Flames of War General: Hurry up Hans! France hasn't read the V4 movement rules edition

Points, mostly.

For a starting force, the short Mark III offers solid volume of fire for the points, with the upgrades driving the cost up quite a lot.

Especially when Brit players are starting around 50 points, I kinda wanted a halfway decent number of tanks.
I did end up assembling a unit of 4 uparmoured ones afterwards, tho those will probably mostly be joining my infantry force.

CHEERS

T-thanks for the T-64B Phil.

You forgot your image

At the end i bought the Afrika korps book and starter, and them i remembered how i was fucking mad because all the shitty changes they made to the stats.

With the TY new movement table i thought they would finally give the Tiger the same mobility as the Panzer IV but with better cross rating, instead they killed the Tiger Ace ability and buff for no reason the 88 pen.

Same deal for Soviet tanks in EW. I don't think it's quite worth doubling the price of your T-28s to get 2 more AT, unless you have an exact plan of how your going to use them.

In the case with the DAK box, you already have 88s to assist with heavy AT work, so it makes more sense to bring the standard Panzer IIIs to increase your volume of fire.

Well, the Tiger is 10"/12"/16"/18" while the Panzer IV is 10"/14"/18"/20", so the Tiger is just 2" behind on dash speeds.

Exactly.

Also makes mistakes less punishing.

Those expensive Panzers need to be wielded like a scalpel to earn back their points, a bit like the Tiger I in LW these days.

Yeah, the Panzer III with the Short 5cm gun is the German workhorse for MidWar. Maybe the Long 5cm gun if you want a bit more punch.

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I think Eastern Front is my big benchmark for V4. Fucking up the desert's fine, I don't care about that to begin with.

top tier taste m8

I was getting the impression that V4 MidWar was sort of the test bed. LW is, if I had to guess, the real money-maker for Flames of War and they'll be able to adjust things with that book as people respond to MW.

I am not hopeful. It's looking like the soviets will mainly consist of hordes of T-34s and T-70s. Maybe if we are lucky we will get a plastic SU-76M or T-26 out of it, but I doubt we'all get half the options that were in Eastern Front

a lot of us are this....

I'm kinda just stating the obvious. In MidWar Panzer IIIs are a good value for their points. Even the short 5cm gun is pretty good against the British tanks.

Stuff like the Long 7.5 on the Panzer IV, or even the 8.8 of the Tiger and 88s are a bit overkill against the British at this point.

My own list will likely be a mix of short and long Panzer IIIs, some Marders for some higher AT, some short Panzer IVs for bombardment, and some armored cars for deployment zone expansion. And then see what points I still have left.

Maybe sprinkle in infantry, AA, or Stukas depending on available points.

How do you jump from a US Abrams to Wat German Leopard 1s and Gepards?

I think the Abrams is supposed to represent Phil's view on SUPERIOR WESTERN TACTICS.

People tend to imagine Abrams, but TY offers spammed Germans and insanely good SPAAGS.

Is there a (roughly) average buy-in for a FoW army? I assume nobody really plays below 1000pts?

Depends on what you want to play, but prolly a couple hundred ameribux either way. Unless you're playing conscript anything armies. Then quadruple it.

~$200 will get you most veteran forces fully done for a 1500ish point game. There are ones you can get done for under $70, but those are either a pain in the butt to paint (Brit and German paras using the PSC kits for them) or are really hard to use properly (the new starter boxes for LW or Big Cat spam).

this

At least for now, in the old eastern front the Long 50mm were the workhorse and the F2 was the big punch.

Is PSC the go-to alternative for WW2 minis?

It's my understanding the major issue with PSC is you'd still have to buy FoW-style bases as they don't provide any.

team-yankee.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=5600

Yep, Plastic Soldier Company is good quality and cheap, and they shove tons of options onto their more recent sprues (For example, just look at their new Universal Carrier sprue...). They have only three real issues:
>Some of their older infantry ranges are pretty inaccurate and/or look really thin and weedy next to Battlefront models.
>Some of the older tanks have multiple-part tracks, which are a giant pain in the rear to assemble.
>You need to get bases for them if using their infantry figures, though you can cut your own or buy base packs from them or Battlefront.
Overall, I prefer them to Battlefront, since they're about the same quality but PSC is much cheaper.

Especially with my airlanding company, where it's ~$60 for a 100% plastic 1500 point force with PSC vs $135 for an (equally detailed) metal version that same 1500 point force from BF.

That's good to hear. I've wanted to start up a LW Brit army and from what I've seen on YouTube, PSC has a fairly new line of Brit infantry that look really good and can mix with Battlefront well.

Also, Universal Carriers give me a massive murderboner. If anybody has good UC pics, please share.

