2023 Retrospective

2023 has been another relatively quiet year for me hobby-wise. I started the year with five goals

Have a good clear out of the random junk in the hobby cupboard.

This I achieved. I had a really good tidy-up in October, bought some new storage solutions, and offloaded some old bits and pieces.

The remaining objectives weren't met: I didn't play any non-FOW games, and didn't make any progress on my ALDG projects.

I played in three FOW tournaments during the year.

ValleyCon was 111pts Late War held in April. I painted a new army for it: a Soviet Rifle Regiment from Berlin: Soviet.

Rifle Regiment - Berlin: Soviet

Regiment HQ

Rifle Company (mid strength with panzerfaust and 1 x Maxim)

Storm Group (full strength with panzerfaust, Maxim and flamethrower)

82mm Mortar Company (6 x 82mm mortar)

120mm Mortar Company (3 x 120mm mortar)

Heavy Tank Killer Company (4 x 76mm gun)

Armoured Car Platoon (3 x BA-64, with 2 x PTRD)

M4 Sherman (76mm) Tank Company (5 x M4 Sherman (76mm)) 

IS-2 (Late) Guards Heavy Tank Company (4 x IS-2)

Unditiching Logs command card (IS-2)

Total Cost: 111 pts

The list was great. It was my first time playing Soviets in FOW since 1st Edition, and while you can argue that Careful troops aren't exactly the classic Soviet experience in FOW, it was still a nice change from Western lists. I won three games, drew two games, and finished tied for 4th place.

The second tournament was Panzerschreck, held in July. This year it was 140pt Late War doubles. I partnered with Bede again, running lists from Berlin: German. My half of the list was four 10.5cm FlaK39 railway cars, and a formation of Fallschirmjager from Fortress Europe. We tied for third out of 18, but lost the dice-off so finished in fourth place again.

The final event was Remember December. This was 60pts Mid War, book points, no Top Armour 2, and only one Support unit. I ran a British Rifle Company:

Rifle Company - North Africa

Company HQ

Rifle Platoon (full strenth)

Rifle Platoon (minimum strenth) 

Rifle Platoon (minimum strenth)

Mortar Platoon (4 x 3-inch mortars)

Anti-tank Platoon (3 x 6-pounders)

Universal Carrier Patrol (3 x Universal Carriers)

Universal Carrier Patrol (3 x Universal Carriers)

Valentine III Death or Glory Troop (3 x Valentine III)

Captured Tank command card (Rifle Company)

Cavalry Commander command card (Valentines)

Total Cost: 60 pts

I started pretty well with two wins, but fell apart in the final game. The Rifle Company played well- I definitely needed all of the infantry, but the Valentines weren't quite as tough as I'd hoped they'd be. The Captured Tank card was a bit of fun: I managed to capture an AB41 in Game 1 and a Stuart in Game 3.

I've continued writing for No Dice No Glory, but my output slowed during the year due to work pressures:

• An overview of Berlin: Soviet
• An article on my Canadian Rifles list from ValleyCon 2022
• A review of the Battlefront Sexton/Ram kit
• A piece on assembling the Battlefront 10.5cm railway car

For 2024, I'm going to keep over a couple of the goals from 2023.

1. I want to paint my ECW Royalists for ADLG-R.
2. I want to play two rulesets that aren't FOW.

FOW has a couple of new things coming out this year, with "Late War Leviathans" adding prototype and 1946 tanks to the game, followed by "Clash of Steel" as an alt-history spinoff. The models look cool, but I'm not sure how much interest there will be locally. 

Tournament-wise, ValleyCon is likely to be Mid War FOW this year, so I'll be looking to put together a new army for that. I can't play at Panzerschreck this year, but hopefully I can make an appearance at Call To Arms in August instead.

The Origin of 17th/21st Lancers' M3 Lees

I recently wrote an article on No Dice No Glory about using the British Crusader Squadron boxed set to field a Death or Glory Squadron for Flames of War. The article touched on the history behind the Lee HQ option for that force, but NDNG wasn't really the place to expand on this so I am writing it up here.

Image: FOW North Africa (2022)

The story presented in the FOW books is that 17th/21st Lancers had three M3 Lees in C Squadron HQ while they were in Tunisia. It is said that the tanks were salvaged from those that had been abandoned by 1st Armored Division in the retreat from Tebourba. 

Photo: Battlefront Miniatures

I have not been able to find the origin of that story. The actual history of these tanks is as follows. 

It was announced at a 26th Armoured Brigade 'O' Group on 28 December 1942 that each regiment was going to be receiving 10 Grants for "close support." This was in preparation for the brigade being completely re-equipped with Shermans, with General Anderson, commander of First Army, advising during a visit to 26th Armoured Brigade HQ on 31 December that this was intended to occur within six weeks. 

The Grants were intended to be allocated with two to each Squadron HQ and four to each Regimental HQ. Those going to Squadron HQ were to replace the Valentine 2pdrs, with those tanks being sent to the Valentine troops, making them four-tank troops.

