Historicals: Only ordered 5 reference books for my lead barbies, any recommendations?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Historicals: Only ordered 5 reference books for my lead barbies, any recommendations?

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Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

GW also had NDAs with their playtesters back when they did public playtests (despite people insisting that never happened because of poo poo rules). Never did a drat thing to keep it quiet, since there's always one person willing to throw stuff online that has the know-how to do it anonymously.

# ? Jan 10, 2012 15:28

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# ? May 13, 2024 06:04

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

I basically got my information from an interview on a podcast.

# ? Jan 10, 2012 15:32

Serotonin: Jul 14, 2001; The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of *blank*

El Estrago Bonito posted:

Man, if that Plastic Soldier Company stuff is as good as it looks I might finish my Jewish Battalion.

It is.

# ? Jan 10, 2012 19:38

Ataxerxes: Dec 2, 2011; What is a soldier but a miserable pile of eaten cats and strange language?

I'm building up a LW Grenadierkompanie (1750p) at the moment, I got Grey Wolf a few days ago and was wondering if you could offer a few pieces of advice about it.

1.) Should I take Panzerwerfers instead of normal artillery? 3 of them with extra crew would be cheaper (in money) than normal Nebelwerfers. Also, are they any good against the Soviets? I was planning on using them for blasting infantry & counter battery fire against the katjushas.

2.) Are StuGs worth is as a support option? I am planning on fielding 3 or 4 of them, and 2 Tiger I E's.

I'll post a list later when I am done with it, here is a link to some picture of the stuff I have painted (still not done with 2 StuGs): http://www.flickr.com/photos/28384215@N00/sets/72157614845823144/with/6077219533/

# ? Jan 11, 2012 04:54

Numlock: May 19, 2007; The simplest seppo on the forums

I believe the general consensus is that the Nebelwerfer/Panzerwerfer is your best bang for the points in terms of German artillery. Don't think I've seen anybody ever take anything else in my local group, which is fairly large and active in tournaments.

My advice: Every time I've fired a bombardment I've subsequently wished I smoked the unit instead. 420 smoke every turn.

# ? Jan 11, 2012 06:01

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

1: Nebelwerfers are really nice models.

2: StuGs are basically Panzer IV with no turret and no coax MG. I have had great success with them, but your mileage may vary.

# ? Jan 11, 2012 16:10

Numlock: May 19, 2007; The simplest seppo on the forums

Don't forget they have an extra point of front armor, which in flames of war makes a ton of difference in how hard they are to kill.

# ? Jan 12, 2012 05:41

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Numlock posted:

Don't forget they have an extra point of front armor, which in flames of war makes a ton of difference in how hard they are to kill.

Yeah, with all the AT8/9 guns that are available to the Soviets/Romanians that extra point of front armor is really valuable.

# ? Jan 12, 2012 05:53

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

IIRC the StuG III has the same front armour as the Pz IV exactly, but it's been a while since I checked.

# ? Jan 12, 2012 06:29

LintMan: Mar 12, 2006; Be seening you

The lack of turret and its weak points give the Stug and overall front armour advantage over the Panzer IV.

# ? Jan 12, 2012 11:55

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Arquinsiel posted:

IIRC the StuG III has the same front armour as the Pz IV exactly, but it's been a while since I checked.

In game the stug has an additional point of FA.

# ? Jan 12, 2012 18:35

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

There's really no reason not to just take lots of StuGs then I guess.

# ? Jan 13, 2012 00:01

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Arquinsiel posted:

There's really no reason not to just take lots of StuGs then I guess.

Yeah, they made the Panzer IV cheaper for that reason, but it's not a lot cheaper. It's still mostly better to take StuGs. It would be nice if turretless vehicles had a penalty in assaults or something.

# ? Jan 13, 2012 00:03

Numlock: May 19, 2007; The simplest seppo on the forums

I believe they do, if they are assaulted from behind the 180 degree front arc (where their hull mounted machine gun can shoot) they don't get defense fire. Not that this ever happens.

Also v3 will give turreted tanks a small bonus (this was from a battlefront employee), see my previous posts.

# ? Jan 13, 2012 01:25

BeigeJacket: Jul 21, 2005

El Estrago Bonito posted:

Man, if that Plastic Soldier Company stuff is as good as it looks I might finish my Jewish Battalion.

Oh cool, what list is this?

# ? Jan 13, 2012 01:28

Ataxerxes: Dec 2, 2011; What is a soldier but a miserable pile of eaten cats and strange language?

