Flames of War General: Eat, Sleep, Make Thread, Repeat

You have basically no reason to not take those as Canadians instead. Mission tactics and safe stowage for everything.

I'd say you're maybe a little heavy on the antitank, but it's not a terrible list.

thanks for the tips, I was a bit nervous about german heavy armour, hence all the AT.

The only thing the firefly makes much difference to is Panthers, and you're unlikely to see a ton of those. Tigers are front-penetrable by the 75mm, while KTs and jagdtigers are impervious to the front from almost any weapon in the game. If you do run into one of the RT Panther lists you're laughing, though.

We're planning a special FoW scenario-day at my FLGS so players can try out some non-standard scenarios and maybe even countries or eras they hadn't encountered before.

So far, we're looking at a beach assault scenario and a mission where an elite force (probably some kind of paras) will have to quickly capture a bridge and then hold it against a superior wave of reinforcements.

Do any of you have ideas for interesting scenarios?

>Tigers are front-penetrable by the 75mm
AT 10 vs FA 9? You might be able to bail them at short range, if they roll bad. Actually penetrating? No.

8. Front Armor 8.

It's only 9 at long range.

...No? Tigers are front 9. side 8.

I'll double check, but for some reason I thought they were 8 Front and Side. *shrug*

No, you're right. Never mind.

I had it in my head the 75mm was AT 11, huh.

I was going to say "The 75mm AP round could do the job", but thinking about it, it had a small margin of penetration at short range on a totally flat front, so "chance to bail on a 1" seems fair.

Since we seem to be talking about brits needing help, this is what I put together last time based off the thread's ideas. Perhaps something similarly limited (as opposed to just wishlisting) could be drummed up for the other countries in need of help?

A lot of the problem is that soviets don't get as much love in terms of fluff, list diversity, etc as other lists. This is really something only battlefront can fix.

Now, having said that, a few things:

1. IS-2s either need a big rework or a points break. As is, all the elements they have going for them have terribly synergy, meaning you pay a load of points for things you can't possibly get any use out of unless things are really going your way. FA 10 hurts a lot, too, but this has more to do with the fact almost every nation has relatively inexpensive high-AT guns on basic units now.

2. Controversially, I think there needs to be a break from the "soviet platoon is a company" thing. This does really hamstring the lists and stops them getting good veteran/elite options, because 10 CV tanks would be obscenely expensive even with H&C.

3. Smoke needs looking at. It's far too easy to pin soviets on the charge as it currently stands, even with suppression (especially now MG teams are 3 dice suppressed). I can buy there was a time when smoke+QoQ was too powerful, but it's far in the other direction now.

4. Costs for guns need looking at in line with the above. Soviets get far less use out of their artillery than other nations, but pay about the same. There's never any real reason you'd want proper guns rather than a mortar team for a quick pin as things are, except maybe being in love with the idea of a soviet artillery park.

5. As a personal point of pride, Katyushas need a big boost. One of the most feared and devastating weapons in the eastern front is a mortar that gets shot up if anything sneezes at it. At the very least they could have a time-on-target-like rule; the rationale for ToT is very similar to the factors that made Katyushas so lethal, namely that the time between "We're getting shelled" and the full salvo hitting was very short.

Oh, and 6. The SU-100 is statted terribly at the moment. It should be a RoF 2 standard tank SPG. It can maybe keep overloaded, if this is meant to represent the gun ditching.

Do you happen to have a link or something to help me to look for it in the archives (a phrase used in the post or something).

I'd really like to know how the user statted them, I don't know how you could model a unit that by all accounts I've heard of wasn't capable of successfully carrying out any action beyond killing civilians .

>IS-2s either need a big rework or a points break.
Yeah, definitely. Their armor thickness doesn't seem to match up with their FA values (it should be higher), and they're really fucking expensive for a RoF 1 gun. Drop the points or up the armor (the later IS-2s should have the same FA value as the Churchill VII)

>Controversially, I think there needs to be a break from the "soviet platoon is a company" thing.
For a few of their elite units, yeah.

