Flames of War: Volksarmee for Arstotszka edition!

I want this
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-18_tank

That's fine. Might pick some new toys up if that's the case.

I've got Hellfire and Burning Empires on my kindle so I'll sort through those lists and see what I can build without needing a whole new army.

You can dismount the MGs from the halftracks, which means an ARP would have 2 LMGs by itself, another 3 from halftracks, and 2 .50 cal MGs from halftracks. Two such platoons, and you might need 10 LMGs (and 4 .50 cal)

Ah, good point, forgot about that. Been away for a couple years but I stopped doing that early on because of the worse save for gun teams. I'd leave the bazookas in the tracks if I wanted their guns. Well, at least I used the crew from the second platoon of M1917s for something else, so I don't have eight of those!

Hey,

i just looked through Burning Empires italians, and oh, man. i am ever sorry! do you run fucileri, bersaglieri, or do you do tanks?

they can roll a 5 and have Conscript Bersaglieri. oh, no man, no!

i'd have no problem if you went with minimum core troops and just stacked up on artillery and gun teams. those poor italians...and i only saw 1 AT Rifle per list....

i'd be willing to fudge stuff....

That has surprisingly good production values for what I assume is a 30's Russian propaganda film.

It's easy to have good production values when you only have to pay the artists in bullets.

Yeah, that'd basically be what I can do this far. Not a lot of tanks at my disposal currently.

Like I said: I'll look at the different lists and see what we can do.

cool. and i am guessing you have Semoventes over M13's?

so yeah...we will fudge shit....

I have some M14/41's, and also a platoon of Semovente 75's.

>M14's

man, those are some hefty tanks you got there

is there an EW book for those at all? i know little of Italy...

maybe we can pretend they're M13's?

The M14/41 is basically the MW version of the M13/40 that appears in EW. Same chassis, so same miniature, with a different gun I think. So not hefty at all, really. The 13/40 is 3/2/1 with a 47 gun in the turret and slow tank.

oh, OK.

also, just to collect more offerings:

YOUR OWN PERSONAL TANK!
--ala GuP, with crazy paint and your choice of crew, no limits but 1945 and before....

template
>Your Custom color scheme
>any cool accesories?
>commander: defaults to you, but you can be another crew spot instead...
>you may pick anyone to be gunner, driver, etc. per tank: each tank has different crew sections.
>(other anons have to accept invite as crew, but any other person/character can be a crewmate)
>....
>What music blares from your speakers as you pass the burning enemy?

so far:

PANZERFUNKWAGEN KingTiger
--blue-green-white tie dyed
--
--Commander Eagles
--Gunner Viruscide
--
--Music:

C3K TROLLMACHINE IS-2
--Red and Gold, 'stalin's heroes' in cryllic
--flamethrower rear-turret
--Commader C3K
--Gunner: IS-2anon
--Loader: actual Russian Kodiak
--Driver: new player of IS Heroes
--
--Music: State Anthem of Soviet Union
ULTRASHERMAN M4A1E8 76mm
--3-tone OD Back and Tank, crowned gryphon insignia
--
--Commander Shermanon
--
--Music: US Artillery March

Obviously the music for the Panzerfunkwagon would be "we brought the funk."

>Panzerbefehlswagen KingTiger
--blue-green-white tie dyed
Modifications: 50.cal AA MG, Panzerfunk branded Schürzen, Aerial adorned with Stars and Stripes, and Boiling Vessel.

--Commander Eagles
--Driver Viruscide
--Gunner Marqod
--Loader: Panzerlehr
--Hull Gunner: Bartosz

--Music: Parliament - Give Up The Funk

>i get the shit position

don't make me get my own tank! mfw

Boiling Vessel is an internal mod, i assume?

wait....

>Driver: Virus
wait, you don't even have the driver's license!
move over, vocal one! you get the radio ops position.
this bitch can drive.
in winter
no chains....

That's why I'm driving. It's inherently funnier if the job is given to the guy who can't drive.

....

........i'm still objecting

wait what is all this i am hearing about custom tanks lately?

for fun.

the idea of going Girl-und-Panzer, but you don't have to be loli and do what you want with a tank of your choice. senshado legal.

in that case i will take one semovente da 105/25 to go.

i actually only saw up to the british episode of GuP though.

>Tank
A British A34 Comet.

>Your Custom color scheme
Standard SCC 15 green, with all markings appropriate for an armored recce regiment. The classic "gotta go fast" pic has replaced the normal divisional marking, and the squadron triangle has a star near the top with the three sides of the triangle labeled "Speed, Armor, Firepower" (left, bottom, right). There's also two thin red stripes down the sides to make it go faster (obviously).