Training was provided by the US Army on 1 January, with three Grants being handed over to 17th/21st Lancers “filled with rations, extra sweets, rum, and a bewildering assortment of ammunition.” The other regiments in the brigade, 16th/5th Lancers and 2nd Lothians and Border Horse, received one Grant each.

It was announced on 7 January that those Grants were the only ones that the brigade would be receiving. No reason is given in the war diaries, however ffrench Blake speculates in his history of the regiment that this was due to the losses the Americans had suffered over the preceding weeks.

Where the histories refers to “Grants”, in FOW we would call them Lees, being the US version of the tank with the cupola MG. I am not aware of any photos existing of these three tanks, but it’s clear from the description that this is what they were: "like a wedding cake" with three layers: 75mm, 37mm, and Browning MG.

The Lees' first and only action was at Two Tree Hill on the morning of 13 January 1943. Two of the tanks were destroyed, with ffrench Blake being badly wounded in the third. Ken Ford’s “Mailed Fist” describes the Lees as being in “ffrench Blake’s C Squadron” for this battle, but ffrench Blake had taken up the role of regimental 2iC from 8 December. The orders for the operation and ffrench Blake's writings make it clear that at Two Tree Hill the Lees were part of RHQ and operating independently, supported by A Squadron. There is no further mention after this of Lees or Grants in any of the histories I’ve read. 

To reflect this in Flames of War V4, I would be tempted to use a Death or Glory Squadron with a normal Valentine HQ and a Grant Troop from Formation Support, instead of the Lee HQ version of the list. The alternative is to run the Lee HQ version anyway, as this is close to the way the Grants were intended to be used had they all been received.

Regarding painting, without photos it is impossible to be certain what the Lees looked like. They might have been repainted in British colours since they were intended to be part of the standard equipment of the regiment, or they may have been left in their original US olive drab, possibly with disruptive patterning applied in dark brown. The tactical signs on the turrets, if applied, would have been yellow diamonds, and the arm of service markings would have been Red 52.

To summarise, 17th/21st Lancers did have three Lees for a period of about two weeks at the start of January 1943. These were part of a delivery of tanks to 6th Armoured Division that was never completed, and the story of them being salvaged is a myth.

Sources:

• The Royal Lancers & Nottinghamshire Yeomanry Museum
• WO 175-292, The National Archives
• WO 175-210, The National Archives
• A History of the 17th/21st Lancers 1922-1959, RLV ffrench Blake
• Mainstay - A 20th Century Life, RLV ffrench Blake
• Death or Glory - The 17th/21st Lancers 1922-1993, Keith Shannon
• Mailed Fist, Ken Ford

A New Platform

In April I started writing for No Dice No Glory, a historical wargaming blog. I’m not sure what this will mean for this blog. Most likely it will lie fallow for a season unless there is something that I want to write that doesn’t fit with the NDNG theme.

 Here are links to the posts that I have published there to date: 

• Multiplayer FOW - reflections on our D Day game from a few years ago 
• Thoughts on the FOW Missions Pack update from April 2021 
• A preview of the Mid War Finnish booklet for FOW.  
• A review of the Panzerschreck tournament that was held in July 2021. 
• Modelling the Priest Kangaroo for FOW

I want to thank the people who have visited this site. I just checked the site statistics and my posts have had over 10,000 views since I started posting here in 2015. Many of those visits would have been bots, but hopefully some of those visits were by real people who have got some value out of what I have written.

15mm Roads

Last year I was looking at urban roads to add to my 15mm terrain for Flames of War. As nice as the Battlefield in a Box roads are, they're quite expensive, so I looked at making my own.

I had tried a variety of materials for roading in the past. The most successful was railway ballast glued to felt as gravel, but I was after a sealed look this time. EVA foam looked okay, but curls with age and is so light that it blows away in the slightest draught. MDF is rigid so doesn’t conform to terrain.

In the end I went with 1.5mm rubber sheet. This was $40/metre on a 1.2m wide roll from Para Rubber (https://pararubber.co.nz/industrial-rubber-strip/692-rubber-insertion-sheet.html).

I cut it into 3" wide strips, scuffed the surface with sandpaper (otherwise the glue beads up), brushed  on PVA, and covered it with budgie sand. Once the glue was dry and the excess brushed off, I sprayed it with flat black to help seal it. Using an art foam roller, I rolled on grey acrylic paint. It would have been quicker to spray them grey, but the hope was a heavier coat of acrylic would help give the surface some durability. The total cost worked out to be about NZ$1/foot.

The rubber scuffed up with sandpaper

Gluing down the sand

After being rolled with paint

The finished product

On the reverse side I am working through rolling on the grey paint without any sand, and adding centreline markings, for when I want a more modern look for Team Yankee.

Here are some photos of it in action in a game late last year.

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...

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.

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.