>especially now MG teams are 3 dice suppressed
Typo? They drop to 2 dice from 3 when pinned. And the problem you mention could be solved by just giving more units access to smoke pots. Giving soviets full smoke support, from what I've seen in combined arms games, is EXTREMELY gamechanging, and not for the better.

>Costs for guns need looking at in line with the above
Tube Arty is a bit overpriced for most non-americans, so this problem needs some fixing in general. They value the dual statline too highly, especially on immobile/heavy and RoF 1 guns.

>Katyushas need a big boost
With their ability to get extra crew and count as two launchers? You can get a 12x12 re-roll misses rocket template with FP 4+ for just over 200 points. I can see a small boost, but a big boost (like ToT) would make them just absurd against infantry armies.

As long as it loses Cat Killer, I don't think there's a problem with making it RoF 2.

> (the later IS-2s should have the same FA value as the Churchill VII)
Arguably higher, since sloping armour is more beneficial than an effective thickness increase alone.
>Typo?
Typo, yeah. Smoke pots would be good. They're a very niche option at the moment, and there are several accounts of soldiers improvising smoke.
>Tube Arty is a bit overpriced for most non-americans
Brits don't get it too bad either with the reroll to hit and reroll saves.
>With their ability to get extra crew and count as two launchers?
They should be pretty absurd against infantry, though. Going up in points would be fine. And as it is, I can't imagine taking a full block of Katyushas with extra loaders: That's a hell of a lot of points to see vapourised in one burst of machinegun fire. They really suffer from being unarmoured trucks parked adjacent to the fighting.
> (You)
>As long as it loses Cat Killer, I don't think there's a problem with making it RoF 2.
Would it get volley fire back?

Honestly, I don't think Cat Killer is all that great a special rule anyway. The cat killers get worse at cat killing because they're always firing at long-range armour.

>Brits don't get it too bad either with the reroll to hit and reroll saves.
The 5+ FP on the 25pdrs means they need that reroll saves to reach parity with everyone else's 4+ FP arty. They're gobshit against anything that doesn't stay still. The larger 5.5s have the classic problem of "have to buy enough of the tiny guns to get the good ones".

>Yeah, definitely. Their armor thickness doesn't seem to match up with their FA values (it should be higher), and they're really fucking expensive for a RoF 1 gun. Drop the points or up the armor (the later IS-2s should have the same FA value as the Churchill VII)
There were a variety of IS-2s produced at different factories, annoyingly enough, and of course the partially-implemented modernisation program. The standard for the modernised IS-2 glacis plate was imperviousness to the long 88 at at any distance, though, which is obviously pretty thick armour, and though the lower front plate wasn't as thick it was proof against the long 75 and short 88 both at long range (900 and 400m respectively; chart says "2-300m" so were I in the vehicle I'd want to be a good bit out of that range...)

...In other words, FA 13? Like the Churchill?

Unless they're not dug-in, which is admittedly unlikely if they're sticking in place.

Potentially a little higher, really: FA 13 is hardly proof against the long 88.

The churchill is possibly a little over-armoured; it's immune to long-75s at range, but it's vulnerable to 88s up close...

Main complication is that there were three different IS-2s, with three different armor values. The Mk VII Churchill had 140mm to 150mm of armor on the front and turret, and was completely impervious to the short 88. Meanwhile the late version of the IS-2 has an appropriately sloped front that provides greater protection... But a less effective turret and lower front armor. And there was also the 1950 modernized IS-2M, which you have to be careful to not get mixed in with the late 44 improvements to the '44 version of the IS-2 (for once the obsessive version tracking of the brits would be useful).

On the whole, I'd leave the thinner '43 model at FA 10 (mostly 100mm or sloped 70mm), put the normal '44 at FA 12 or 13, and allow an upgrade to the late '44 with FA 13 or 14.

