What are the most effective units?

[General Di Caro]

The Sturmpanzer has rear defense 4, I believe.  My usual opponent owns the piece, so I have no card to look at.  It has speed 3.

We played two games… Soviet versus German tank battles.  The Sturmpanzer survived both games.  It so good against infantry but not very good against tanks, so I didn’t feel like my tanks were threatened by it.  I used my heavy tanks to go after my opponent’s Jagdpanther and Tiger, leaving the Sturmpanzer to my light tanks and Russian infantry.  Sigh.

As I mentioned, I flanked the Sturmpanzer with T-70s, and would have blown it away.  But lady luck did not shine upon me.

[Otto_Skorzeny]

The stats of the Sturmpanzer IV “Brümmbar” are those :
Cost : 22
Speed : 3
Defense:7/4
Infantry : 9/9/7
Vehicles: 8/6/4
Abilities: Fixed Howitzer  - This unit can attack only units in front of it.
            Blast  - When this unit attacks, make a separate attack roll against each unit in the target hex. (This includes friendly units.)
            Bombardment  - This unit’s attacks ignore cover.

The fact is against soldiers, this guys a total killer, but against vehicles, well, it’s not that good. I have played against it once. I was playing Soviet Union only and my opponent was playing Germany only. I chose to field 6 Mosin Nagant (18), 1 Commissar (5), 1 Cossack Captain (9), 2 Soviet Antitank (16), 1 KV-1 (32), 1 Fanatical Sniper (8) and 1 T-80 (12). My opponent had the new SS Panther IV (32), one 40mm Antitank (14), one Brümmbar (22), one German Sniper (11), one SS officier (7), 2 SS Panzergrenadier (10), one Kar-98 Infantry (3). At the start of the game, I was pretty afraid of the Brümmbar and the german artillery, but luckily, my sniper killed in turn 2 the artillery. After that, I rushed the SS Panther IV and I was able to destroy it quickly too. During those turn, my opponent had killed my T-80 and my both infantry. Unluckily for him, he wasn’t able to do more than disrupted with his Brümmbar against my infantry. Still, with his SS Panther IV dead, his Brümmbar was dead meat too. I rushed him with my KV-1 and he wasn’t able to do anything against me. Should my KV-1 be killed by the SS-Panther, even if I would have been able to destroy it, the Brümmbar would have destroyed me, totally.
In conclusion, I think that the Brümmbar, for 22 points, is pretty powerful. As for the KV-1, it had saved my day, once again !

[Yankee Slayer]

Otto you were more lucky than me with killercelery’s Brümmbar.

I personnaly think the new rule for no turret restriction is wrong.  It make no sense.  And give the Brümmbar too much power.

[Otto_Skorzeny]

Yeah, I think you’re right on this one, no turret isn’t a real drawback anymore. Anyways, who’s going to shoot with his tank showing his back, no one…
Anyways, we’ll see what we can do about it.

[General Di Caro]

No one may decide to expose his rear defense.  It’s up to you to make him do it.  Force your opponent to make a decision by placing several of your units in range.  In the game I recently played, I had three T-70s surrounding the Sturmpanzer from all directions.  One was guaranteed to get a rear shot. Meanwhile my T-34s occupied the Tiger and Jagdpanther.  Unfortunately, my dice rolls were lame and soon they’re were no more (of my) tanks left on the field.

Most German tanks have average rear defense… in the 3 to 5 range, so I always try to use mobility get behind or to the side of them.  If my tanks are going to take fire, I’d rather it be in an aggressive posture.  However, one can only do this with initiative and defensive terrain to block LOS while getting tanks into flanking position.

[Yankee Slayer]

I know one unit that will always shoot with his back exposed…. the british archer.  :-o :-D :-D  I’m so funny !

Di Caro is right.  Weaker rear armor on german tank is their weakness and you must exploit it.  And most of the time this is done with bold moves and usualy has it’s price.  but you have to break eggs to make an omelette.

We spoke of the best way to get rid of german tanks, what about the soviets ?  Most of their big tanks have the same armor in front and back.  The only way I can figure is multible high power shot.  I think the new PAK-40 in booster 2 is a must against soviet tanks.  The PAK-38 is not powerfull enough for their big boys.  Anyone has another strategy ??

[djensen]

I tried this out to see if smoke could be effective:

SS-Panzer IV
Panzer III
Panzer III
PAK-40
some infantry

The PAK-40 helped tie up one Soviet tank but just couldn’t do more than disrupt it each round. Eventually some SMGs killed it after that it went downhill (bad dice rolls didn’t help ;-)). One thing it does is help deny hexes that your opponent is willing to move into. Maybe if you get 2 PAK-40s into position where any approach to destroy one by armor is a 2 on 1 battle, that might be enough to help slow down the Soviet tanks until you get your Panzers in to get good position.

[General Di Caro]

Best Infantry: SS-Panzergrenadier (U-S Paratrooper looks pretty darn good, haven’t used it yet). Both have Defense 5.

Best Anti-tank unit: PAK-40.

