Sunday, January 27, 2019

ValleyCon 2019 Review

ValleyCon this weekend was another excellent event, and a huge thanks goes to McBeth for organising it. I won three games and lost two, placing fourth overall. I won't go through a blow-by-blow account of the weekend, and I don't have any photos to share from it, but will just pick out a few key thoughts.

The weekend has established my faith in Mid War V4 as a good system. Up until now, MW has seemed incredibly bland, a way of biding time until the interesting lists come out with LW, but it surprised me how enjoyable it was. 85pts on a 6x4 was a bit denser than we’ve usually played, but it worked well. There was a wide range of armies represented, with the top three placings going to Armoured Rifles, Grants, and Honeys.

Using the Battle Plans mission selector was good. It added another layer of thinking about your opponent and what posture they would likely take, and what type of mission you wanted to face them in. It did limit the variety of missions played: I had two Bridgeheads, two No Retreats, and a Dust Up. One tweak might be having the TO specify which line to use. It should work well in a five-round tournament if you played lines 2-6 in a random order.

The Rifle Company is a solid list. The fact that I won a few games, quite possibly my first FOW wins in over a year, speaks to how robust and forgiving it is.

The cards I took worked out well. Artillery Expert and Diversionary Tactics are gold. Bagpiper, Sticky Bombs, and transports for the 6pdrs all helped at different times.

As expected my Reserves decisions were challenging. In each game that I needed to, I put two Rifle Platoons in Reserve, leaving another 8pts to find. In the first couple of games that was the 6pdrs, relying on their transports to get them where they needed to be. In the second, I switched that to being the mortars and the carriers, as I really needed to have all of my guns on the table. My Ambush platoon was always the Bofors, which gave me flexibility for dealing with armoured cars.

I had one bad loss that should have been avoidable. Ending up attacking in Bridgehead, I remember thinking "I should Night Attack in this", but then immediately forgot to. I also forgot that I had two batteries with smoke, which would have also made life a whole lot easier.

It was disappointing that I didn't end up running into either Honeys or M14/41s, as that would have been an interesting test of the list.

One thing that would be interesting to see would be how to get Churchills into 85pts. At 33pts for three, it's a tough ask as it would require running a much smaller core formation. No one brought heavy tanks of any kind, and apart from the three players with M10s and Marders, no one was really geared up to deal with them.

I left my painting really late, with a couple of really late nights leading up to the event, but was pretty happy with how they turned out in the end. They are painted in the colours of 78th Division in the Italian campaign.
Next time: I have received a copy of Impetus 2nd Edition, so I'll have a look at the changes, and update any progress on painting my light cavalry. Since it took me a whole evening to paint my first horse, I'm not that optimistic...

Tuesday, January 15, 2019

ValleyCon 2019 Preview

ValleyCon this year is a much smaller affair than usual, being club-focused and limited in numbers and scope, so that people who would travel to play are more likely to attend Natcon in Kapiti at Easter instead. The FOW event is 85 points Mid War, restricted to Mediterranean theatre lists. 

One of my issues with mid war has been that very few of the lists are actually of any interest to me. Part of this I think is fatigue, I’ve been playing MW Flames since 2001, and it’s a very vanilla period without the variety that the other periods offer. There were only two lists that I felt I’d want to run this year: the “Death or Glory” Valentine/Crusader combination, or a stock British Rifle Company. Since I’ve had all the infantry figures  sitting in a container for ages, I felt it was time to get them painted rather than buying a bunch of new tanks.

The list I have settled on is this:
Rifle Company - Armoured Fist
Rifle Company HQ, 2pts
Rifle Platoon - Full Strength plus the 'Sticky Bombs' card, 13pts
Rifle Platoon - Full Strength plus the 'Sticky Bombs' card, 13pts
Rifle Platoon - Full Strength plus the 'Sticky Bombs' card, 13pts
3-inch Mortar Platoon, 6pts
   4 x 3-inch Mortar
6pdr Anti-tank Platoon, 13pts
   4 x 6pdr Anti-tank Gun plus the 'Softskin Transport' card
Universal Carrier Patrol, 3pts
   3 x Universal Carriers with Boys AT Rifles
25pdr Field Troop, 14pts
   4 x 25pdr Gun
Bofors Light AA Troop, 4pts
   3 x Bofors 40mm AA Gun
'Bagpiper' card
'Diversionary Tactics' card
'Artillery Expert' card
Total Cost: 85 pts
It's a big list, partly because there are no tanks to soak up the points, but also because 85pts is larger than we would usually play here. Under V3 it would have come out in the mid-1400pt range. Some of the thinking that has gone into creating it is:
  • I have gone tank-less due to the prevalence of Marders. They're popular due to being underpriced; with no high armour targets they become expensive machine-gun carriers.
  • Another popular type of list is the light armour horde, and it's one that I probably have the most concern about. Nearly everything I'm taking has some ability to kill tanks. The Bofors, for example, are there solely for their ROF3 AT7, not because I have much to fear from air attack.
  • The 'Softskin Transport' command card on the 6pdrs. I dithered a bit over this one. Would the points be better spent going towards another Carrier Patrol? Transport is highly vulnerable on a 6x4, but the penalty for having no tanks is that I have no mobile AT, so this at least gives me an option for repositioning them, or bringing them forward in support of an attack.
  • 'Bagpiper' command card. My infantry are going to have to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to taking objectives, so this card that provides a 3+ Rally within 6" of the Formation Commander is to try and keep them moving in the event that I have to attack.
Apart from a chronic lack of mobility, a major issue I will face will be reserves: there is no natural choice for the 34 points I'll have to leave off in some games, and difficult decisions will need to be made.

I’ve left the painting my army far too late this year. Usually I’ve been proactive and have finished by the end of the previous year, but now with less than two weeks to go I still have some major gaps: a whole platoon of infantry, additional teams for the other two platoons, the actual guns for the AA platoon, and the artillery battery.
Next up: I'll post photos once all of the painting is completed, and review how it all went once the tournament is over.