Armored vehicles are a thing, and there are plenty of times you'll hit a dug in unit and then they'll scatter just those teams that were under the template out of the way (keeping the rest dug in). I've been able to actually repeat a bombardment to any effect exactly once.

The thinner 43, even in that picture, has a 120mm upper glacis and 100mm@30* lower, so it's not as low as 100 in practise and certainly not 70mm.

In either case, though, while there are different marks of designed IS-2, it seems these were inconsistently manufactured: some models have been measured at 100mm or even 90mm plate, and whether the plate is cast or rolled is also inconsistent between factories. Granted, I doubt FoW cares about this; we certainly don't get weaker-armoured production-shortage Panthers with shoddy welds lowering the armour...

Doing some maths on a tablecloth, the IS-2 1943 and Panther would have very similar upper and lower hull LOS thickness values, with the values reversed between glacis and LFP, so 10 probably works fine despite the thicker armour on the IS.

As always, archive awareness has some info that helps explain the seeming disparity between the practical and hard numbers. Read "IS-3 reloads".

It wouldn't surprise me if the SU-100 had a lower listed RoF than parallel german or allied guns, since the testing standards were different. A soviet vehicle that wasn't emptying it's bins completely had no reason to be near the listed RoF.

>Katyushas need a big boost
A huge number of tubes at an extremely low cost? Get fucked. Particularly with the shoot and scoot rules removing the smoke trails. If the enemy's firing at the katys then they're a moron. There's almost certainly something better, and because the Soviet player isn't a halfwit, they'll only be covering a single katy with the template anyway.

>and there are plenty of times you'll hit a dug in unit and then they'll scatter just those teams that were under the template out of the way
You seriously expect us to believe that? Lose G2G and Concealed and bulletproof cover on a bunch of teams? Apparently the rest of the british army is just twiddling it's thumbs at that stage.

If you're going to lie, make it something convincing.

Do you have any citations that back that up? Either the rather strange and impractical sustained rate, or the measure of the instantaneous rate.

It's also worth mentioning that both figures were almost certainly parade ground perfection.

>Get fucked.
Nice to meet you too.
Katys are about as good as heavy mortars for a similar cost. Their bonus is the ability to make themselves into 24-strong divisions in the place of being proper artillery, but then you've got a a 24 mortar barrage which is also unlikely to do much.

And the priority isn't to return fire with indirect fire, the priority is to shoot them with regular guns. They're unarmoured vehicles, so any hits on them have a 2/3 chance of killing them outright, and they can't be dug in (and correspondingly concealed/GTG) like infantry guns. Taking a huge battery of mortars that won't do much is just offering your opponent 200+ points and a VP out of your list for anything that gets in machinegun range or has a decent range gun.

Check archive awareness, as I said. Soviets tested rate of fire with all ammunition including that from fully-stowed bins, rather than just ready racks or other easily available ammo. I'd link the site but Veeky Forums complains when I try.

And indeed, testing on a range is different from in combat. But awkward conditions in the heat of battle were hardly unique to the soviets either.

>You seriously expect us to believe that? Lose G2G and Concealed and bulletproof cover on a bunch of teams? Apparently the rest of the british army is just twiddling it's thumbs at that stage.
>And the priority isn't to return fire with indirect fire, the priority is to shoot them with regular guns.
Do you guys play on a salt flat?

Jesus fucking christ I won't sleep well after reading that.

How're you putting your guns so they they're totally inaccessible by the rest of the map? You can put them behind a wood or something but they're going to be well within cannon range as soon as anything gets a line of fire on them.

Armor and penetration values are always pretty weird in fow (i am still pretty mad of late shermans 13 pen).
I think the main problem is that the is2 turret even thought it was rounded, it wasn't really efective against long 75 and 88 guns. What is2 really need is a lower cost point and be able to move and fire.

The Tiger II H has a shit turret too, though, but it keeps 14 armour (of 15).

I know that PSC has moved from their own proportions to make their models more like the plastic Battlefronts ones. But i am wondering how the new Normandy Heavy weapons set compares to the battlefront plastics, anybody got some opinions/pictures/scale comparisons?