What abou the begleits? From my understanding you can give then to the StuG's you take as support for Grenaderkompanie, and 45p for the three of them don't seem too much. The extra hits and extra fire seems handy.

# ? Jan 13, 2012 05:22

moths: Aug 25, 2004; I would also still appreciate some danger.

If he's talking FoW, I think he means these guys. There's a little bit more about them here but google term "Jewish Brigade" is your best bet for more.

Everyone would be in British uniforms, but I haven't been able to find an image of how a company Rabbi would be dressed. I'm curious if he'd be in civilian clothes or have a beard.

# ? Jan 13, 2012 07:16

KSAF Staff Report: Dec 5, 2011; #acolyte faggot Hall of Fame
Ask me about trying to get published by The Black Library in between the minutes of Traffic Court reporting. Also ask me about having a game survival rate worse than the Infant Mortality Rate of Afghanistan

Noooooooooo, I finished the thread.
I am working up some FoW Finns and don't have access to Grey Wolf yet. I know you can opt to take Fearless Trained now, but screw that noise. Fearless Vets all the way.
Besides that, are there any drastic changes to how their infantry companies operate? I know we gain Sturmis as an attachment, but that seems to be all.
And what's the consensus on the Mid-War use of the BT42? I am thinking of taking enough mortars to allow them to fire indirectly regularly, as that armor value 1 makes me nervous about sending them to fire direct.
I mean, rifle fire at 15" is how I took out my brother's Marder II.

# ? Jan 14, 2012 07:06

big_g: Sep 24, 2004; Our young men will have to shoot down their young men at the rate of four to one, if we're to keep pace at all.

Remember about a hundred pages back I started a late Crusader force well here's some update shots for you guys.

Everything that is finished. Three archer/crossbow stands and one light cavalry left to do then its job done:

Knights:

Infantry

Magnetic bases are awesome

# ? Jan 14, 2012 15:46

lilljonas: May 6, 2007; We got crabs? We got crabs!

Gotta love those Mirliton crusaders. :3:

# ? Jan 14, 2012 18:20

Numlock: May 19, 2007; The simplest seppo on the forums

KSAF Staff Report posted:

Finnish Stuff

The options are Fearless Vet and Confident Vet. As long as you don't plan on making a ton of morale checks then the downgrade can be worth it for the points break on stuff.

The BT42 gets breakthrough gun now so if your local opponents use tons of infantry its an obvious choice. Just keep it 16.5 inches away from any infantry and it should be safe, especially if the opponents anti-armor stuff has more important targets to deal with.

They do have the option to take field fortifications, something to look into if you play against the smarmier Allied lists a lot.

# ? Jan 14, 2012 19:13

Ensign Expendable: Nov 11, 2008; Lager beer is proof that god loves us; Pillbug

That's pretty amazing painting at that scale! Good job.

# ? Jan 14, 2012 20:10

Ataxerxes: Dec 2, 2011; What is a soldier but a miserable pile of eaten cats and strange language?

LW Grenadierkompanie (as per Gray Wolf)

Company HQ 45p
-2x panzerfaust +20p
-AT section +25p
total 90p

1 Grenadier Platoon
-3 Squads 155p
-command faust +10p
total 165p

2 Grenadier Platoon
-3 Squads 155p
-command faust 10p
total 165p

3 Grenadier Platoon
-3 Squads 155p
-command faust 10p
-pioneers +45p
-supply wagon +20p
total 230p

Machine Gun platoon
-1 section 70p
-command pancerknacker +5p
total 75p

AT-gun platoon
-2 7.5cm PaK40 105p

StuG Platoon
-3 StuG 285p
-Tank Escorts +45
total 330p

Scwere Panzer Platoon
-2 Tiger 1 E 430p

Armoured Rocket Launcher Battery
-3 Panzerwerfer 42 165p
-extra crew x3 15p

total 180p

Full total:
1740p

This is my 1750p list, is there any use for those 10 points? I could drop a few panzerknackers and take a looted T-70, but would that be of any use?
Does this look playable at all? I will mostly be facing Soviets or Yanks.

Also I have 100+ elements of Scots pikemen for my DBM army, will post pictures later.

# ? Jan 15, 2012 10:28

Serotonin: Jul 14, 2001; The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of *blank*

Sold a load of 28mm WW2 stuff so time to have a spending frenzy with Zvezda and Plastic Soldier Company.

# ? Jan 15, 2012 13:54

Numlock: May 19, 2007; The simplest seppo on the forums

Ataxerxes posted:

LW Grenadierkompanie (as per Gray Wolf)

You might get more use out of another anti-tank gun or two instead of the Machine Guns. That is unless you commonly face Strelkovy hordes.