>any cool accessories?
It has the unregulated gearing and engine of a C hull Cromwell, for a top speed of 40mph. If you're fine with fucking up the suspension, anyway.

>What music blares from your speakers as you pass the burning enemy?
Provisionally: youtube.com/watch?v=doEwWzMz99A
I reserve the right to change this if someone can come up with something more appropriately British.

I was considering picking up the plastic soldier company T-34 battalion to get into late war and was just wondering how debilitating hen and chicks can be. Also just any tips in general on playing Soviets.

>how debilitating hen and chicks can be
A lot, so shoot or scoot. You'll learn to live with the pain, tovarishch.

It'll pack your shit in, but make you better at playing for sure.

Too bad H&C also exists for units that shouldn't even have it though.

So would it be better to msu my tankovy platoons even if I have less tanks that way to have more options about how I move or blob them for numbers? Moreover should I just go get artillery instead of a bunch of tanks if I want to play Soviets? I do like B-4s.

I usually run 3x5 (sometimes more in each) t34/76s, and then rely on the sheer numbers and the more expensive non-scooters to do the heavy lifting (SU-85m is golden). Also equip your 34s with tank escorts for glorious soviet aesthetic.

Get what you think is fun and cool looking, man. Competition is just one aspect of this hobby.

Yeah, tank riders and escorts do sound fun.

Honestly a lot of stuff sounds like fun, I just worry too much about things I shouldn't I guess. Basically I just want to roll a bunch of tanks around or flatten things right now rather than fiddle with a bunch of infantry. I almost don't even want tank riders, but they're cool enough I don't exactly mind having to deal with all the little figures.

Bear with me since I'm half asleep but I put together something using Red Bear's Tankovy Batalon at 1500.

Tankovy HQ
T-34 obr 1942 with cupola and tank escorts

Combat Companies
Platoon with 6 T-34 obr 1942s, cupolas and tank escorts

Platoon with 7 T-34 obr 1942s, cupolas and tank escorts

Weapons Company
Motorised Mortar Company with trucks and observer team

Corps Support
Guards Heavy Assault Gun Company with three ISU-122s and AA .50s

Tank Killer Company with three SU-85Ms

Light Armoured Car Platoon consisting of 3 BA-64s, dunno if I want to swap out their AA for PTRS AT rifles.

What training/morale is that army?

Confident/Trained. The ISUs are Fearless/Trained.

The only issue is that you don't have any anti-air, but that's still quite niche. I think it's a very good list, and worth a try.

confident trained
Looks fine! You got your bases covered. I've never had any use for cupolas though.

BA64s are fine for recon, but with spetnatz you get to infiltrate another unit, which is nice if you want a headstart on your tank charge.

Keep in mind there's a difference between tank escorts and tank riders, no separate models needed for tank escorts.

and don't suffer H&C!

Learn to plan ahead for subsequent turns. You don't fly by the seat of your pants as Soviet tanks, you figure out where your tanks will need to be in 3 turns, and you move them there before (seriously) throwing some main cannon dice.

They're still at penalty to hit when maneuvering... Just with the ability of moving partial platoon and not fucking up the shots of the ones that didn't move.

ISU-122s are alright, but not anything amazeballs. They are arguably the best fucking heavy tank for Soviets in Late War, with possible exceptions to the IS-85 and KV-8s.

You have to roll for air support and it costs a lot right? I looked at the air support options I had and it was like 200 points minimum for a single plane, then again anti-air looks cheap.

>I've never had any use for cupolas though
No? They just sounded like a good idea at the time.

>BA64s are fine for recon, but with spetnatz you get to infiltrate another unit
Decoy tanks were tempting but I didn't have the points at the time, dropping the cupolas though would get me the extra bit I'd need to get either those for the infiltrate. I'd lose out on recce though right?

>no separate models needed for tank escorts.
So they can't get dropped off period then? Thats interesting. I was just taking them instead of tank riders since I vaguely remember something about requiring an even combat platoon count.

Cool, I think I can do that. I'll just think about it kinda like SW: Armada then.

Anti-Air in terms of Anti-Aircraft Guns. Which you can at least use them to guard objectives from infantry.

You don't really want Decoy Tanks. They let you do an infiltration, but they're also RoF 1, and vitally, not recce. You want Spetnaz if you want Infiltrators.

Tank Escorts are essentially a part of the tank, like having an extra machine gun. They can't leave, you always have enough tank escorts for your tanks, but they can be pinned down in an assault.

Even platoons stop you from being screwed over for Reserves.

Thanks for clearing all that up. I believe I have a good idea of what I'll be buying now so I'll be headed to bed to sleep on camo schemes. Thanks to all of you in general too for answering my questions too.