New Project - 1938 Czechoslovaks

Early War has always been my favourite period of Flames of War: the wide range of nations involved, their different ideas about how a mechanised war should be fought, and tanks they built to implement those ideas. It has huge variety to it, making it far more flavourful than the other periods. Unfortunately, that is exactly why, according to comments at the Battlefront Open Day earlier this year, Early War won't get the full V4 treatment: it requires too large a range for shops to carry, and probably lacks the broad appeal of Late War. The suggestion was that the period would come out as Osprey publications, as have Vietnam and Fate Of A Nation. This would probably be fine for those of us with existing armies, but I wonder if the availability of models is going to cripple the period.

Back to the point. In the days of V1 when the Early War lists were free PDFs, I wrote up a set for 1938 Fall Grün Czechoslovaks. I can't remember whether the list ever made it onto the FOW website, but in any event I never progressed to the point of assembling an army. That work has been lost to the sands of time and archaic storage media, however Early War Slovak lists were published as part of the Barbarossa digital release, and on that basis I have decided to jump into the project.

I bought the models last year with the intent of taking them to ValleyCon 2018, but that ended up being a Mid War event so they've sat in a box waiting for a reason to start painting them. Normally it's competitions that provide that impetus, but as it's unlikely that we'll see another Early War competition until the period is rereleased, the aim of posting weekly updates to this blog, combined with McZermof having a bunch of Panzer Is and IIs that could do with a run sometime, will be the motivation.

I'm working towards 1100pts based around a LT vz.35 company, and will chip away at them between now and the end of the year. The Slovak list can be used directly with only minor additional restrictions, such as no LT vz.38 tanks (available for service from 1939), and of course no German equipment or allied platoons. Models are available for most things in the list, with the exception of softskin transport and the 3.7cm anti-tank gun.

Obrnený Rota - Barbarossa Digital

Obrnený Rota HQ - 2 x LT vz.35

Obrnený Platoon - 3 x LT vz.35

Obrnený Platoon - 3 x LT vz.35

Armoured Car Platoon - 3 x OA vz.30

Motorizovaná Pechota Platoon - 8 x Rifle/MG teams

Artillery Battery - 4 x 10cm vz.30 howitzer

Anti-aircraft Platoon - 2 x 2cm vz.36 gun

Sporadic Air Support - 1 x Avia B-534

This week I had a go at painting the first tank platoon, using the Battlefront Panzer 35(t). The tank commander is a steel helmeted US figure, being the closest I've found to the Czech tankers' uniform. I'm not totally happy with how they've turned out, and will have another look when I start working on the next batch.

In other events this week, I had another 45pt game of Team Yankee with Scott. This was using More Missions, on a 6x4 table. I ran Afgantsy for the first time, defending in Bridgehead against West German Panzergrenadiers, and was pretty happy with how they went.

Air Assault Battalion - Red Thunder

Battalion HQ

Air Assault Company - minimum size plus AGS-17 and AT-4

Air Assault Company - minimum size plus SA-14 and AT-4

Hind Assault Helicopter Company - 2 x Hind

Hind Assault Helicopter Company - 2 x Hind

BMP-1 Scout Platoon - 3 x BMP-1

T-64 Company - 3 x T-64

Shilka AA Platoon - 2 x Shilka

Scott elected to attack at dawn, making the most of his tech advantage. Being required to put everything that wasn't Afgantsy in reserve, I had to play a waiting game until the cavalry arrived. It was going well for him until I realised that even with radar, night limited the range of his AA umbrella to 24", allowing me to Spiral his Leopards with relative impunity, killing one and causing the second to flee. I lost the Hinds the following turn, but it was a good trade. The Panzergrenadiers pressed on and made a good fist of it, clearing out my right hand Afgantsy company and closing in on the objectives, but then my reserves arrived and the West Germans ran out of steam.

The game itself played much better than the same number of points on a 4x4 from three weeks ago. The table wasn't overloaded with models, and Scott wasn't forced to charge a wall of ATGMs and RPGs. There were Marines on the table next door, and even with the number of LAVs and Hummers involved, it looked good.

This coming week, I'll be back to painting more Soviets. It's now only eight weeks until Remember December, so in my next post I'll outline the list I'm proposing to take, and provide a BRDM update...

Completed Army for ValleyCon 2018

Over the weekend I completed the painting for my ValleyCon list. There wasn't much to do, as it's built around units that I already had. The tanks are painted up as belonging to II./Panzer-Regiment 5, themed on the attack on the Gazala Line in May/June 1942.

I've had to make a few compromises with the Panzer IIIs - I was short a couple of Ausf. Js and don't have time to source new ones, so I've had to use a couple of Ausf. Ls, replacing their guns to try and make it look like they're not actually the up-armoured version.

All 80 points - not much considering an equivalent British force would probably comprise a full regiment of Honeys...

Panzer III Platoon

Panzer IV Platoon

Panzer II Platoon

5cm PaK38 Platoon

One of the 5cm PaK38 guns

8.8cm FlaK36

Objective Markers

Army List for ValleyCon 2018

ValleyCon is coming up at the end of January 2018. After two years of 1000pt Early War, the format has changed to be full V4 at 80pt Mid War. This is an interesting call, given that V4 at Call To Arms last year (albeit prior to the release of Fighting First) was cancelled due to a lack of registrations, but I'm of the opinion that it was the right one. V3 was remarkable for the completionist nature of its lists, but the core ruleset has done its dash and the community needs to move on to the new version, however there are still issues with the balance of the EW and LW conversion. Starting afresh with the native V4 lists is absolutely the best approach. I do have lingering concerns about the suitability of V4 as a tournament ruleset, so the event should be able to confirm or refute those.

