Flames of War General /fowg/: Disregard the constabulary, post cromwells

Don't forget his Cromwells counted as Recce.

This is a tournament where Romania won MW, I'll accept anything at this point.

Why is having only 3 a bad thing? That frees up points for more options, surely? I thought one of the complaints was that Comets are too expensive and limiting options.

No Croms in the Comet list, which is what I was talking about.

Odd number platoons are bad, generally. 3 means you lose two and you're taking a platoon morale, while 4 would mean you need to lose 3 for platoon morale. It's not as bad as an odd platoon count, but it's still not optimal.

How viable is a Canadian Armoured Recce Squadron from Market Garden?

You're leaving out the fact that the Hero Tankovy player came in 7th out of 26.

And was in third place out of only the Sovieet players.

Ahead of someone playing regular Tankovy who came in 13th overall.

Still not saying it's an awesome list, but clearly the guy playing Hero Tankovy at this specific tournament was able to make it work for him.

The CAR is OK,but much better as 1-2 support platoons in the Rifle Company.

>TY US Mech list

Seems decent. You'll want to de the defender with a list like that.

ITVs are damn-near useless if you have to attack, but are *excellent* in defense if you can give them good lines of sight.

The infantry will be good at holding the objectives, while the Abrams can be your mobile emergency response team. Going where the situation calls for it.

I like it.

As for the artillery, I might have taken minelets or bomb lets over laser-guided munitions, but I think it'll work well.

They're excellent. You should just field them as "Canadian Rifle Company", so that you can Night Attack when you want to (and defend when you would prefer that). Especially since 2 Rifle Platoons are far from bad support options for CAR.

I'm really happy that Canadian Armoured Recce shortens to CAR.

Well I guess I could split the difference and buy enough tanks for a self-contained company and then a Rifle Company in its own right so I can choose between the two.

Would I be correct that the same principle applies to the 11th Armoured List?

11th Armoured armoured recce is cromwells.

I meant, if I wanted to build a 11th Armoured Sherman list (not recon), would the advice also be to just take them as support for an infantry company?

The reasons why CAR works wonders as support for an Infantry Company is
1) the tanks excel at sneaking into a good firing position, since they'll be GtG as long as you're in cover, giving you that extra bit of breathing space before opening fire with a lethal round.
2) Night Attack is "good", especially when combined with the above (who dares to open fire on your advancing infantry if they know 8 sneaky shermans are just waiting).
3) The Fireflies being able to use Eyes and Ears when facing infantry (or, hell, just being able to have 50cals) means they're not quite as useless when the cheeky bugger on the other side of the table decides to go trackless.
4) Advancing with your infantry in tanks (well, transports with medium tank armour) means the enemy will be hard pressed between firing at them, or firing at the (even harder to hit) real tanks. Whatever he does, it's probably bad.

None of these things really apply for the 11th (since their Lorried Rifles are mechanized, they can't Night Attack)

Okay, cool, thanks for the breakdown!

11th Armored Rifles are rated Mechanised: this mean no Night Attack, however, unlike an Infantry company, it also means you can deploy 2x Fully Armoured platoons on-table when defending.

I've done this with two Sherman platoons both with double Fireflies (usually + Rifles & 25-pounders), so in that sense it is an advantage. A regular Rifle Company would need Sherman + M10s or 6-pounder to have the same on-table AT support...they're different lists and the Mech plays a little differently.

Losing Night Attack is a disadvantage though, if you like playing that way. I like having AT15 Fireflies in daylight. The CAR can get similar Sherman platoons, but with Cautious Movement and (optional) Wide Tracks (duckbills), they can make better use of night which make them more suited to it.

Building options for both the 11th Armoured tank and Lorried Rifle makes sense, since they share many platoons and just by changing the HQ and a platoon or two you can play a different force.

maybe he tried something like this

>9 trained tanks
>no at more than 12
>no smoke
>no recce
The recipe to get fucked by any remotely competitive list with at least a couple at threats

Is there a British list that lets you take more than one platoon of Achilles?

And yet it some variation of Hero Tankovy came in 7th at the Gen Con Late War tournament at 1550 points.

Ahead of normal Tankovy.

Looking at the standings I'd imagine there weren't too many things that AT 12 couldn't handle. Probably only the Panzer Kampfgruppe, and the 512. Schwere Panzerjägerkompanie had anything that AT 12 couldn't punch through.

