup the table using some JR Miniatures roads, the GF9 Russian Battlefield in a Box set plus various hills, fields and trees from the terrain box.

Surprisingly he played very conservatively; his Tiger stayed mostly at the back while my T-34/85s cowered behind the hill/tree line on my left. Fortunately while this was going on the rest of my army were able to destroy all his halftracks and force his artillery from the table; luck certainly wasn't on my side though with my only unit losses coming from a Rifle Company that failed it's Rally test, failed the Commissar reroll and then shot the Commissar before running off the table! I also failed to range in my artillery three times which would have caught the Tiger under the template and the hail of shots I fired at it from the T-34s all bounced off the front (as a result of this game I proceeded to assemble and prime a unit of three ISU-122s which should have the firepower to make a dent in it! Just need to paint them now lol). Anyway, this was a very fun game, neither of us was especially competent with the 3rd Ed rules but we managed and the emphasis for us both was just enjoying the experience.

Between this and a recent game between Ethan's Germans and Chris' Americans there is growing interest in Flames of War at the club, with several onlookers asking about the game. We are trying to see if we can get it in at the store but what initially seemed to be a much more reasonable company to deal with than GW (their literature said there was no required stock level or ongoing stock check every week) turns out to have been untrue, with it now looking like the store will need to get in over $1,000 worth of product just to open the account and with regular stock checks - despite the interest, this is primarily a comic book store we play at and there is NO WAY this is going to fly. Oh well Battlefront, looks like you shot yourself in the foot there as there were several of us (including a couple of newbies that have definite armies they want to collect, not the generic stuff BF is insisting the store carry) that would have ordered a nice amount of product direct from the store if they had been able to place special orders. Your loss!