Well, moment of truth.
Are Soviets going to fucked forever or are they going to be rebalanced into something that doesn't suck? There is precedent for it after all; the Jordanians got improved when the actual FoaN book came out, and LW Soviets did eventually get actual veterans.

Dare we hope?

Pic related

Gotta wait for Red Thunder and see whether there will be cheers or Cheers.

If RT doesn't fix it then IMO it will be too late as games rarely recover after a hype fade.

youtube.com/watch?v=92vuuZt7wak&feature=youtu.be&t=878

Wasn't there only one actual Veteran list (Cossacks) and a unit of over costed, inefficient Veterans in another list?

Heroes got a buff from 4th Edition, so there's that.

Engineer Sappers as well, and Hero Strelk have the option to take a few veteran units (Tank Destruction Company and Shturmovye Group, one each, as well as the usual scouts)

Unfortunately. Some of their stuff is pretty crap. Zvezda and Forged In Battle are a couple other alternatives.

Yeah, there's get-shot-like trained "veterans" that cost as much as veterans, but lack the support choices that allow actual veterans to be viable.

>Wasn't there only one actual Veteran list (Cossacks) and a unit of over costed, inefficient Veterans in another list?
Engineer sappers were alright. Cossacks were a gimmick list though, though it gave you VETERAN COSSACK T-34s so anyone who didn't play it was a moron.

Let's have a go at stating the M60 shall we?
FA: 16 (with ERA package)
SA: 6
TA: 1
Movement: Same as Chietain with Stillbrew
Skill: Same as Abrams for all
ROF: 1 moving, 2 stationary
AT: 19
Range: 40in
Points per tank: 4
Unit size: 3-6

1)Should be AT20, it uses the L7 105mm gun as the Abrams.
2)FA 15 - even if you put ERA on it the thickness of the actual armor leaves a great deal to be desired - and US ERA packages for the M60 were designed chiefly to keep it from being murdered by HEAT rounds from T-62s, it never really advanced to cover kinetic penetrators the same way Soviet stuff did.
US ERA should probably just be a bonus vs HEAT as a result.
3)SA 8 or 10 at least, this isn't a Panther or Leopard I
4)TA 2 is mandatory on an MBT.
5)6-7 points a tank is probably a decent starting point - how much is a Leopard?

And US tank platoons have been 3-4 tanks since the second world war you dummy.

It does not Cheered enough.
SA should be rated 8, cross on 2+. It also have stabilizer so moving RoF is rated 2.

The m60 is almost certainly goingt to be FA16 , it has aroundone 260mm of armour and the t-72 is rated for 270mm

PSC sell plastic FoW-style bases on their website. It's a separate purchase since they don't make their kits specifically for FoW.

Yes, very much so. A few of their first kits are contentious among hobbyists, but are still miles better than BF plastics except a few of their early infantry kits, and even those are debatable (I for instance prefer their more realistic proportions).
No T-55 Battalion? I already hate it.

I don't think the T-55 came with a USSR card did it?

It didn't. Not enough of them were forward-based in europe to count apparently.

It has no built in composite.
Hull front is thinner than a T-55 (109mm v 120mm, both at 60 degrees), and that 260mm is only the gun mantlet, the rest of the turret front is not that thick.

The T-72 is also better than 270mm - you've clearly had to too much cheers for today.
.

You know the M60 is going to be rated with better armor than the T-72.

Maybe. But if it's going to be a cheaper option than the M1 the stats will have to go down accordingly. If it's Abrams but with 1 less FA then it competes with the Abrams both in list and kit sales. Making it weaker (and cheaper) means more go in a list and more kits sold.

>It has no built in composite.
Officially only counts for it's HEAT resistance trait.

>Hull front is thinner than a T-55 (109mm v 120mm, both at 60 degrees), and that 260mm is only the gun mantlet, the rest of the turret front is not that thick.
It's actually at 65, so it's more like 260.

>The T-72 is also better than 270mm - you've clearly had to too much cheers for today.
Check the TY rulebook. Their T-72 has 270mm front armour, which is the only possible way the abrams gets 18 and the T-72 gets 16. Reality has nothing to do with this; the M60A3 is going to get FA 16, because it's going to get it's actual armour value and the T-72 and T-64 are getting whatever armour values they wanked out for them, and conveniently that just so happens to make current-gen soviet tech inferior to western steel folded 1000 times. The T-72M is FA 15 with 240mm (by BF's working); it's not going to be statted that badly.

Was hoping Red Thunder wouldn't be USSR exclusive, but rather generic Warsaw Pact...

Well, DDR is basically your warpac book, featuring T-72Ms and BDD T-55s. You can just call them czechs or poles.

It really wouldn't be that hard to just make a generic supplement book, since most of WARPAC is all using the same shit. Just take all the unique units from different WARPAC nations and put em in a supplement book.