Whereas there are probably half a dozen Early War lists that I would have felt inspired to build, and probably twice that number of Late War lists, the MW books are slim pickings, and I couldn't get excited about anything. Maybe it’s that we've all been playing the North Africa setting for a long time, this is now the fifth version of these lists in 15 years, and it’s also the only version of lists that didn’t correct and expand on the edition that preceded it. Whatever the reason, I've left it too late and have ended up limited by what is already in my collection. Having played Brits for the last couple of tournaments, it’s time for a change, so I’ve decided to take Germans.

The list I have ended up with is themed on 21st Panzer Division at Gazala, May/June 1942. The theme establishes the bounds in terms of the types of equipment I can use - a mix of short- and long-barreled Panzer IIIs, the division only had a handful of long-barreled Panzer IVs at this time, and Marders hadn't yet made an appearance.

I also want to try and capture the flavour of DAK operations, which is stereotyped in my mind as close cooperation between tanks and anti-tank guns, with the iconic image being the 8.8cm FlaK, firing off its trailer.

That means that my 80pt list looks like this:

Panzer III Company - Afrika Korps

Company HQ - 1 x Panzer III (short), 5pts

Panzer III Platoon - 2 x Panzer III (short) and 2 x Panzer III (long), 24pts

Panzer IV Platoon - 3 x Panzer IV (short), 18pts

Panzer II Platoon - 3 x Panzer II plus the 'Forward Scouts' command card, 8pts

5cm Tank-hunter Platoon, 12pts
   3 x 5cm PaK38 

8.8cm Heavy AA Platoon, 12pts
   2 x 8.8cm FlaK36 

'Pure Luck' command card

Total Cost: 80 pts

In game terms, I'm not really sure how it'll go. It'll be the first list I've taken to a competition without any infantry. The PaK38s will help keep Crusaders and Stuarts out of my flanks, but AT9 struggles against FA6, so Shermans will be a problem. The sweet spot for Afrika Korps is definitely the Marder III platoon, and three of those would be far better than two 88s. The Panzer IIs, while a lot more expensive than a platoon of armoured cars, provides an extra combat platoon, which is critical given the unforgiving nature of the V4 morale rules.

I only have the PaK38s to paint, so will post photos of the army once they're done.

FOW V4 - Nagging Concerns

My V4 experience to date has been quite a journey. From initial caution, through disappointment when the first MW lists were revealed, to wild enthusiasm after playing a couple of games with tank companies, I've now played a few games with a major infantry focus and my opinion has started swinging back again.

To be clear, I still believe V4 is a good game. The rules have on the whole been improved. It's just that there are a number of issues that have cropped up as we've delved deeper that have somewhat dampened my earlier excitement.

The main issue is a general lack of clarity about the rules. In the process of slimming down the rules from just short of 300 pages in the V3 rulebook to only 100 pages, there are important sentences that have been left out. McBeth has written a piece that does a good job of capturing some of the issues with the completeness of the rules. These things don't matter so much for social games, but as soon as we put it into a competitive environment, interpretations will differ and problems will arise. As an example, McBeth and I probably spent about 20 minutes during a recent game trying to work out whether aircraft counted as "on table" for the purposes of Strategic Withdrawal (final answer: yes). We spent another five minutes trying to decide whether an observer team was able to Shoot and Scoot after spotting for a bombardment (final answer: yes). A couple of other questions we had were resolved when we eventually read the next sentence in the paragraph, but they were a minority. 

An additional concern is that while tank engagements tend to be over pretty quickly, the game length increases drastically as soon as infantry are involved. It's not that the game is slowed down by them, but rather games involving infantry seem to be taking more turns to bring to a conclusion than they used to, and this may impact our ability to complete tournament games within set time limits. I think there are a few reasons for this:

1. Last Stand. The need to get infantry units down to two stands, and formations down to one CHQ, Combat, or Weapons unit, means it takes much longer to win by breaking the opponents army. 
2. Infantry Assaults. Changes to the line of sight rules mean it's easier to set up a strong defensive position and therefore a lot harder to pull off a successful assault. Instead of one turn of preparation to achieve a pin, and an assault that either blows the defender away or falls over in hail of bad dice, it seems like you now need to take several turns of chipping away with repeat bombardments, followed by possibly two or three moves of successive assaults, in order to fully clear a position. Not unreasonable, but it all takes time.
3. Both sides losing in timed-out defensive battles. Without the ability to win by clock, the only way a defender can win in a defensive battle is by either being able to clear the enemy out of your half, or by hunting down weapons platoons in the attacker's backcourt to bring them closer to Formation Last Stand. In competitions, a lot will depend on the attacker's attitude: if they reach the point of no longer being able to win the game, will they concede and let the defender have the points, or do they take up positions that prevent the defender from winning, play the clock, and force the defender to risk a counterattack?

