Hello All
Welcome to part two of My Journey Back to FOW. As you saw last time, I have bought a British ‘Desert Rat’ army and my first task was a 100pts M3 Grant/Lee Tank Company. I decided to build and paint the Lee’s first as they are the bulk of the army and I wanted to see what the new plastics are like.
I’m happy to say the plastics were really nice, even the side skirt, which I was really worried about, fitted with very few issues and without the need of elastic bands or other devices to get a flush finish. For the colour scheme, I followed the video guide BF has on their YouTube channel (I believe it’s also on the spotlight page for the Lee). I was determined to use pin washing on these, something I have been practising with on other models, but in the end, I reverted to type and bought some more Pitt Pens and went with my good old black lining.
I have also managed to get two games in with the army vs Adam (who long time readers and listeners to the podcast will remember). We stumbled our way through the games; the first one a blow out in Adam’s favour as his DAK infantry had too much firepower for me to contend with. We set up again and rolled up ‘hasty attack’, this time I was able to concentrate my force better and force Adam to have to play a game of manoeuvre, helped by his Pak38 ambush whiffing; my Lees eventually assaulting his infantry off the objective.
We both enjoyed the games and were surprised how fast and fluid the game was, and that was with us having to double check all the rulebook to see if a rule had carried over from Version 3. I was also impressed with how useful the unit cards were. If I’m honest I thought they’d be a poor addition but we quickly found they were far easier to use than constantly checking the army book for stats.
While we are still getting our heads around the meta and how to make effective lists, ie still falling into old edition list building tactics, the core tactics are still there and we both felt we knew what should work from playing the last edition. The platoon commands are still a thing I don’t think I fully know how to get the most out of, but I’m sure it won’t take long. One or two times we really got it right and saw how important they are to the game, it’s something I want to focus on.
Next up is the artillery and the Humbers, this will mean I just have the planes to go for the first 100pts, but one of my planes came broken and I’m just waiting for Battlefront Customer services to send a replacement. After that, it’s onto British Infantry and then if I have time, before my next planned project, I’m thinking of adding a full squadron of Crusaders and another of Stuarts (yes I don’t do things by halves!).
Thanks for reading and, as always, it’s been emotional.
Ben