2018 Retrospective

I entered 2018 with five main goals, and this is my review of how I went.

My first goal was to finish my FOW army for ValleyCon 18. This was a mid war competition, coming after the release of the first four North African theatre books. I ran a Panzer III company from 21st Panzer Division themed on the Gazala Line battles of May/June 1942, placing a glorious last without a single win. I didn't write a post about how it went, so the details are a bit hazy, but there were a few lessons. I had made some deliberately sub-optimal list choices for the sake of theme, one being the use of 88s instead of Marders. I also should have taken a platoon of armoured cars for 2pts rather than the Forward Scouts card on the Panzer IIs. I still think Panzers should be effective if you take the time to develop experience with them, but the list is so small that the margin for error is tiny.

The second goal was to buy some Italian light cavalry and a Landsknecht square for Impetus. I'm happy to say that I now have the cavalry, although they have yet to see any paint. The Landsknechts will roll over once again.

The big effort for the year was Team Yankee. My actual goal for the year was a NATO list to play in both 30pt (noting that since then we have established 45pts as a local standard) and 100pt games. Instead of going down that path, my Warsaw Pact collection grew significantly, adding more Hinds, the various BRDM-based support weapons, and my first T-64s, plus a bit of terrain. It was a good year for TY in the club, with many more people starting armies and playing at Remember December, and 2019 promises to be even better as those armies expand, with people looking at playing TY at the Nationals at Easter, and Panzerschreck in July.

My next objective for the year was to look into Fate of a Nation. I purchased a copy when it was released, and like the look of it, but haven't played a game yet. I'm still keen to have a few games with proxies in before committing to purchase anything for it.

The last item on my list was to try a couple of other WW2 rulesets. We had a couple of playtest games of a ruleset written by a member of the club, which was fun and got me painting some 28mm FJ, but I haven't yet had either Chain of Command or Battlegroup on the table.

In other events during the year, I ran the club's V3 Impetus competition in August. That was a good day, and I'm looking forward to seeing the 2nd Edition of Impetus when it's released next year.

Triple T vs McZermof

McBeth vs Reg

Scott's Elephant

Having had a think about goals for 2019, I have the following list:

1. As always, the first priority is preparation for FOW at Valleycon. I have some mid war British infantry, gun crews, and carriers still to paint up for that. 
2. D-Day 75. 6 June marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, and it seems like a multiplayer game of FOW would be in order. There's a bit of planning, painting, and terrain building required for that. It will become a focal point for the first few months of the year, and will clear out a fair amount of my unpainted FOW stash. The event will also serve as a last hurrah for the old Overlord/Atlantik Wall V3 books before late war lists start being rereleased under the V4 format.
3. Extend the 28mm FJ, and use them in a few games. Ideally I'd get to the point of being able to having enough in case 1000pts is required for Bolt Action, but the primary interest would be in seeing how Chain of Command goes. Putting together some 28mm terrain wouldn't go amiss, either.
4. Cruel Seas. I'm quite excited by this, as it is something completely different to my other games. I plan to build a Royal Navy fleet for it.
5. Warmachine. After a couple of years away from this, I've decided that I will try and play a few games of it next year. I have a couple of models still to paint up, and might even buy a new warjack or two.
6. Yes, the Landsknecht pike block. This first appeared on my To Do list in 2015, and I'm still no closer to completing it. It's part of a larger project to repaint and rebase my existing Impetus army, and 2nd Edition should provide the required nudge.

Looking back through the list, Team Yankee is notable by its absence. There are a couple of units that I would add, particularly DANA and BM-21s (to make the most of the new artillery rules that will be coming with 2nd Edition), Geckos (because they're ridiculous), and another infantry company (because the BF plastics are great, and so I can run a larger Afgantsy battalion), but those are all relatively minor things. I have toyed around with the idea of doing West German Leopard 1s, or the French to see if they're really as bad as they look on paper, but at the moment I'm thinking it would be better to spend my TY time getting more experience with the Soviets, to try and be more competitive with them.

Who knows what else will take my fancy during the year. Will I jump into FOAN? Will I do some Soviets for FOW? How about an Ancients army? Will I finally succumb to the allure of GW products? One thing's for sure, I've enjoyed getting back into blogging over the last few months, and and will endeavour to continue doing it regularly.

So, happy new year, thanks for reading my blog, and I wish you well for the year ahead.

FOW Road Map, and Summer Plans

This week saw Battlefront release a bunch of information about their future plans, including a roadmap for Late War FOW. The contents of this will have been analysed on a bunch of other sites so I won't go through it in detail, but just wanted to pull together a few thoughts.

• It is good having an idea of what books are going to be coming out and when, and to have an early view at what lists are going to be in the D-Day books. 
• I understand the reasoning for it, but it's a little disappointing that, after the drawn-out release of Late War under V2/V3 (the release of individual battle-themed books, their rerelease as theatre compendiums, then again as updated compendiums), we now need to go through the whole thing again over the next four years. And more specifically that my Comet Squadron won't be playable again until 2021.
• I like the way that the lists in the D-Day books are split out into D-1, D-Day, and Breakout Formations.
• The following text appears in the Q&A:
  
  I have interpreted this as meaning that, unlike what the previously indication at the Battlefront UK Open Day earlier this year, EW is now planned to get the "full treatment", akin to what we have seen with Mid War, rather than a FOAN-style release. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it is a good thing as we will see product in shops. FOAN is a good book, but unless you're buying one of the four starter sets, it looks like you have to purchase anything else through the BF webstore. On the other, the Q&A also includes this:
  
  While it relates specifically to the LW releases, the same thinking will carry over to EW. It points to a limited range of nations, and within those nations, a more restricted product line.
• The video included renders of the new FJ and US Para plastics, and they look amazing.