There are a few other things I've learned from recent games.

• Don't take half-tracks, wheeled vehicles or medium+ guns anywhere near any kind of difficult going. The Cross scores are harsh, and you can be sure that if you end up needing to move them, the unit will play no further part in the game.
• Anti-aircraft units are worthwhile, even though the maths suggests otherwise. In a game with Bede I took a platoon of three Bofors against a Sporadic Hs129, and while they did nothing during the first air raid, costing me a Churchill, they managed to down it the next time it came in. More importantly, even if the dice hadn't lined up the way they did, at least I felt like I was involved in the process and not just helplessly watching my tanks die.  I'll be looking at AA options for all of my lists from now on, at least until we see whether the local meta ends up leaning towards aircraft or not.
• Keep tanks well away from Panzerfausts. This was always the case in V3, but even more so now, given that they hit with AT 12 against side armour on a simple skill check. No one is driving away from that in one piece.
• I'm undecided on Night Attack. McBeth used it on me in Rearguard, and while it gave him more of a concealed approach, it robbed him of his Support platoons until dawn broke on my Turn 4. Did it change the outcome of the game? I asked him about it after the game and he thought it was worth it, so probably not.
• I can't think of a solid justification for Observer teams having unlimited line of sight at night, but it avoids some of the weirdness that crops up in the same situation in Team Yankee. I still struggle with there being no benefit to being Gone To Ground when under a bombardment template.

I did have grand plans to touch up and rebase various armies for V4, but honestly I can't be bothered at the moment. I received a box of more 15mm Soviets for Team Yankee this week, enough to get me to a 75 point list, so I'm going to be focusing on those for the next little while. I'm looking forward to the release of Red Thunder, my initial thinking being that I'd like to pick up some T-64s and then re-purpose my T-72s to start an East German army. But the other thing I've been thinking about for TY, which would take me in a completely different direction to a battalion of T-64s, is to standardise on 30pt games. It would have a very different feel compared to the bigger games. A couple of platoons of BMP-mounted infantry trying to secure a bridge defended by a British Airmobile Company? Getting T-55s on the table without feeling like you have to drop 60 of them? Scorpions and Scimitars having a meaningful role? It sounds to me like smaller games could be fun.

FOW V4-LW Game Review

Let me get this out of the way first: Flames of War Version 4 is an excellent game.

McZermof and I played two games at the club on Saturday. The set-up was 1750pt late war tank companies on an 8x6 table. We were a bit light on terrain, particularly roads, so that's something we'll have to work on for next time. 48 square feet is a lot of real estate to cover, but we managed to arrange it to avoid having large lines of sight.

For the first game, we tried the "Battle Plans" mission selector from the More Missions PDF. I chose a Prepared Attack posture, while McZermof went for Hasty Attack. The die roll to chose the specific mission had me defending in Breakthrough. This made sense: you could imagine that the British were in the process of preparing for a major operation when the Germans threw in a spoiling attack. I quite like the Battle Plans concept, but would need to think through how it would work in a tournament context.

Due to the size of the table, the game broke into three separate actions: a German left hook of three StuGs running into three Comets, which was a matchup the Germans were never likely to win; a right hook of seven StuGs and two Hornisse against five Comets, which were slightly better odds; and a flank march of Sturm Scouts that had to come onto the table in the face of four Stuart Jalopies and three Universal Carriers. The end result was a British victory for the lost of five of their eight Comets, most of the damage being done by an Hs129B3, with the Germans hitting Formation Last Stand at the start of their Turn 5. All up, the game lasted a bit over an hour.

The British Right Flank: Comets afloat in a sea of burning StuGs.

The Killer Blow: The StuG missed, the Typhoon hit, the Germans broke.

For the second game we decided to play Dust Up. This game went much better for the Germans. Their reserves turned up and were able to make a concentrated push for their objectives, while the British reserves were late and had to be committed piecemeal to try and stop them. The Luftwaffe turned up every turn except for the first, and their lone Hs129 single-handedly removed five Comets from the British left flank. It all came down to a single 4+ Unit Last Stand for the Stuart Jalopies, who through speed and determination had managed to get themselves past three StuGs and onto an objective before being reduced to a single tank. They failed, leading to Formation Last Stand for the British at the start of their Turn 7. This game was a bit longer, at about two hours, but still pretty good for a 1750pt game that involved a lot of chat and leafing through the rulebook.

The End of Game 2. Note Stuart Jalopy on the objective in the far distance, about to fail its Unit Last Stand

As mentioned in my previous post, there were three main things I had wanted to learn from the day.