If you are planning on doing a lot of assaulting with the StuGs, I strongly suggest getting 5 of them. Three tanks is too weak IMHO to do anything other than hide behind infantry or maybe be used in Ambush.

Don't worry about leaving a point or 10 behind when designing a list, its not going to decide the game if you take a 1475 point army against a guy that used 1500.

That looted tank platoon is probably there more for fun than any actual use. Not much a single tank can do (unless its a King Tiger) and in competitive play people are going to pick on it to get a easy victory point on you.

So I would drop the machine guns and add another StuG or two if you can. If you can't or don't want to take an odd number of platoons I would go with a unit of mortars. Can't go wrong with another smoke template.

# ? Jan 15, 2012 18:47

big_g: Sep 24, 2004; Our young men will have to shoot down their young men at the rate of four to one, if we're to keep pace at all.

Thanks for the kind comments on the Crusaders. Just to prove I've not been too lazy with them taking forever I finished a ISU-152 platoon with .50 cals today as part of my Soviet Heavy assault Gun Company.

Pictures are lovely as poor indoor lighting.

# ? Jan 15, 2012 22:34

Ensign Expendable: Nov 11, 2008; Lager beer is proof that god loves us; Pillbug

Did it come with those slogan decals, or did you make them yourself? The regular and uniform font looks really weird. Also the decal that presumably should say "Tiger Killer" says "Killer Tiger", and even that is misspelled. Otherwise, really nice paint job. I like the camo.

# ? Jan 15, 2012 22:46

CovfefeCatCafe: Apr 11, 2006; A fresh attitude
brewed daily!

I've got a mid-war Italian list that I want to get some opinions on. I think it's fairly solid. I won 2 out of 3 battles with it, the one battle I lost was still a fairly close fight.

I am concerned, because I can see some weakness in the ability to take objectives, and the two battles I won were not really due to the overall composition of the army. (First battle was against MW American Armored Rifle Company, my opponent just sat and hid half his army behind a ridge line so I couldn't shoot at it (scared of my 8.8s), and the PIII/IV squad snuck it's way to an objective completely unopposed. Second battle, my opponent never rolled anything higher than a 3 the entire time, poor bastard even had a Tiger shooting at the side armor of the PIVs and didn't hit a drat thing.)

Anyways, 1750 (1730) Points of Battaglione Bersaglieri

code:

HQ

Battalion HQ		30 points
  Passaglia Bombs	+5 points

Combat

Bersaglieri Company A
  3 Groups		320 points

Bersaglieri Company B
  3 Groups		320 points

Div Support

Cannon Battery
  4 Captured 25 pdr	190 points
  Observer		+15 points

Howitzer Battery
  4 100/17 guns		195 points
  Observer		+15 points

Anti-Aircraft Platoon
  2 88/56 (8.8 FlaK36)  200 points
  Gun shields		+40 points
  Extra Crew		+20 points

4x Panzer III Platoon	360 points
  2x Panzer IV E/F1	+20 points

Total:                  1730 points

For some reason (bad math) I thought this was 1750 points, but today I ran the numbers again and got 1730. I'm tempted to jump on the extra 20 points to run 4 Panzer IV's, but my experience in the 3 battles I've had lead me to think it really won't effect the survivability of the squad by any appreciable amount. I'm thinking of dropping the 25 pdr Battery in favor of a Demolisher Platoon.

Any thoughts on how to improve this list?

CovfefeCatCafe fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Jan 15, 2012

# ? Jan 15, 2012 22:50

moths: Aug 25, 2004; I would also still appreciate some danger.

From what I've read, the slogans look professional on Russian tanks because they're propaganda pieces. As opposed to the spontaneous patriotic vandalism you see on American vehicles.

e:

I initially thought decal slogans looked too crisp, but I've found a few images like this and am 100% ok with them. The Soviets' penmanship supremacy may be what actually launched the cold war.

moths fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jan 15, 2012

# ? Jan 15, 2012 22:54

Ensign Expendable: Nov 11, 2008; Lager beer is proof that god loves us; Pillbug

Some slogans were NKVD ordered, some were spontaneous, but it's not like they had finely printed decals to apply. All of them were hand-painted.

# ? Jan 15, 2012 23:01

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Ensign Expendable posted:

Some slogans were NKVD ordered, some were spontaneous, but it's not like they had finely printed decals to apply. All of them were hand-painted.

According to what I've seen all slogans had to be run past the KKVD via SMERSH or the tank crew faced penalties.