Your are probably right, but as said it could be weaker as a game concession. Also, I just opened up the Osprey on the T-72 and
>T-72A 500mm vs APFSDS and 560mm vs HEAT
>T-72B 520mm vs APFSDS and 950mm vs HEAT

Sweet Jesus, I was not expecting to see numbers quite that high.

The Gulf War gave Soviet tanks a bad rep. Before the Gulf War NATO planners were terrified of the Soviet tanks. Then the Gulf happened and M1A1HAs were murdering T-72Ms crewed by Arabs and suddenly the popular imaginings of how a 1980s Cold War would have gone completely inverted.

>said it could be weaker as a game concession. Also, I just opened up the Osprey on the T-72 and
The values fluctuate a bit depending on source, but 430-500 is a pretty consistent range for T-72A estimates and the B is usually 20-50mm better. You'll note this is the same or better than the abrams.

>M1A1HAs
With the silver bullet. Ammo advantage really can't be understated (remembering that, on the other side, a load of the iraqi tanks were using mild steel rounds the soviets had long put into training use as their principle round which was totally ineffective against NATO MBTs).

It drives me absolutely fucking mental the comparison between Iraqi T-72Ms which where decrepit because
>Arab Army
In many cases still had training ammo loaded and where afraid to fire their High Velocity rounds for fear of the gun bursting. Being used tactically incorrectly in an attempt to gun duel the NATO forces at night without Flare support no less, against the Superior versions of the Abrams that they'd built to counter the Soviet Tanks of the mid eighties.

That article that one of the big FoW blogs put out drove me spare for the entire week.

I can see how that originated all the cheers we have today: '70s monkey model tanks fighting '90s upgraded fresh from factory tanks

PSC infantry model quality doesn't touch BF plastics. Price and proportion are the only upside.

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>Being used tactically incorrectly in an attempt to gun duel the NATO forces
This is something else I forgot; a lot of people assume "had soviet advisors" means "have warpac doctrine", but that's not true at all. Warsaw pact advisors were typically technical or logistical; most third world armies that had soviet backing still used tanks as self-propelled guns. The soviets, on the other hand, used tanks as their manuever arm, like most of the forces who fought in WW2.

>PSC infantry model quality doesn't touch BF plastics. Price and proportion are the only upside.
Really depends which ones, their brits, paras, and grenadiers in normandy are great. Their US and Soviet troops are weird spindly potato men though.

Weren't there a lot of friendly fire incidents with the Yanks during that war? I vaguely recall one Abrams platoon knocking out another due misidentification, and that whole thing with 2 Warrior IFVs decked out with neon IFF flags getting the BRRT.

Yeah apart from fresh from the factory tanks they shipped pretty much every M1A1HA and M1A2 in Europe to the Gulf. Even ignoring how shit the Iraqi army was the American forces were not equipped as they would have been in Europe in the late let alone mid-80's.

In the mid-80s the main US tank in Europe was the M60, and the main version of the M1 would have been the straight M1 or the M1IP (improved performance) both of which lacked the 120mm smoothboore of the A1 and later.

Yeah, I am pretty sure the coalition lost more AFVs to friendly fire than the Iraqis.

The legend used to be that no M1 was destroyed by an Iraqi tank. Hence how Abrams got their super tank reputation.

>Uninterrupted chain of command
>Full air superiority
>Accurate intel
>Still manages to be more lethal to friendly forces than the enemy is

If this is what happens when everything goes according to plan, I'd hate to see how it would have gone with everything gone to shit from a Warpac invasion.

Yeah, it would be a shit show from the time the first rockets started falling on NATO battalion HQs. I would anticipate that the NATO defense would be several isolated companies fighting for dear life.

In Team Yankee NATO tanks make the Soviet kit look like garbage to the point where you feel like you have a clear advantage outnumbered 2:1.

Let's not forget that NATO isn't even entirely on the same page.
American wants to nuke their way to victory.
The Germans demand no nuke used, and are prepared to defend ever foot or ground to the death, just like the did in '45.
The French are prepare to fight to the last German, but are unlikely to throw their own country under the bus for the rest of Europe.
The British expect there'll be plenty of time to bring reinforcements across the channel.
The Dutch and Belgians expect water obstacles, mines, and static defenses to hold the Soviets at bay.
The Turks hate the Russians, but are more likely to get bogged down in the Balkans than they are to counterattack the Soviet Union directly.
The Italians are on the wrong side of the Alps.
The Spanish are at the wrong end of Europe.
The Danes and Norwegians haven't been able to defend themselves, let alone anyone else since the century rolled over.
And the Portuguese are even farther back then the Spaniards, making them the last stop on the WarPact cross country tour.

Honestly we lucked out that the shooting did not start.

>The Germans demand no nuke used, and are prepared to defend ever foot or ground to the death, just like the did in '45.

Holy shit I butchered that sentence.