1. Pace and Space. Light Tank mobility is amazing, particularly on such a large board. Special mention goes to the Stuart Jalopies, whose combination of Light Tank and Spearhead opened up interesting possibilities for deployment in Dust Up. Half-tracked is not as good cross country, but given a decent road network it would come into its own.
2. Transport. I didn't end up using the halftracks at all. The infantry in fact didn't move much at all, due to me being the defender in both games: they parked themselves on the objectives and sat there. The lack of roads on our table would have limited their advantage anyway.
3. Air Support. The Hs129 was the MVP of game two, and my Typhoons did pretty well on the occasions that they turned up. While the reduction in AT to 3 for all bombs and rockets means that those weapons are not going to be a huge problem for tanks, cannon-armed aircraft are incredibly potent against medium armour. An immediate change I will be making to this particular list is dropping the Carriers for a pair of Bofors SPs so that I don't feel like such a sitting duck next time around.

To summarise my thoughts from the day, the ruleset is quick and clean, yet are still undeniably Flames of War. Many rules have been stripped back or removed entirely, but it's evident that an awful lot of thought has gone into what has remained. This would be the benefit of having had Team Yankee in the wild for a couple of years prior to V4 being released, in what was effectively a massive open beta of the revised mechanics. No matter how thorough the playtesting process, there is no possible way that V4 could have been as significantly a change from V3 while still being as slick as it is, were it not for the influence of TY.

There were only a few issues that we came across.

1. Fighter Interception. Under V3, purchasing air support gave you access to both ground-attack aircraft and fighter interception. It appears that under V4 the only fighter interception available is the 25pt purchase in the Early War British and French lists. I have no idea why this would be the case.
2. Hans-Ulrich Rudel. Not present in this game, but if your opponent happens to bring Rudel along, then all you can do is resign yourself to losing two tanks a turn for the entire game. First impressions, given what I've already noted above regarding cannon-armed aircraft, are that he's probably broken. I cannot understand the logic of making him immortal (Charmed Life, page 43 of Special Rules and Warriors), rather than being given a variation of the 3+ Warrior Save (page 3 of the same book).
3. Semi-indirect Fire. It took us a few minutes to try and work out what exactly can be rerolled by Semi-indirect Fire when needing 7s or 8s to hit. I'm still not quite sure that I understand how it's meant to work.

And that was it. Two full 1750pt games with a new set of rules resulted in only three quibbles. To reiterate my opening statement, V4 is an excellent game, and I look forward to playing more of it.

Upcoming V4-LW Game Preview

This coming Saturday I have a game of FOW V4 lined up with McZermof. It's set up as a 1750pt late war game, being played on an 8x6 table. His post about it can be found here. I'll be taking my Comet Squadron for its first ever run, with my list being:

British Armoured Squaron - Nachtjäger

Company HQ, 290 pts
   2 x Comet

Armoured Platoon, 435 pts
   3 x Comet

Armoured Platoon, 435 pts
   3 x Comet

Recce Patrol, 185 pts
   4 x Stuart VI Jalopy

Motor Platoon, 140 pts

Scout Platoon, 95 pts
   3 x Universal Carrier + 1 x PIAT upgrade 

Limited Air Support, 170 pts
   2 x Typhoon

Total Cost: 1750 pts

I am borrowing M5 Stuarts and M3 halftracks from my American collection as I don't have models of their British equivalents, hence the difference in colours.  If the list is fun then I'll look to get the miniatures to do it properly.  I made up some removable commanders and .50cals to temporarily turn the Stuarts into turretless Jalopies.

Apart from getting a game in with a friend who is always great fun to play, there are a few other specific things I'm hoping to get from the game that have influenced my list build.

1. Pace and Space. First impressions are that V4 looks like it promotes manoeuvre, so we want to put that to the test by putting quite small lists onto a table twice the size that they'd usually be found on. All of my vehicles have either Light Tank or Half-track mobility, so if the game has been built to favour movement then this is a list that should be able to exploit that.
2. Transport. Under V3, motorised transport was only really of use on tables bigger than 6x4, and even then were usually more of a liability. Infantry have been given a significant speed boost in V4, but also now have a better save while mounted. It's going to be interesting to see how these two factors change the value of transport.
3. Air Support. V4 is notable for the similarity of its rules to Team Yankee, and in that latter system failure to field air defence will cost you dearly. While nothing in V4 compares in any way to the firepower of the AGM-65 in TY, both of us are bringing cannon-armed ground attack aircraft to the table, and neither of us have any anti-aircraft units. Hopefully this will indicate whether fielding AA is going to be important in this system.

I'll post again after the game with some photos and thoughts.

Club Day - Team Yankee and V4-MW

On Saturday I was at the club for the first time this year, having arranged with Chris to give Team Yankee a go. Having agreed on 55pt lists, I turned up with 11 T-72s and two Hinds, while Chris had six M1A1s and two Cobras, very nicely painted for Desert Storm.

We rolled for a mission, coming up with Counterattack. When I deployed my first platoon as the defender, we laughed and immediately switched to Dust Up instead. The issue was the distance between the two deployment zones, placing us 8" apart at the start of turn one, and that kind of standup short range slugfest was not what we wanted from the game.