>Decoy tanks were tempting
Never ever ever ever ever ever use decoy tanks. They're a small platoon with RoF 1 (and, IIRC, H&C, but RoF 1 is bad on it's own) and crucially they MUST be deployed. Even in missions where you can't use infiltration. You basically never want to put down two mediocre-at-best tanks if you defend.

holy fuck i cannot do camo

how can i strip my plastic tonks back to scratch and stick to dunkelgelb.

HOw long before Volksarmee gets scanned?

It's not even out yet.

So probably quite some time.

If you can find a cleaning product called Simple Green, give it a dunk in that. And then give it a scrub with an old tooth brush.

an acitone free Nail vanish remover

>Comet
>meme markings
>military food groups
>redline ref'
>SPEED!

....i like you, you....

>standard green
>2 thin red stripes

you do know the two stripes on each side a stock black gloss are every americunts' 2016 trendy choice paint job on their pussywagon sports cars?

we really need a SteelWhip tank in here....

>we really need a SteelWhip tank in here....

The GrogStuG

>we really need a SteelWhip tank in here....
TOG2*?

i dunno, SteelWhip hasn't shown in forever....

>you do know the two stripes on each side a stock black gloss are every americunts' 2016 trendy choice paint job on their pussywagon sports cars?
Yes. If the post wasn't half exaggerated self mockery (I end up playing fast moving forces in pretty much every TT game I play), it'd just be a normal Comet.

Seeing the succes of great war and the incoming v4, FoW russian civil war is unlikely to come in a near (far) future

>fast moving forces
the only way, Druchi, the only way...

also a sarcasm.

> Be me
> email BF customer service, two boxes of plastic IS-2s I bought were missing crew sprues.
> CS says they'll fix it, email later, say replacements have been sent.
> Find today I've been charged $90 for "replacements" as they sent two whole boxes when I just needed the crew sprues

Is this normal? WTF? If I had know this would happen I'd just have ordered the crews separately.

No, that is not normal, what the fuck? E-mail them about the charge and them sending the boxes, and if they don't do anything contact your credit card company.

where are you? seems like a normal interaction with bf to me. once they took so long to process my order the bank thought it was fraud. i asked battlefront about it and they said they didn't even have a copy of my order but still sent me a confirmation email. so yeah.... expect fuck ups.

Is Labamba man in the house?
just wondering how you paint your italians. mine look... wrong.

Battlefront apparently only very barely know what the fuck they're doing most of the time.

I don't think any of them actually know the first thing about inventory management.

Been waiting for months for a couple of spray cans. Thought it was supposed to make things easier. The Soviet Green spray was dead on Vallejo Russian Uniform green. The key to working with battlefront is order at release or else it's a shitshow as to whether or not you will get what you are ordering.

Been considering an airbrush. I work in a lab, so I would have space to work and a compressed air supply. I used a spray gun one summer job to spray paint all the fire hydrants in the town. Thing was a hardware store special and had to be disassembled at lunch and at the end of the day for cleaning. Are airbrushes a similar pain in the ass? Anyone have any recommendations for something in the ~100 USD price range or is that too cheap of an entrance point?

Yeah, I'm here.

My italians are a black primer, rucksack tan for the tan, bootstrap leather for leather bits(belts, pouches, helmet straps), bloodtracker brown for the wood of the guns with either ironhull grey or cold steel for the metal bits(can't remember which).

I'm a shit painter, though, so take my advice with a few pounds of salt.

And if anyone knows the vallejo equivilents of those colors please tell me. I've searched and never found anything.

BF already makes them, They're called Tachanka's like how the video is named

But Tachankas are already in WW2, so no need for a new era for them- you can even field them in any WW2 era, and BF makes them already.

No H&C for decoy tanks.

I revised my list from last night with /fowg/'s advice in mind. I think its a little more aggressive and at some point massed katyushas sounded like more fun than motorized mortars even if its expensive in comparison. For spetsnaz I just buy a small German infantry platoon with halftracks and paint them a bit off, right?

Red Bear Tankovy Batalon
1500pts
Confident Trained

Tankovy HQ
T-34 obr 1942

Combat Companies
Platoon with 6 T-34 obr 1942s

Platoon with 7 T-34 obr 1942s

Corps Support
Guards Heavy Assault Gun Company with three ISU-122s and two and AA .50s
[Fearless Trained

Tank Killer Company with four SU-85Ms

Spetsnaz Platoon
[Fearless Veteran]

Guards Rocket Mortar Battalion with seven Katyushas and one Katyusha with additional crew.
[Fearless Trained]

not bad....

i made my recon by buying the artillery HQ, and mixing the various signal men into radzvedki.

spetznaz can use the standard soviet scout blister is you like. but if you want disguises, sure.
though i didn't check to see which small german blisters mix up to soviet the best....