Is the hero rota razvedki with motorcycles playable? It seems to have awfully few stands of infantry for something that will have to attack dug in infantry often enough.

The Tiger II H turret wasn't a shit, the one that really is a shit and really need a new value is the porsche one something like FA 12.

But still like i said FoW pen values are pretty weird since both 100mm and 122mm guns with normal ammo could pen Tiger II H but just in the turret. unless you want to count the bad quality of german armor in late war.

But since the FoW system was made for a "simple" representation of WW2 i think the fairest value for is2 is being a better panther (a tank with good AT and good anti infantry) at the same cost or even cheaper.

It is a shame how the best and most brutal tank battles in the game should be between german and russian lists. I want to be in a world where IS2 hero list fight CT KT list all the days with equal probability of winning.

Yeah, my bad, I mixed up the porsche and henschel turrets.

Did... someone just admit they made a mistake on the internet?

Yeah I can't imagine a single game of FoW that I've played where moving dug in infantry/guns just to avoid another bombardment would have been anything but a game losing move.

>is the hero...playable?
In most cases no, sorry.

Did you quote the wrong person?

>Type 2 Ka-Mi amphibious light tanks

The "Ka-Mi" in the Ka-Mi tank comes from the "kami" in the name of engineer Kaminishi Jinzou, who was involved with development at the Headquarters for Army Technology.

>an entire army of fucking Steamboat Willie tanks
Jesus fuck Japan.

The only LW tank army I can think of where you can fill your combat platoons to the max with FV tanks for 670 points.

Japs were crazy

Is there a group finder for flames of war? I'd like to find other players near me.

None that actually work.

It's called "You ask the thread and we call you a Homo."

Has anyone made custom rules for the IS-4? or at least a good quality model

You try checking out your local gaming stores? I've got two near me, and one of them is full of old guys playing Flames of War.

Speaking of which, are Fallschirmjagers a decent army for a new player? I want to play paratroopers and I figured playing Germans instead of American/British would give me more potential opponents to play against.

FSJ are excellent if you want Fearless Veteran elite infantry.

They get large platoons (good for both staying power and assault ability) and the various lists available to them have a wide range of excellent support troops.

As for minis, I'd recommend the PSC company box. Those minis are nice, although you'd need to buy bases separately since that kit doesn't come with any.

FJs - like any elite army - will always be small in number and so require careful play. But, especially the Italy list, they're pretty resilient and hard to shift, and make a strong defensive army.

How do you guys store your FoW models? The infantry bases get me, they cover a wide area but are very low profile, how you you store them so they don't get damaged but don't take up loads of space?

I use foam carrying trays.
Various companies have pre-cut layers perfectly sized for FoW bases and various tanks.

>Do you happen to have a link or something to help me to look for it in the archives (a phrase used in the post or something).
I've done a bit of hunting around but I think it must have been back around 2013 at least, because there's nothing in the archives. I do remember the conversation got started when the Project Warsaw team announced they weren't doing a list for them: flamesofwar.com/Default.aspx?tabid=53&art_id=1620

The main thing I remember was a special rule about having to check every turn that they wouldn't ignore orders to go off looting.

How do you pronounce that?

Der-leh-wan-ger?

Doesn't roll off the tongue.

You have it right: forvo.com/word/dirlewanger/

Deer - leh - vang -uh

Well thank you.
I guess I'll try some digging of my own to see if anything turns up.

Do you really not remember the name of the special rule or any other exact phrase that could help?

Oh, it was further back than the archives go.
Damn.

>Do you really not remember the name of the special rule or any other exact phrase that could help?

I think it was as simple as "roll 1d6 each turn, on a 1-2 they exit the table".

>Oh, it was further back than the archives go.
>Damn.

Yeah it was prior to the big archive purge; there wasn't even a regular FoW general then like now.

If you were serious about running these guys in FoW form, the hard part would be recreating their bizarre morale - they're either suicidally drunk and headless of casualties, or on the verge of panic with the officers shooting them in the back.