With each of us setting up with just a platoon on the table, Chris did everything right: taking up concealed positions and getting off the first shot. He was let down by some awful dice that left two tanks dead on each side - no big problem for the Soviets but catastrophic for the Americans. They passed their Formation Last Stand, and second platoon of Abrams came on from reserve. The same thing occurred: the Americans took up good positions and fired first, but couldn't survive poor dice.

We ignored a failed formation last stand for the Americans and played on in order to get the helicopters onto the table and give them a run. The Cobras tried a few times to shoot down the Hinds with their Miniguns, but fell short on 5+ Firepower tests. With the second T-72 company arriving from reserve, it was only a matter of time before the last two M1A1s succumbed to weight of firepower.

The game was over in less than an hour, so we reset for a No Retreat with the Soviets attacking. Chris swapped one M1A1 for a pair of F16s. With the Americans having just three M1A1s available until their reserves arrived, I pressed forward, set up a gunline with one company along the ridge in the middle, and swung the second company around to the right and towards the front objective.

Chris got his Cobras on as reserves, and once again they tangled with the Hinds to no effect. I lost two T-72s from the centre company, but the remaining three plus the Hinds killed one Abrams, putting the platoon into poor spirits. The survivor stuck around, but the Hinds switched target and Spiralled the company commander, leading to an auto-fail of American formation morale on the start of their turn three due to having no units in Good Spirits on the table.

Once again we played on, and the game turned quicker than I believed possible. The survivor from the first M1A1 platoon was able to move into a position to contest the objective, the second M1A1 platoon came on from reserve, and the F16s decided to arrive two turns in a row. By the end of that second turn of air support, all of my tanks had been destroyed.

Reflecting on the games, the Americans struggled with the fragility of their two-tank platoons and their vulnerability to a single bad dice roll. The gameplay was fast and brutal, and it looked good. Apart from our issues with the Counterattack mission, there weren't any moments where we thought "this doesn't feel right". However, we believe it would play better with more space for manoeuvre, and to this end, we have agreed that our next game will be 75pts on an 8x6. The arrival of the American jets was a game-changer, and my future Soviet builds will have to include a decent amount of AAA. My plan at the moment is to extend the T-72 companies from five to six tanks each, keep the Hinds and add pairs of Shilkas and Gophers, and a BMP-2 scout platoon. It could feel sparse in a table that big, but that's more a function of the lists we are using, given the number of T-55s or Leopard 1s that could fit into 75pts.

With two games finished before lunch, I grabbed my 8th Army and Afrika Korps armies, and we ran through a game of FOW V4. Sorting through the collection, we came to 77pts each with the British having a formation each of Crusaders and Grants, plus a platoon of Humbers totalling 24 vehicles, facing off against a 14 vehicle mix of Panzer IIs, IIIs, IVs, and SdKfz 222s. Under V3 these forces would have totalled 1515pts and 1365pts respectively. I took the Germans, and we set up for Encounter.

Chris ran the British force exceptionally well. Cribbing an extra 8" headstart for his first Crusader platoon using Spearhead (which I had previously dismissed as all but useless), he hit my five-strong Panzer III platoon with five Grants to the front, coordinated with what seemed like a never-ending stream of Crusaders using their pace to turn into my flank. My positioning was never quite right, and I lost too many shots trying to fix it with failed Blitz Move orders. The Panzer IVs finally came in from reserve on turn five but by then it was too late, and by the end of the next turn I was overrun.

The game played well. It went quickly and produced no weird results. 75pts on a 6x4 felt reasonable - it could maybe do to be slightly fewer points but I certainly wouldn't want to go any higher, given the number of tanks the British can field.

I was left thinking that for this particular match-up the German list needed a platoon of PaK38s, either in the Formation Support slot or as part of a small Afrika Rifle Company. Crusaders are going to struggle to take an objective held by three PaK38s, creating a problem for the British: the Crusaders need to get into the flanks of the Panzers in order to do any damage, but won't be able to without being drawn onto the PaK38s, which they are going to struggle to kill. It's clear that while the rules have been streamlined, and the first release of lists brutally pared back to their most basic core, the mid-war game still poses interesting challenges.

All in all, it was an excellent day of gaming. My next immediate project is finishing my LW British armour for a game with McZermof, hopefully in a month's time.

FOW V4-EW/LW - First Impressions

My copy of the Flames of War V4 EW/LW rules arrived on Friday, and while we haven't put it on the table yet, my general first impression is favourable. Here are a few observations from reading it through, many of which are good things.