1) Polish Szwadron Rozpozanawczy Dywuzji
2) German Panzerspähkompanie
3) British Armoured Squadron
4) German Panzer Kampfgruppe (Trained)
5) Soviet Hero Strelkovy Polk (Red Army)
6) Soviet Strelkovy Batalon
7) ***Soviet Hero Tankovy***
8) German Hermann Goring StuG Batterie
9) Finnish Jääkärikompanie
10) British Parachute Company
11) Polish Szwadron Pancerny
12) German 512. Schwere Panzerjägerkompanie
13) ***Soviet Tankovy Batalon (Red Army)***

I like the idea of maximizing your heavy mortar support. Those things are great for the price and having both the 160 mm and 120 mm let you optimize your fire and pin down more units. Still not sure that you have enough tanks to last, but the escorts and tank killer team will help cover the lack of numbers for the tanks.

Oh wow. I didn't get why people kept saying "Get the hero mortars" before, but now that I've actually looked at their stats I can't understand why you WOULDN'T grab as many of those as you can. Cheap hits-as-vet +2 and +3 FP templates...

nigger no soviet list gets real smoke!

>bullshit argument

...

Thoughts on this list? Considering getting PSC's paras, and that Medium Artillery Support is so damn tempting.

Yes, that is one of the primary reasons why a Trained tank army with at most 12 medium tanks, tends to suck.

Hero Heavy Mortars are one of the only things worth fielding a Hero list for. And luckily, you don't have to run one of the shitty tank lists to take them.

Great, congrats to the plucky bastard who lost out to 5 infantry lists and British armored. What did the lists actually look like? I ask that, because he could easily have taken 8 T-34-76s with bedsprings and escorts, loaded the rest up with mortars and infantry, and ran it like a Tank-level infantry force.

I know a guy at my FLGS that basically runs that exact list, and he does fairly well with it. When we did a Market Garden Firestorm Campaign, he ran that list and kicked a decent amount of ass.

I think it looks about as good as a FV British infantry list can possibly look at 1500pts.

Several British Motor Companies can get two platoons.

But then you have to deal with playing a motor company.

They don't tell us his list. Just the lists for the top 3.

All we know is Hero Tankovy at 1550 points, and that he played against one of the top 3 guys.

I'm still not sitting here saying it's the best list ever. Obviously it's not.

But this is at least some second-hand anecdotal evidence that it can work well. 7th place out of 26 isn't bad. It's not top 5, but it still goes against the prevailing opinion that Hero Tankovy is complete and utter shit. Which seems to be the refrain every time it's mentioned here.

This player made it work. How? I don't know. But if the list was complete shit like people keep insisting that it is, how did this player make the top 25% - 30% in that tournament? You'd expect him to be in the **bottom** 25% if the list is complete shit.

If he's good, it's because he probably would've won with a decent list.

If he's lucky, then that'll sometimes happen in any game with dice.

Either way, hero tankovy is a bad list.

>If he's a good player it's the list's fault he didn't finish higher

>If he was just lucky that could happen with any list

Sure. Fine.

But you seem dead set on denying the evidence that we have here, however anecdotal, that someone playing Hero Tankovy at a tournament did well with it.

Maybe this guy finally cracked the code. Maybe he figured out what makes Hero Tankovy tick.

Or it could just be pure dumb luck.

Or a high-skill player purposely taking a sub-par list just for laughs.

But it's still a potential bucking of the trend. And I'm curious to find out what the situation actually is.

Soviet Whinger, dude, don't bother. They're like two white-roomers had a retarded hate child.

My money is on one of the latter two.

Hero tankovy has, as a plus side, the fact it's core tanks are pretty good by any reasonable measure; AT 12 and FA 7 is a fair set of stats, and bedsprings help cover their (already respectable) sides. However, you can't really assault with them, so they're pretty close to auto-lose against LW infantry lists, and their support is lacking. They also have no real protective measures, which is a structural failing of most soviet lists, but much easier to stomach when you can take eight casualties and still have more than half your tanks on the board, rather than take eight casualties and be on a company morale check (on the off chance your one CO is still alive).

I tell a lie; there is a chance he fought suboptimal lists. Armoured cars or infantry that don't come with billions of AT assets might have been reasonably fair matchups.

>le maymay soviet whiner

Also, on a re-read of the lists that did place highly, two of the three don't have any kind of artillery or infantry support, so it looks like kind of a weird meta in general. If nobody's using smoke and everyone's just facetanking the other side's gun lines then hero tankovy isn't at as much of a disadvantage.

>he probably just got to that position because every game he had was against a terrible opponent.
Yeah, that's how you get to the top 10.

Honestly, I'd be questioning the apparent American fixation with smoke and petite manoeuvres.