Best Anti-Infantry Assault Gun: The Sturmpanzer.  (This thing is devastating).  :cry:

Strongest Tank: The Tiger. (Haven’t gotten the King Tiger) I’m sure some folks on this site will vote the Croc.

Most Versatile Tank (a much different category): That’s a toughy.  I like the Guards T-34 (Soviet).

Best Tank against Infantry: The M5 Stuart (British) is very tough because it’s so fast.  Sherman also effective.

Best Commander: U-S Captain.  -1 on cover rolls for opponents is huge.  The Haupsturmfuhrer finishes a close second.

Best Machine Gun: MG-42.
Best Mortar: The U-S M2. (range 8 hexes!)

Worst infantry: The Chinese are useless.  Italians also bad.  So are Soviet Mosin-Nagant with their command dependency.
Worst Tank: The French and all the Japanese tanks are very weak.
Worst Anti-Tank unit: the Soviet PTRD-41 Antitank Rifle.  This is good against hot dog stands, that’s it.
Worst commander: The Commissar, by far.

Personal favorites:
SS-Panther tank.  Moving while disrupted.
Haupsturmfuhrer: I like saying “Fanatic” and “Exert Will” during my games.
Red Devil Captain.

Units I fear: The Sturmpanzer.  As mentioned, this thing is devastating because it can slaughter infantry from 8 hexes while ignoring cover.

Any unit with a flamethrower.  There… I said it.

And the unit that may be the most impossible to deal with… the Nashorn.  RANGE 20 HEXES!!!  Enough said.

[Staff Sgt. Barnes]

you forgot snipers, i know the chances of them getting a kil from a distance isnt easy, but there great for keeping the other guys infrantry out of the way. everything else goes alnog with me, even the flame thrower bit.

[General Di Caro]

Haven’t used the sniper yet.

The Wermacht Expert is 11 points… and rolls 6 dice at all ranges, +1 on each die.  And has head shot special ability.  Woo hoo.

Of course, this all seems to depend on how many points each person uses and what kind of map you are using.  One sniper placed in the right spot in a 100 point game against an army that has just one or two infantry wouldn’t have much of an impact.

Against an opponent who is infantry heavy would make more of a difference.

There is another thread on this board about different set ups.  I have used mostly 100 point armies and 150 sometimes.  Once I used 200 points, but that was to allow more tanks on the map, not a ton of 4 point units.

The map is only so big-- and the game was designed for 100 point armies-- to optimize the use of tactics like cover and flanking.  A bigger map with more objectives would possibly make infantry less useful because they can’t cover as much ground.  Unless you extend the time of the game.  And the possibilities go on and on.

So, some units may be more useful in bigger armies than they would be in smaller armies.  I guess that’s why the German tanks didn’t show up in the winning 100 point tournament armies.  They take up so much “space,” while you can fit in three Shermans and have room for a lot of other stuff.

[AgentOrange]

I managed to play a 300 point game the other day.  Before I go into the team details, lemme just say that we didn’t give two sh*ts about historical accuracy.  So yes, Germans and Japs were fighting together, as well as Brits and Americans alongside Russians.  So here’s the teams. (as best as I can recall)

Axis  :mrgreen:

2 King Tigers - 142
1 Nashorn - 45
1 SdKfz 251 - 14
2 SS Hauptsturmfuhrers - 14
2 SNLF Captains - 12 (I used these as paratroopers by the way)
4 MG42 Machine-Gun Teams - 40
3 Imperial Snipers - 24
1 SS Panzergrenadier - 5
1 Blackshirt - 4
Total = 300

Allies  :mrgreen:

1 IS-2 - 68
2 Guards T34/85s - 66
2 M3 Stuarts - 30
1 Red Devil Captain - 7
2 Screaming Eagle Captains - 22
4 Screaming Eagle Paratroopers - 36
4 Vickers Machine-Gun Teams - 32
3 Fanatical Snipers - 24
3 Polish Cavalry - 12
Total = 297

In short, I (Axis) won the game.  However, the ending was very anti-climactic.  I don’t blame this on the 300 points, but just the units that we had toward the end.  Both of our units held the objective, but my remaining units (both King Tigers) and his units (3 Paratroopers and a Paratrooper Captain) couldn’t kill each other.  So when I say I won, I just mean that we reached round 10, and I had killed more of his stuff than he had of mine.  (The King Tiger is awesome!)

[General Di Caro]

I’m thinking about experimenting with an all-soldiers army… maybe even all of one type of soldier.  Might make for an interesting game.

[djensen]

In considering of tournament play or playing for points.

In Set I, a big problem with an all soldier army is the inability to deal with the big tanks. Rolling 11 or 10 dice on 6 or 7 armor is tough to damage or destroy in one hit. And since the Tiger I has overrun that makes it less likely for that.

The all armor or mostly armor strategy against all infantry is to wander around, kill a few infantry, on turn seven (if you get to turn seven after 60 minutes), you storm the objective. The likely outcome is that the tanks get disrupted or damaged but not destroyed and time expires and the armor team wins.