• You have greater freedom than ever to operate out of command, but it has the potential to go horribly wrong once you start getting shot at. If you split a platoon you are probably asking to lose it.
• While the consequences of failure are less significant than they used to be, tanks are much less likely to be able to successfully move through difficult going. Assaulting into woods on a 3+ cross check is going to be a very different proposition to doing it under the old 2+ bogging check.
• Weapons platoons are more important now than they have been since Support/Combat platoon ratios were removed in V2. Since Support platoons don't contribute towards Formation Last Stand, stacking a list with divisional support is going to make it fragile. It's going to take a bit of gametime to work out what impact this will have on Early War tank lists at the 1000pt level usually played here, as (with the exception of the Germans) they generally don't have any Weapons platoons available to them.
• Another potential impact on small games: I usually run pairs of anti-tank guns, but this doesn't seem sensible under V4 as the platoon will be testing as soon as one is lost.
• Mortars are going to become more popular due to their low price, increase in FP, and being Weapons Platoons. This is despite losing their reroll on the first attempt to range in. Nebelwerfers have lost their primary advantage of not suffering a To Hit penalty for failing to range in on their first attempt.
• Significant changes to the rules for flamethrowers to bring them into line with normal shooting. They now have a normal roll to hit rather than skill checks to hit. The addition of Breakthrough Gun to their statline means that teams hit by flamethrowers now get rerolled successful saves instead of being automatically destroyed. Balancing this, they no longer appear to be single use weapons, and there is no longer a restriction on movement prior to shooting.
• Curious that going to ground does not improve survivability against artillery. The only difference between being caught moving in the open, and being dug in, concealed and gone to ground, is the Firepower roll. Combined with rerolling made saves under repeat bombardments, it looks like a deliberate attempt to make infantry easier to dig out, and is a big change from the previous philosophy of artillery being largely ineffective against entrenched infantry. 
• I note that Spearhead doesn't stack like it does in TY: the move cannot be made if the Spearhead unit is placed outside of its normal deployment area using the Spearhead rule. The rule as a whole is very restrictive, and in most missions it is either not able to be used due to the layout of deployment and objective areas, or is only useful for cribbing a few extra inches of deployment area. Reconnaissance doesn't seem to be as important in this game as it was in previous editions.
• Struggling to get my head around the logic of the air support rules. Your flight has a number of planes that is determined by the level of air support you purchased, but the number of planes has no impact on the effectiveness of the air strike. The only benefit of a more expensive level of air support appears to be that it may last a bit longer in the face of anti-aircraft fire. 
• Staying with the topic of air support, Typhoon rockets used to have AT 6 FP 3+, which has now been mapped to AT 3 FP 3+. This feels a bit light given their reputation, and is probably not at a level where I'd feel the need to bring Wirbelwinds to the table.

On the whole it feels like a good upgrade, and I'm looking forward to getting the chance to try it out.

Postscript to Thoughts on the Afrika Korps Spoiler

Less than 12 hours after my previous post about the upcoming Afrika Korps book, WWPD posted a spoiler of its companion, Desert Rats. This was one of the three missing pieces of context that I felt made judging AK difficult, with the other two being design notes, so that we could have insight into Battlefront's intended scope for the book, and an understanding of how the roadmap of future releases is likely to play out.

Like AK, Desert Rats is notable for what is missing: Shermans, Deacons, portees, 2pdr anti-tank guns, Priests, and variety in armoured car choices. It too has a dubious inclusion in the form of the 17/25pdr anti-tank gun. My guess is that the Tiger was included in AK because Tiger, and the 17/25pdr then had to be added to try and restore game balance. But once you subtract those anachronisms, in my opinion the two books are actually a very good representation of generic forces from British and German armoured divisions in July 1942.

Seeing what is in Desert Rats, the thinking behind AK, and mid-war in general, has started to become clear. It's now obvious that V4 is a total reboot of the system as Team Yankee WW2, targeted at those who have never played FOW, because with the completion of the V3 lists for the entire war there is now little money in existing customers. The mid-war models will all be sold as platoon boxed sets, and the scope of each list will be set by production capacity and release schedules for those boxes.

In a world where V1 to V3 didn't exist, V4 would be huge. A (presumably) tight set of fast-play rules that (hopefully) look and feel like a WW2 game, nice miniatures conveniently packaged, the promise of expansion into other nations and list types, an arms race between gamers as new units were purchased. But that those earlier versions have been and gone, that experience is exactly what playing FOW was like in its heyday, and the people most likely to be attracted by WW2 gaming in 15mm already have been there, done that, and many of them have drifted away. Since they have multiple armies across multiple eras sitting in boxes, they might try a game or two of V4 out of curiosity, but they won't stick with it because the lack of variety in the initial releases. It will be a couple of years before the system is mature enough to run a native V4 tournament, and by the time the game gets to that point those veteran players may not be able to be enticed back.

So where will the target audience, these new players that V4 is going to attract, come from? You can't accidentally find FOW in New Zealand any more. I believe there are only three brick-and-mortar retailers of FOW left in the country, and the nearest of those is a seven hour drive from my hometown, which just happens to be the capital and third-largest city. Without the product having a ground presence, people will only find out about the game by seeing it played, either at conventions or clubs, and that requires the aforementioned veterans to be playing it. There may be a small amount of growth from second generation players who have access to their dad's old miniatures, who will try it and may end up getting some of their friends interested, but that's it. But in all honesty, I can only see further decline for FOW in New Zealand.

The unknown in all of this is the EW/LW conversion, with the questions being how it plays, how the V3 lists balance out under the new rules, and how long it will be before those eras are remade in mid-war's image? And most importantly, will it be enough to at least keep people playing the game while MW sorts itself out?