Suboptimal -lists-. A heavy tank company tends to suck but someone who's gone all-in on infantry with no AT will get facerolled by them. Like I say, armoured cars could have trouble, given side 5 is generally enough to give serious headaches to people reliant on light, speedy flanking, and infantry with one PIAT or something might fluff on the bedsprings and get punched to death by tank escorts. If he got lucky and nobody had a panzerfaust/bazooka hell infantry list, then you can assault, but hero tankovy isn't generally that great at assaulting because the assumption of LW infantry is that they're stationary death-traps.

>gone all-in on infantry with no AT
That seems...implausible.

Quite a lot of people, including the recent WWPD podcast, mention that BMPs are a really nasty list because the BMPs can spam missiles and allow the infantry to run into assault range unmolested. My question is, what exactly are they meant to do there? Chobham gives side 16 to HEAT weapons, a couple of guys hitting on sixes, and bailing on a 1 save + 4+ firepower doesn't seem like it's actually going to do that much.

If he can bail you with his horde of RPGs in the assault, you can't fall back, and are destroyed. Also, if he can force a morale check, 50/50 shot of you going away. Morale is the achilles' heel of American armor.

Yeah, but bailing seems pretty remote when you hit on a 6 and are at risk of bail on a 1. Every attacking stand is only 1/72 of a bail. If all of your stands are in contact you statistically need 8 rounds of combat for 1 bail.

Sure. Heavy Tank lists can (and have) pulled the occasional tournament upset. I've seen medium-tank infested metas suddenly grind to a halt against the bubble-wrapped Jagdtigers with belt-fed loading mechanisms, the LW King Tigger party, or the best one ever: IS-2s.

The important thing to remember is that a bad list isn't suddenly redeemed because someone in a tournament did well with it. But more importantly, it speaks volumes about that guy's list build and ability as a player to take an objectively bad list that features little to no forgiveness, and pull a suprising 7th place out of it.

As am I. I've ran the Hero Tankovy, and the list feels like you're hamstrung. Ambushes become hyper-lethal to your entire game, recce becomes not enough to go around (what I wouldb't have given for cars and spetsnaz...), you can't trade fire worth shit against Veterans in concealment, and your suppirt options are rubbish. You can make Hero Motostrelk work effectively, and Hero Strelk is really just Udarny+. But the tankovy, in my personal experience, is like playing a Trained American/British/German medium tank force, with none of the national rules or support choices.

Wait, hero tankovy doesn't get armoured cars or spetsnaz?

...What other recce is there on the soviet side?

No, they do. But like pretty much every not-Ravedki Soviet list, they take up the same slot (and often compete with the maligned Decoy Tanks). This means you get 1 platoon of Spetsnaz, -OR- 1 platoon of cars (for Hero, it is literally 3 trained armored cars).

With your small tank sizes, and how easily you're hit as trained, I would have loved if the ACs and Spetsnaz were separate on the support oprtions. It's difficult to protect yourself from ambushing PaKs or StuGs from only one angle.

By the way, Breakthrough Assault has a nice article going the changes to the Battle of the Bulge compilation book. I wasn't aware of it before, but towed tank destroyers are no longer stupidly good.

breakthroughassault.co.uk/2016/08/old-blood-guts-preview-battle-bulge-american-lists.html

Yes that's why i said that it would get fucked by competitive lists, as long as the tournament had so many for fun and historical list he could win with a good amount of skill and some luck. Competitive lists in the LW meta are american tank and mech companies from bg&g or bridge at remagen, panther spam from bg&g or desperate measures, always defend sits krieg lists of various nature and the sporadic soviet infantry spam or mech brigade. Usually any consolidated competitive scenes has at least 1/3 of the participants to tourneys running any of the above.

Don't forget American arty park.

I'm amazed the Jaakari came that high.What're they feeding them?

Oh right, well i guess you can put it in with the sits krieg lists

Worth noting is the fact that Patton will no longer be providing spearhead or 3+ motivation to everyone that sees him, in American armored companies. And Towed Tank Destroyers are no longer anything beyond a gun team (price reduced considerabbly).

Well there's always Abrams that gives spearhead and aa iirc

I want to put up a brit cruiser force for EW, should i go the crusader route wich is a lot more expensive and i get less tanks while getting a better armor or...

... go the cruiser IV route wich gives me more tonks and an even number of platoons but worse armor?

True. But Patton was the bigger problem. Now if you want Spearhead and AA, you're taking the (previously unpopular) Abrams. And you're not getting decloaking towed tank destroyers out of the bargain.

fug forgot to post the list

Pretty much anything. They're a decent list, AT platoon sizes notwithstanding.