As is tradition.

£20 gets you enough Zvezda King Tigers or Jagdtigers to play, spend another £20-30 on some infantry and Nebelwerfers and you've got a surprisingly effective budget list. The nature of support platoons means you can expand out from that into infantry or even medium tank lists whilst reusing stuff.

>The French are prepare to fight to the last German
I kek'ed mightily
>The Danes and Norwegians haven't been able to defend themselves, let alone anyone else since the century rolled over.
More to do with a lack of manpower than actual hardware or skill (though selling off bases, subs, and ships, and buying horribly expensive shit from the US doesn't help either country). In a full-on war, the Russians will have more men than the two countries have bullets, combined, and more tanks/aircraft than the two countries have munitions to deal with either, combined. And that's just on the northern flank.

No
At this point I'd rather stick playing Red Dragon

So, how bad/good are the IS-2 in this edition? What about the KV-1, SU-85, ISU-152, Katyushas, and IL-2?

Harder to kill, still crap at killing things.

Not necessarily harder to kill, really (unless against american arty). The only one who's improved more than marginally is the Hero IS-2 (and mind you, those were utter shit in V3). Meanwhile, the ISU-152 has been utterly fucked now.

>So, how bad/good are the IS-2 in this edition?

Breakthrough got worse and RoF 1 is exactly as crippling as it was before. They were overcosted before and suffered massively under the v4 shakeup, making the "everything is still balanced" claim a joke.

>What about the KV-1,
Still good as a cheap heavy, like before. Suffers slightly from a weakening of tank escorts but it still does the things it used to do.

>SU-85,
Same kind of deal. Still kills Pz IVs real good and struggles against panthers.

>ISU-152,
Also lost out in the big guns nerf and bunker busters aren't anti-bunker weapons anymore (artillery does fine). Bunker busters are also now RoF 0 when moving so you just straight-up can't shoot. Also went from "struggling" to "never pick".

>Katyushas,
Improved hugely with the FP and artillery buffs and are now murder against infantry, but as fragile as before.

>and IL-2?
Cannon armed aircraft in priority flights are now one of the most OP things in the game so they're a strong pick.

Been a while since I posted a batrep, but I figured since this one was short and it's the first time my airlanding hit the field, it'd be worth sharing.

This was a 2k a side 2v2 game, with each player allowed to deviate by up to 100pts as long as the total was under 2k. We were using a custom-made V3.5 ruleset that's still getting worked on, since the local group is isolated and we can afford to do that.

... ouch

Yeah... It was a perfect storm of shitty dice and bad tactics.

Am I reading correctly that they still had all their SPGs left when they gave up? That... seems foolhardy. It's a blow but 10 AFVs and 2 big guns is far from game over territory. I'd be surprised if you won, but then, I've won a game where I had an infantry commander on the objective and my opponent had 12 light tanks.

In Forced Withdrawl, the defender pulls objectives up on turns 6, 7, and 8, so they essentially need to capture one objective at the start of their turn 6 or have two locked down for capture on their turn 7. Else the defender will remove the objective they're about to grab. The defender also has to withdraw forces as the battle goes on, but we had plenty of platoons that would be irrelevant and safe to withdraw. So he's looking at trying to force his way through two large platoons of FV infantry backed up by AT guns and laden with gammon bombs and PIATs in order to grab either of the open objectives, or taking tanks without infantry support or turrets into a town with enemy infantry that have panzerfausts. He'd have to push hard with unsuitable armor through enemies set up to deal with that sort of thing.

I feel like i'm gaping on something here again, how close do you have to be to gain cover and concealment from trench lines? And is this covered anywhere in the book? It feels somewhat vague. I assume its full up against the trench line

To just throw a statistics check in there, all ten tanks firing at GtG Vet infantry from the halt will kill about a team a turn. Hitting on 6s sucks dick.

Sure, but you have one piat or two panzerfausts in each. Assaulting might've done something. I've just pulled off too many improbable wins to say an army that's got ten vehicles left is a lost cause.

The (Fearless) Airlanding have Gammon Bombs, so TA3. The Soviets were in buildings. Neither would be a good idea. (And you can't really count on Fearless British Bulldogs failing morale, empirical evidence notwithstanding)

Technically each airlanding platoon had two PIATs (one base, one attached out from the HQ) and a Faust (platoon command upgrade).

>The Soviets were in buildings
Yeah, trained very difficult bog checks every round are a great way to ruin your tanks...

What the german players should have done was advance the infantry through the town with the tanks right behind them, since the tanks would be able to shoot over the infantry's heads in defensive fire and to shell any Russians on the upper floors. That would have kept the infantry much more protected and let the tanks close without worrying about being assaulted or ambushed.

What model of T-72s are available to TY?

A strangely statted T-72A and the T-72M.

What about them is strangely statted?