When I was an edgy wehraboo teen I had a bit of a fixation on this outfit; mainly thanks to reading those trashy Sven Hassel novels which often featured the Dirlewanger Brigade. There is a shortage of decent material on them, other than one good book ("Cruel Hunters" by French McLean) and the Militaria on them (which is in Polish with brief English translations).

Oh it's not that I think they're incredibly coo and want to model them.
My interest mostly comes from the fact that the little I've read about them paints them as a bunch of bumbling lunatics who had next to no training who had the tendency to charge ahead blindly while completely drunk(and apparently in some cases even unarmed!?) and die to a man in the process in any situation where they were engaged in actual combat, while in any other situation they simply killed any civilians around in the most brutal way imaginable.

I was interested in how someone else statted them because I just don't see them as an actual military unit of any value and so don't see how one could represent them in a wargame.

I think there were a core group of committed survivors who were competent enough; note the guy here has a close combat clasp and Iron Cross. The majority of them were doomed, suicidal thugs, but a small cadre of W-SS veterans sent to the unit for punishment were able to at least keep themselves alive. Late in 1944 Fritz Schmedes, erstwhile commander of the SS-Polizei division, was sent to it (as punishment for refusing a personal order from Himmler to launch a pointless counterattack). He became the de facto commander in the absence of any real leadership by Dirlewanger.

When reading about homosexuals in the Holocaust some years back, I was stunned to discover that they were given the option for release from a concentration camp - if they submitted to chemical castration and volunteered for the Dirlewanger Brigade. Now that's fucked up.

Thanks for the feedback! The reason I've decided to go with an elite infantry army is mostly due to the fact that I'm trying to save time and money.

So I threw a list together using Bridge by Bridge. Any advice? Keep in mind I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing so I'm open to any criticism.

Ersatz Fallschirmjagerkompanie

1500 pts

Fallschirmjager-kompanie HQ 130 pts
Company HQ 40 pts
2 Panzerschreck teams +50 pts
2 8cm GW42 +40 pts

Fallschirmjager Platoon 205 pts
3 Fallchirmjager Squads

Fallschirmjager Platoon 205 pts
3 Fallchirmjager Squads

Fallschirmjager Mortar Platoon 200 pts
2 Mortar Sections

Fallschirmjager Anti-tank Gun Platoon 65 pts
2 PaK36(r)

Fallschirmjager Assault Gun Platoon 545 pts
5 StuG G

Fallschirmjager Artillery Battery 150 pts
2 15cm sF18

Wait, the site that's notoriously heavy on it's pro-Russian and anti US and German bias?

It seems funny that the guy translating from soviet records is producing different results to german east front memoirs and cold-war speculation, isn't it.

I guess you're right in that there were some competent men mixed in with the useless maniacs. (maybe it could be modeled by a rule similar to Unknown Hero for the italians to represent the competent ones mixed with the rabble and perhaps something like the SS HitlerJugend rule which made them attack the nearest unit when morale fails if I recall correctly)
At the very least those who survived Warsaw had to have been at least somewhat competent, I think I read somewhere that the unit had some ridiculous casualty rate something like 300% partly because they were mostly ill trained rabble led by a madman who didn't acre about them at all but also because the building clearing was a brutal affair(I read somewhere about some German who was apparently engaged in 14 close combat actions during the fighting which is saying something considering how rarely actual melee combat occurred in the war)

Rare generally, yes. In city fighting? No. Visibility is so poor you can be on top of people before you realise they're there, even if neither side is attempting to ambush the other, and it's very difficult for vehicles and artillery to dig people out of an urban area. This means lots of building-to-building fighting, which is always brutal.

Well anyway I was really trying to say that i concede that some of them who survived Warsaw had to have been at least somewhat competent to survive city combat

Where are you from?

Maybe someone else on here is a local.

It's hard to say. The people who were involved in close order fighting and survived will be a minority, and from small samples it'd be hard to say if they were lucky or good.

