Skip to main content

Road to Nationals Part Five: Lessons Learned

It's been a while since I've updated but since my last post I've played a decent amount of games. Some of my assumptions have proven legitimate but others, I was totally off base.

This was a proxy game, those Marders are actually Semoventes
The Sherman is disappointing for its cost. In the games I've used them they have never been close to cost effective. The best they've done is kill a crusader troop. In other games they were ambushed by Semovente's, destroyed by artillery (after rolling 4 1's), or just hid from Marders. It's anecdotal as hell but so far they've been nothing but 8 point bullet magnets that can't actually take that heat. Even in tank vs tank match ups the American Sherman's still need mass. I'm sure the Sherman works fine if you're committed to them but as support to an infantry list they are simply too expensive. Instead I'm planning on using Lee's going forward. In 100 point lists the Sherman will probably be the better pick but 71 points is what I'll be playing in the immediate future.

A bunch of Crusaders mulching my infantry
For 5 points a tank, you lose one front armour, 4 inches of range on the main gun and one less AT. You also get the Stuart's gun strapped to the top giving you 3 shots total. So for 25 points worth of Lees you get 15 shots (10 75mm and 5 37mm) versus just 6 shots from 24 points worth of Shermans. Since the biggest threat to my big blobs of dough boys is being assaulted/machine gunned by lots of little tanks the lee is the better counter. Stuarts have been great at this but obviously can't tangle with more serious tanks like the lee can with it's AT 9 or 10. Again, I haven't done the hard math on this; I suspect there's some point on a curve where Shermans are more cost efficient versus certain things but I don't think 24 points of  Shermans is really justifiable in a 71 point game.

From that proxy game, they're just Italians. those ATG's and M14/41's
reduced the Stuarts to one active tanks and were wiped out in assault.
On the tactical front, I've learned that everything in American lists can't go unsupported. You really need to hedge your bets; the yanks are just going to take a lot of hits. When I lost those Shermans to some Semoventes on their flank, it could have been prevented with infantry hugging them. I've lost my Stuarts because I've neglected to fire covering smoke, and had my infantry decimated in repeated crusader assaults for want of AT support.

Comments

  1. Jordan V.21 June 2018 at 08:39

    To be clear, the Shermans killed just a troop, not a squadron.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lasalle at Leipzig: Battle of Leipzig After Action Report

The Carleton Tabletop Gaming Club, in partnership with Sword and Board in downtown Toronto who graciously allowed us to use their space over 2 days put on our first Napoleonic event. The event was called Lasalle at Leipzig both because it involves a game event using the Lasalle rules for the Leipzig campaign, but also, importantly, because this scenario is ahistorical, including an alternate history where Lasalle himself survived and the British stalled and withdrew from Spain. This allowed us both to include British lists, Bavarians loyal to Napoleon, and write a more open range of possibilities for the results of the campaign. The scenario assumes that Napoleon's primary chance to win the battle was historically lost when Murat’s charge failed to fully rout the Coalition units, south of Leipzig on the first day. It seemed to us that the most suitable use of the Lasalle ruleset was to represent this action alone, rather than attempting to cover the wider events of the 3 day...
2 comments
Read more

Road to Nationals Part One: State of the Game

Canadian Nationals in September. My first time going to Nationals and only my second real  tournament. The ground is shifting under the feet of most flames of war players these days.  Version 4 and a return to midwar has rendered a lot of armies and lists unplayable, both literally  and in the moaning, hyperbolic sense. I was left relatively unscathed, late war Germans and  early war french weren’t hurt that bad but my opponents came out stronger than ever. There’s a  nasty trend in our club, a slow power creep in tanks. When we first started, my most common  match up was taking my StuGs and grenadiers up against British infantry and shermans. Now all  I fight is IS-2’s and churchills. Panzer 4’s and StuGs just don't cut it face to face with those monstrosities, now nebelwerfers and fausts made it work in the past but no more. I’ll admit the invincible 10 point panzerfausts were a little silly and nebs were arguably t...
2 comments
Read more

Road to Nationals Part Four: The Most Interesting Card in the Game

Flames of war suffers from the same problem that most tactical games suffer from, the lack of interaction with the operational layer. In missions with reserves, 40% of one's force is for the most part out of your hands, even more so if you use aircraft. In V3 the only influence you had over those all important 5+ rolls was your platoon count. Hit that 9+ platoon sweet spot and put your awkward filler platoons in the reserve box, maybe see them on the board, maybe not. V4 is still very much the same in this respect but the new command cards give players some bearing on the reserves system. There are 2 basic flavours of such card thus far: cards that let you re-roll aircraft or reserves and cards which stop your opponent from rolling for reserves or aircraft. The Italians, always the outlier, have a card which nullifies cards which would stop them from rolling for reserves or aircraft.  This is the most interesting card in the game. Now that more direct means of influencing reserve...
3 comments
Read more