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.

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.

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.

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.

Weekend Painting

Over the weekend my wife was out of town, so I had a bit more time than usual for painting after the kids were in bed than could usually be justified. I ended up painting four Jagdpanthers that I had picked up at some stage on a whim. These were resin kits that included a plastic sprue with tracks, gun barrels, hatches, stowage etc.

Not 100% happy now that they're finished: the plastic tracks are excellent, but they are wider than the metal tracks the resin hull was originally designed for, so stick out about 1mm wider than they should. I didn't notice until I glued the front mudguards on, and I'm annoyed that I didn't stop at that point and fix it. At some stage I'm going to have to go back, take them off and work out where to slim the parts down and make them fit better.

Now that I have 900-odd points of Jagdpanthers, I'm not entirely sure what to do with them. They are of course useful as a support platoon for a variety of different lists, although I'm not sure many games could justify four of them. More promising are a couple of Jagdpanther lists, being the 654. and 559. schwere Panzerjägerkompanie lists from "Atlantik Wall" and "Bridge by Bridge" respectively.

I like the look of the 559. list, with the idea of Jagdpanthers backed up by StuGs, Wirbelwinds and FJ being quite attractive. It'll be hopeless on the table: a company of a small number of expensive tanks, fragile on the flanks, that will usually end up having to attack, without being able to take any recce platoons, but at least it'll look good as it falls in a screaming heap.

The 654. list for Normandy doesn't have any combinations that jump out as strongly, but it's been suggested that people might be keen for a Normandy day at the Club sometime so it's something I'll have to look into.