...

Anyone here played TANKS?

I tried a 100pt game with the starter plus initial expansions that were available at our local store. That was one of each, so it was a Pershing, an M4A3 (76), and 2x M4A3 (75), against a Jagdpanther, Panther, Pz. IV, and StuG III. No upgrades. The Americans won. Their national rule reduces the penalty to hit when they move, so they're always moving and that makes it harder for their opponents to hit them. That hurt - the Panzer IV and Stug III (attack value 4) didn't accomplish anything.

Makes me wonder if the tanks with attack 4 are worth taking at all - especially because I'd like to make a British list with at least a couple Cromwells because I like how they look. But four attack dice against a Pershing that's moved...

You still have to see what a fat super pershing can do, that thing has 4 defense dice at all times (moving 1), has something like 7 attack dice and almost always fires first

Here's the build btw:
Super Pershing
-War Daddy Pool
-Clarence Mason
-Jailbird Boggs
-John Irwin
-Camo Net
You should have enough points left over to take a sherman 75 with a couple cheap upgrades, also you could use Baby Rihards instead of Mason if you like his extra mobility over the extra defense

store.aetherworks.com.au/product_info.php?cPath=173_301_1981&products_id=32031&osCsid=dfd2c16e2003074507b640b5d200d321

New german list incoming!

Noooo! I just finished paying for my Aufklärung list.

Seriously though, I wonder what could possibly be inside.

FoW forum is thinking Panzergrenadiere in M113s.

But with a price tag of 18.50 I would expect a bit more than this.

>German pamphlet briefing
>Panzertruppen

Google is being supremely unhelpful as to what that might mean.

The results are almost all about the WWII Panzertruppen.

Perhaps its a non-Aufklarungs Leopard 1 list?

A mixed tank list would be pretty nice. It would be cool to bring 2 platoons of leopard 2s and 2 platoons of Leopard 1s.

In the same force I mean. I am a little hesitant to mix 2 forces (at 100 ponts) at the moment due to morale issues.

Panzertruppen is just a broad name for all units using tanks.

>M113's with Leo 2's and Leo 1's

My dick if that's the case.

The TANKS forum is starting to get a lot of posts from people who haven’t been able to find the game in stock and are giving up on getting started – and giving up on GF9/BF too.

The same mistake yet again.

They always underestimate demand. Always.

Then again, they tend to produce as much as they believe they can without taking a loss if it doesn't sell.

My LGS got a VC local forces blister a few days back that it had ordered and paid for in January.

keep in mind defense dice cap at 6. and yes, Pershing are fucking made of Win. so are IS-2's.

why are you bringing camo net on a US tank? YOU HAVE TO KEEP MOVING, and you will never get that 1 defense die.

bring something lovely instead, like a supercharger or hyper-ammo.

...

i am trying to find a great video to link to.

i just found this instead

youtube.com/watch?v=XOEE1esGxNA

I'm now on a month's wait for some infantry I ordered.

US infantry for Team Yankee was hard for me to find for a while.

When it finally became available on War Store I picked it up instantly before it could sell out again.

But other than that, most of the TY or FoW stuff I order from my FLGS comes in within a week or two.

Unless it's something that is sold out everywhere.

Maybe it's just a perk of living in a commonwealth country, but my shit was here in five-seven working days via Royal Mail.

Direct from Battlefront?

Well, you do live in the same country.

With camo net you can just tay still and get that defense die anyway while also getting the reroll from staying still

Except that their shipping comes from Britain mate. Goddamn Nottingham.

Home of the Evil Empire.

Why does a Kiwi company have their production in Malaysia, and their shipping in England?

deals with Satan

Well it's probably a lot cheaper to ship stuff out via the Royal Mail to commonwealth countries, shorter distance to the EU...

Or Battlefront are just fucking nutjobs.

It was the only way to stop the Dark Lord Mike Haught from moving everything to the US; they had to scatter their assets to the four corners of the globe, in the hopes of buying time for a Hero to come and defeat the Dark Lord and his American Bias.

Cyka blyat.

>Or Battlefront are just fucking nutjobs.
I have to assume there's some hellaciously good tax benefits with how they're doing things.

Beyond that, I assume they don't want to move their people and offices, Malaysia does cheap figures, and it's easier to distribute them from the UK than from Malaysia or sending them to NZ. Maybe the shipping between the UK and Malaysia is really cheap, and the distribution FROM the UK is really good.