# ? Jan 15, 2012 23:01

3 Action Economist: May 22, 2002; Educate. Agitate. Liberate.

Also, as I understand it, they were very rare.

# ? Jan 16, 2012 01:11

Numlock: May 19, 2007; The simplest seppo on the forums

YF19pilot posted:

I am concerned, because I can see some weakness in the ability to take objectives, and the two battles I won were not really due to the overall composition of the army. (First battle was against MW American Armored Rifle Company, my opponent just sat and hid half his army behind a ridge line so I couldn't shoot at it (scared of my 8.8s), and the PIII/IV squad snuck it's way to an objective completely unopposed.

Anyways, 1750 (1730) Points of Battaglione Bersaglieri

I guess he didn't take any thing that could do smoke bombardments? Because that's going to be your problem I think.

If somebody smokes your 8.8's or smokes something in front of them then they have effectively taken them out of the game. If I was playing against your list I would do so and consider it points well spent even if my artillery (I always take something that can do a smoke bombardment) did nothing else the entire game.

I'm assuming that in Mid-War there are just as many smoke bombardment capable guns as there is in Late-War as I'm not very familiar with Mid-War.

# ? Jan 16, 2012 05:30

Ensign Expendable: Nov 11, 2008; Lager beer is proof that god loves us; Pillbug

Not wargaming related, but here are some sappers:

# ? Jan 16, 2012 06:21

Serotonin: Jul 14, 2001; The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of *blank*

Colonial Air Force posted:

Also, as I understand it, they were very rare.

As far as I know pretty much all markings on Soviet tanks were rare especially mid to late war.

Managed to buy a load of tanks from Zvezda and Platic Soldier Company. I have loads of them on their way. T-2's, T-34's, KV-1's, Pz 4's, Pz3's and even a little pz2. About 23 in total. Can't. Wait.

# ? Jan 16, 2012 07:52

CovfefeCatCafe: Apr 11, 2006; A fresh attitude
brewed daily!

Numlock posted:

I guess he didn't take any thing that could do smoke bombardments? Because that's going to be your problem I think.

If somebody smokes your 8.8's or smokes something in front of them then they have effectively taken them out of the game. If I was playing against your list I would do so and consider it points well spent even if my artillery (I always take something that can do a smoke bombardment) did nothing else the entire game.

I'm assuming that in Mid-War there are just as many smoke bombardment capable guns as there is in Late-War as I'm not very familiar with Mid-War.

There are smoke capable guns, but I don't think as many as in late war. The Italians only have two guns plus one mortar that can smoke. Actually, I forgot the 25 pdr had smoke, that could've saved my rear end in the third game.

My opponent in the first game had M7 priests and the M2A1 105, both which can smoke, but again, he hid everything behind that ridgeline, including the observers. He moved everything 5" at a time to avoid making a dust cloud I could target, and the only time the artillery ever saw action was the two turns in which the PIII/PIV squad was visible to the 105's before taking the objective. He literally put nothing on the half of the board that wasn't blocked by that ridge.

# ? Jan 16, 2012 15:13

Ensign Expendable: Nov 11, 2008; Lager beer is proof that god loves us; Pillbug

Serotonin posted:

As far as I know pretty much all markings on Soviet tanks were rare especially mid to late war.

Managed to buy a load of tanks from Zvezda and Platic Soldier Company. I have loads of them on their way. T-2's, T-34's, KV-1's, Pz 4's, Pz3's and even a little pz2. About 23 in total. Can't. Wait.

What's a T-2? I know the Soviet designation for Pz-whatever was T-whatever, but then you refer to German tanks by the German name, and it's confusing.

# ? Jan 16, 2012 15:31

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

Knowing where he bought them I'd say he meant T-26.

# ? Jan 16, 2012 15:39

Serotonin: Jul 14, 2001; The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of *blank*

Blame typing on my phone pre breakfast and while having a poo poo. Yeah T-26's.

# ? Jan 16, 2012 15:54

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# ? May 13, 2024 06:04

No Pun Intended: Jul 23, 2007; DWARVEN SEX OFFENDER

ASK ME ABOUT TONING MY FINE ASS DWARVEN BOOTY BY RUNNING FROM THE COPS OUTSIDE THAT ELF KINDERGARTEN

BEHOLD THE DONG OF THE DWARVES! THE DWARVEN DONG IS COMING!

Apparently Saga has been getting good reviews as of late. Glad I just ordered my copy on sale from maelstrom.

# ? Jan 16, 2012 23:59

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Historicals: Only ordered 5 reference books for my lead barbies, any recommendations?

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