...

>“I don't remember when we decided to kill this pig Fels. To survive because he constantly pushed us ahead. Seven or eight of us drew rifles at random. Two were loaded. When the occasion came up that Fels was in front of us we shot him in the back. He fell and we escaped. The new commander was much more humane.”

soldiers frag their officers if pushed too far

i'm actually glad for this.

to have a chance of fighting a tank in Flames of War, the AP value must beat the Armor by at least 3.

so for 7, 11 will do, 12 is better
(remember. long range is essentially +1 armor.)

There's not any free shipping deals for PSC are there? Something like a coupon code or spend X amount for free shipping?

Not sure, where in the world are ya?
There's probably someone around here who can recommend a good online store for your region.

Just in the US. Their prices are great, but the 22% shipping seems a bit high. That'd be great if someone knows a good one.

Not sure about US suppliers myself, since I'm in the EU.

I recall hearing good things about the WarStore, though.

Been googling around, finding some good stuff actually. I never thought about other retailers selling PSC stuff. Thanks for the suggestion, this helps a bunch!

I just saw the cards of TANKS! most of them seem pretty good, a little worried with panzer iv, stug and the english sherman, but maybe they are a little better with the upgrade cards.

What is the general thought about TANKS?

Ersatz FJ don't quite count as "elite", but you can build some nice lists with them. For 1500 and similar to what you've done, I'd go:

German Ersatz Fallschirmjager

Infantry Company, from Bridge by Bridge, page 25

Compulsory Fallschirmjager Company HQ (Ersatz Fallschirmjager) (p.26) - CinC SMG, 2iC SMG (40 pts)
- Upgrade 2iC SMG to 2iC Panzerfaust SMG (10 pts)
- 3x Panzerschrek (75 pts)
- 8cm GW42 (Stummelwerfer) mortar (20 pts)

Compulsory Fallschirmjager Platoon (Ersatz Fallschirmjager) (p.26) - Command Panzerfaust SMG, 9x Rifle/MG (215 pts)

Compulsory Fallschirmjager Platoon (Ersatz Fallschirmjager) (p.26) - Command Panzerfaust SMG, 9x Rifle/MG (215 pts)

Fallschirmjager Mortar Platoon (Ersatz Fallschirmjager) (p.27) - Command SMG, Observer Rifle, 2x 8cm GW42 (Stummelwerfer) mortar (55 pts)

Fallschirmjager Anti-tank Platoon (Ersatz Fallschirmjager) (p.29) - Command SMG, 4x 7.5cm PaK40 gun (180 pts)

Fallschirmjager Assault Gun Platoon (Ersatz Fallschirmjager) (p.30) - Command StuG G, 4x StuG G (545 pts)

Fallschirmjager Artillery Battery (Ersatz Fallschirmjager) (p.31) - Command SMG, Staff, Observer Rifle, 3x 10.5cm leFH18 howitzer (140 pts)

1495 Points, 6 Platoons

You combat attach the single 8cm Mortar in the HQ to the 1-section Mortar platoon: you now how three weapons for bombarding or smoke, so no need to re-roll hits. The five FV StuGs are a great unit, but the three CT Panthers are also very good, and better as a dedicated tank-killing option.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm also checking out the Paracadutisi list from Fortress Italy since it looks rather fun.

>What is the general thought about TANKS?

Might be fun.

I'm certainly willing to at least pick up the starter set when that comes out.

Got some Russians done this bank holiday weekend. Should start the infantry next as I have the PSC box set with loads in. I'm not sure on lists or what's a sensible force to run, but I'm going for a late-war/Berlin force so more T-34, SU-85 or ISU-152?

Couldn't even attach the photo the first time.

>the hard part would be recreating their bizarre morale - they're either suicidally drunk and headless of casualties, or on the verge of panic with the officers shooting them in the back.
Well, if you're designing a list for them from scratch, you could use an Italian-style table to determine their morale and skill. If using an existing list it does present a problem, yeah.