For friendly games or games that include Set II, it can be fun and this may not apply as much.

[POINTMAN]

You see, i dont know if that is the rules are broken, but it is somewhat refreshing to know that even with 2 king Tigers on the board, you still had infantry running around…even if the two were completely ineffective against each other.

One of my major concerns with this game was that it was going to go the route of most WotC games were the rares are king and commons and uncommons were basicly cannon fodder. I learned playing L5R how important it was to have a balance and while rares gave the advantage in specific situations, it was the commons and uncommons that won the day. It actually makes me more enthusiastic about playing knowing that every unit is important.

By the way, I have a limited amount of pieces right now but it appears that the king tiger is by far the most expensive piece to field. Is that the case and is it really worth it’s cost?

[AgentOrange]

In a 100-point game, I’m not sure if it would be worth it.  I played a 300-point game recently, and I used two.  They have the best defense I’ve ever seen (frontal defense anyway) and monstrous attack values against vehicles.  Just know that it can destroy any other tank going one-on-one.

[Staff Sgt. Barnes]

i played a big game the other day, it came down to me and my KV-1 agasint 2 king tigers. i won with out a scrath on my tank. (allthough he rolled the worst rolls ever recoded in the histrory of rolls, 3 times, i sh*t you not, 3 times he rolled all 1’s and then another time all 3’s.) the king tiger is amazing i will give it that, put aside the fac that my buddy had horrible rolls, the KV-1 would have gotten the crap kicked out of it.

[General Di Caro]

I am settling on 150 games as a good fit.  Maybe 200 to allow an extra tank for a bigger battle.

I do not believe your friend rolled all 1’s out of how many dice??

Funny you mention that.  I recently played the 1943 Battle of Kursk (with a couple 1944 tanks, sorry) and my German-using opponent consistently rolled terribly with his big tanks.  He was consistenly getting 3 or 4 successes out of 15 rolls!  My Ruskies were surviving his salvos.  I somehow managed to lose this game through terrible tactics of my own, which I will not burden you with details.

Let’s say I have a habit of leaving all of my units out of LOS except for one… and this one happened to be my KV-1!  What a waste of the “Hulking Mass” special ability.

I am looking forward to playing year restricted scenarios.  For instance, Barbarossa.  1941.  At that point, the Panther and Tiger weren’t on the battlefield.  Not even the Mark IV Panzer, according to this game.  The best tank in the world at that time was the T-34.  So, in such a scenario, the Russians would have an advantage over the Wermacht.

Of course, 1941 was a unmitigated disaster for the Soviet Union, as it lost every major engagement before winter, invaluable equipment, hundreds of miles of its territory, and hundreds of thousands of men to German encirclements by armored thrusts, men who would starve in German captivity.  The cause of these calamities was abject neglect and delusion by Stalin, who didn’t believe Germany would attack, and for other reasons to lengthy to mention in this post.

But this can’t be incorporated into a 100-point 1941 battle in Axis and Allies minis.  It seems the Russians might even have an advantage because the T-34 is the best of all pre-1942 tanks in both sets.

Any thoughts?

How about Battle of France in 1940?  Have enough Renault Tanks? or even Italian soldiers?  Or some 1935 engagement between Japan and Chinese.  The way I am going with my boosters, I will soon have enough Kuomintang rifleman to field a 15-unit, 30 point army!!

This game has some great possibilities… if you are willing to drop major coin to get enough units.

Have any of you played any of the scenarios published on the Avalon Hill site???

[General Di Caro]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_armoured_fighting_vehicles_of_World_War_II#Panzerkampfwagen_IV

[General Di Caro]

Apparently the Panzer Mark IV was used before 1942, but those models did not have a 75 mm gun as the 1942 Miniature accurately wields.

http://www.2worldwar2.com/german-tanks.htm

[General Di Caro]

From another WWII website–

Maybe the designers can make an early model Mark IV Panzer in Set III?  For use in Barbarossa.  :-)

3. German PzKfW Mk. IV Panzer

The 17.3 ton Mk. IV Panzer tank was introduced in 1937 and used throughout WW II. Early in that conflict it was the dominant tank. Its fast firing, short barreled 75mm gun was ideal for supporting infantry and the Mark IV was used with great effectiveness in German Blitzkrieg attacks on Poland, France, the low countries, and initially in the invasion of the USSR. Top speed was 18 MPH.

There were hull and turret mounted machine guns to increase the Mark IV’s lethality against enemy infantry. Between 1940 and 1945, Germany produced about 9,000 of these tanks, making the Mk. IV far more numerous on both the Western and Eastern Fronts than the later Panther and Tiger tanks. The Mark IV provided a nice balance of protection, firepower, reliability and maneuverability early in the war.

When it was realized that the original, short barreled 75mm gun lacked the muzzle velocity to penetrate the heavy armor of the newer Soviet T34 tank, a long barreled 75mm gun became standard in the Mark IV. This high velocity weapon served for the rest of the war, keeping the Mk. IV a dangerous foe for all Allied tanks, although by then its 30mm armor could be defeated by the front line Allied tanks.