I think I do want to go with disguises, but I'm having trouble finding German infantry packs that I can be sure will have enough MP40s to represent them properly as SMG teams. Worst comes to worst though I can get that standard blister and not have to worry to much about it.

Just so I have this right, the Katys exchange all their fire for a single devastating template since they count as having nine weapons, correct? I'm just assuming thats better since it sounds like a blast.

>Guards Rocket Mortar Battalion with seven Katyushas and one Katyusha with additional crew. [Fearless Trained]

I don't think this is possible, extra crew is generally an all or nothing upgrade.

Is it not? Their forces of war listbuilder was letting me, if not I guess thats not so bad but I think I'd only take four Katys then and get a few more tanks or another spetsnas squad.

The Oberfeldwebel Schmidt & Assault Troop pack's got a lot of MP40s and PPSHs in it.

i used army painter desert yellow as my primer. dude at my flgs insisted that vallejo desert yellow matched the army painter primer. protip: it fucking doesn't. managed to kinda save them with a heavy dry brush of iraqi sand but its a real shit show up close.

Thanks, I'll take a look at those now.

That's not a good excuse. You need to read the accompanying text as well. It probably say something like "equip all katyushas with extra crew for +10 per katyusha" or something similar. "All" is a very important word here.

>order at release
This didn't help with TY or tanks.

Yeah, I misread it. I just bought the upgrade for a platoon instead of a single Katyusha. Judging by the chart thats an extra 40 points on top of the eight just to hit the devastating template even though only one more would be needed so that blows. Maybe I'll just stick with mortars even if they don't feel as cool, because katys sound like they'll let me down more often than not for that many points.

It's sixteen guns, and soviets get some weird rules with large batteries of rockets. IK think you get devastating and rerolls?

Mortars are generally better, simply because they can be dug in, and thus less vulnerable to counter-attacks.

Nothing "wierdly soviet" about it, 16 gun bombardments means devastating template and reroll misses. (The soviets do have special rules with rocket launchers that can get up to 32 "guns" firing)

Yeah, thats what it says. Its only one template though right?

That makes sense, ah well. I was just thinking I needed something to dig infantry out of defensive positions for my tanks as they push up.

>Yeah, thats what it says. Its only one template though right?
Yes, still only one template. A single platoon (and russians count "companies" as platoons) can only ever provide a single template.

>That makes sense, ah well. I was just thinking I needed something to dig infantry out of defensive positions for my tanks as they push up.
First of all, artillery isn't really that good at digging up infantry, and the mortars would most likely be better at it (they have 3+ Firepower, as compared to 4+ for Katyushas, if I remember correctly). They're mostly useful for pinning stuff, annoying anti-tank guns, and harrassing infantry that isn't dug in any more (due to coming in from reserve, or because they needed to move).
Secondly, you have an excellent tool for digging up infantry in your ISU-122s.

So Katyushas are just more mobile and cover a wider area. I'll probably end up buying both if only to attempt to bury things in rockets every now and then for grins.

>ISU-122s
I think you mean 152s.

I am fairly certain your list says ISU-122, which have Breakthrough Guns, so no infantry, gun or unarmed vehicle saves. And 2+ Firepower, so you're quite likely to eradicate whatever [not an armored vehicle] you manage to hit.

Thats not me, and yeah you're right. 152s have the 1+ firepower but 2+ is still pretty great.

The important thing isn't the firepower, the important thing is that they both remove infantry saves (so no negating 2 out of every 3 hits you get on them).

That does sound like a pretty big deal, especially considering they look to be strong AT too. I'm guessing they're going to be the highest priority target most of the time then considering they can smash most things they run into.

Sort of?
With RoF 1 smoke can massively limit their effectiveness.

Oh yeah, easy to forget smoke exists when basically nothing I have can take it.

Well, your assault engineers get smoke pots.
Isn't that cool?

Nevermind that they will all probably be dead before you have chance to use them.

Yeah...

> Pay for uber-expensive assault engineer with smoke
> team has to remain stationary to deploy smoke and cannot assault

Thanks so much BF...

Doh! I feel your pain because I was excited for tanks and came in the weekend after we got it in at the FLGS (a few weeks after it actually came out because I guess they only printed like 100 starter boxes) and it was bought up. Had to wait even longer to get it ordered in.

Battlefront tends to be very cautious when dropping new products. But for the Tanks starter box it was just cardboard with 3 spruces tossed in, so I don't see why they couldn't have made a few more.

Question to Bartosz or anyone other from Poland:
Do you buy minis directly from BF, or from other sources? (shops/local distributors).
If from BF, how long it usually takes for your order to arrive?