Changing topic, now that I'm on leave for a couple of weeks, there are a couple of projects I'll be working on.

28mm Italian Wars

This is something that I've been thinking about for 2-3 years now. In 2016 I purchased a second hand 28mm Florentine army for Impetus, with the plan to repaint it, rebase it, and add a few additional units, but I have been procrastinating because it is way outside my comfort zone. Prompted by the announcement of Impetus 2, I've purchased some mounted crossbow and will be drawing heavily on the work of Jonathan Freitag at http://palousewargamingjournal.blogspot.com for painting inspiration.

28mm Fallschirmjäger

I have also picked up a mortar team and HMG team for my 28mm FJ, the aim being to get to play some CoC next year, and to have 500pts on hand in case any need for Bolt Action arises.

ValleyCon 2019

The next ValleyCon is going to be a much smaller club-based event, with the club's major support for the year going towards assisting with Natcon at Easter, and Charicon, a charity fundraising event in late February. I'll be playing Flames of War, which is an 85 point midwar tournament. I'll be running British Rifles, but only have enough infantry at the moment for two Motor Platoons. I need to extend those to three full Rifle Platoons, and add mortars and 25pdrs. I'll discuss the list in more detail early next year.

Next Time: I will take a look back at 2018, and outline my plans for 2019.

Remember December

On Saturday we had the club's annual Remember December event. This year it was Team Yankee, based on a 45pt Firestorm Red Thunder campaign. I ran Afgantsy, which was a change of plan from my original East German intentions.

Air Assault Battalion - Red Thunder

Battalion HQ - 1 x AK-74 team

Air Assault Company - Minimum size plus AGS-17 and AT-4 Spigot

Air Assault Company - Minimum size plus SA-14 Gremlin and AT-4 Spigot

Hind Assault Helicopter Company - 2 x Hind

Hind Assault Helicopter Company - 2 x Hind

T-64 Tank Platoon - 3 x T-64

Shilka Platoon - 2 x Shilka

BMP-1 Recon Platoon - 3 x BMP-1 Scout

The thinking here was that the infantry is really good, with Spigots and plenty of RPGs for dealing with light armour spam, T-64s are really good, the Shilkas are needed to protect the T-64s, and the Hinds are a potential game-winner. On the whole, I thought it was a pretty decent list.

The List

I won't subject you to a blow-by-blow account of the day, but it didn't go well for me. I was run over by LAVs in a Free For All in game one, had to attack Dutch YPRs and Leo 2s in a failed Counterattack in game two, and was unable to hold off a very well-executed attack by West German Marders and Leo 2s in a No Retreat for game three.

The Afgantsy come under fire from a Spectre

I still think the list was good. In the first game I struggled with rallying the infantry (on 2s and 3s), which crippled my AT-4s, and the rest of my infantry had too short a range to avoid being shot to pieces by the LAVs. 

In the second game I failed to concentrate my attack on one objective. The Dutch didn’t have huge numbers on the board, and their reserves were coming on from miles away, so I should have been able to use my infantry to overrun the objective while my armour watched their back. 

The third game was the one my list was designed to play, but my opponent exploited a flaw in my deployment and slipped a platoon each of Leopards and Panzergrenadiers down the flank and onto the back objective. I was annoyed at my stupidity, as this was absolutely a game that I should have won, but on reflection it showed exactly what is so good about 45pts on a 6x4: you simply couldn't pull that kind of attack off against the density of units that you get at 100pts.

The top Warsaw Pact list was ten T-64s, which I did not expect. The first few times I played TY, helicopters dominated tanks because we didn't have any air defence units. Here, it was a brilliant play to the meta: 45pt red-vs-blue games, and NATO helicopters are expensive. And it paid off, with only one NATO list having a pair of Cobras.

In terms of list breakdown, we had a really good variety:

• 1 x Afgantsy battalion
• 2 x T-64 battalions
• 1 x BMP-2 battalion
• 1 x Soviet T-72 battalion
• 1 x Polish T-72M battalion
• 1 x West German Leopard 2 company
• 1 x West German Marder company
• 1 x Dutch YPR company
• 1 x Marine M60 company
• 1 x Marine LAV company
• 1 x British Mech company (the competition winner)

No M1s or Leopard 1s. No French, Canadians, Australians, East Germans, or Czechs. No strike aircraft.

The Firestorm format worked really well, and it's something that I hope we will use again for both TY and FOW. A huge thanks to Pelarel from The Regiment for pulling it together. A possible refinement might be giving the sides a choice about what posture each of their lists should take, rather than attack/defence being decided by random draw. The aim would be to get a bit more teamwork going into building lists, planning the strategic element, and picking matchups.

Next week: I look ahead to summer painting plans. I have some reflection I need to do about where to next with TY, but that will be a post for later in the summer.