New Year / New Army Month 2

Martin back with my next update on my New Year/New Army project. Today as well as a quick general progress update I am going to talk about how I intend to play with the Force I am creating.

Month 2 Progress

Wel, I have a Formation fully painted! Next bit of good news I have 2 Support platoons completed as well. The Grant Armoured Troop which I was originally going to have in my Formation until “unexpectedly” I acquired some extra Crusader sprues allowing me to build 5 Troops as Crusaders.The second addition are without doubt one of the most game effective platoons in the British Force a battery of 25pdr guns. Lets be honest, even with the Dynamic Points adjustment they are probably the best guns in every British, German or Italian MW force.

List Building

So where does this leave me in list terms?Lets have a look at what I actually have using Dynamic Points.

• HQ platoon with 2 Crusader II and 2 Crusader CS tanks, 8pts
• Crusader II Troop, 7pts
• Crusader II Troop, 7pts
• Crusader II and III Troop with 2x 2pdr and 1x 6pdr tank, 7pts
• Crusader II and III Troop with 1x 2pdr and 2x 6pdr tank, 8pts
• Crusader II and III Troop with 1x 2pdr and 2x 6pdr tank, 8pts
• Grant Troop, 15pts
• 25pdr Troop, 14pts
• 2 soft skin transports, 1pt

From this list you can see i have a total of 74 usable points, so before additing more units lets assess what I have got, what it can do and if there is anything I could do to make it a little more effective using Command Cards.

Setting up what I have

In general with Crusaders I really want to fight a manouver battle and helpfully my Support units work well with this type of battle plan, they can act as an anvil allowing the Crusaders to act as a hammer to drive the enemy into my prepared killing ground. The obvious issue I have is all my Formation units are Aggressive and lightly armoured making the platoons subject to suffering from rapid depletion in their effectiveness.

Now I could negate this by taking the Scout Tanks Card to make them Cautious and Skill Trained and I gain the Scout benefit but this card partly reduces their one major advantage Crusaders have a 14″ Tactical move and its expensive. I must apply it to all my Formation platoons as per Lessons From The Front for a whopping 12 points! Now if they had more than minimal armour I’d definately consider it but, on a FA3 tank it is a serious investment. The other issue I have is most of my tanks are AT7 FP4+ so in tank on tank action even against an Italian M14/40 or a Panzer III (early), I really need to flank them so I have a better than 50/50 chance of an effective hit so I don’t really want to reduce my mobility.

So what else can I do? There is another option and that’s to be even more aggressive and give platoons the Cavalry Commander Command Card, this allows the Crusaders to perform a Follow Me order on a 3+ and still shoot, meaning I can potentially move platoons 18″ and still get a shot from each tank, this can be applied to 1 or more platoons, no all platoons requirement. I am going to give this to both my Crusader II platoons as a starting point, this should mean they can make wide sweeping flanking moves to bring their 2pdr guns to effective action more quickly or even come rapidly on from Reserve and into action. This could be quite handy with missplaced Scattered Reserves – 18″ is a similar distance to that which most tanks can Cross Country of Terrain Dash with no shooting.

My HQ platoon are going to fulfill 2 roles, the CS tanks will support my suppression/screening effort. I have a handy smoke bombardment that can be used to initially screen my flanking Crusader II Troops before advancing and using direct fire smoke. My 1iC and 2iC will lead the remaining 3 mixed Crusader platoons in a more frontal advance, the 6pdr armed tanks are a match for any Panzer III or IV in the desert with their AT10 even with FA4 their kill rates will still equal those of a Panzer III with the long 5cm gun or the common short barrelled 7.5cm Panzer IV all for noticably less points per tank. These platoons will hopefully distract my opponents a bit as well and whilst they are worrying about getting their armour picked off by the upgunned tanks I can get my really fast moving tanks around their flank.

I have some useful attributes in my artillery platoon. The 25pdrs provide a useful second smoke bombardment and make for more than passable AT guns with R24″ AT9 FP3+. Plus they are hard to assault thanks to having the Turntable rule, so can hold ground as well especially against an armoured thrust. The 25pdr guns and CS tanks are also handy at digging out guns and infantry with their FP3+ direct fire, which is sometimes a more useful option than the FP4+ bombardment. I’d only really be looking to use bombardments against densely clustered targets or for long ranged counter battery fire where I can deplete the enemies guns with repeated bombardments.

The Grant Troop are a good all around armoured unit sure 3 tanks is a bit limiting for assaulting but they have a decent gun and reasonable armour for MW added to their Careful rating these can engage enemy tanks frontally, unsupported infantry are vulnerable to this platoon or they can happily hold a position blunting an enemy advance. So coupled with my 25pdrs and CS tanks these will form my anvil.

Getting to 100 points

So what am I missing – yep no Spearhead option that’s easy to fix and whilst dynamic points (DP) has made the Unversal Carrier patrols a fair bit more expensive they are probably still a better option than the Humber or Daimler troops in this case due to their superiour mobility when compared to the much slower wheeled armoured cars and I dont need any more low end AT.

Now I also lack any infantry support which are always useful to have in your list and as luck would have it I have enough points left, 24, to add an entire Motor Company Formation, which would have been the 4th component of the Armoured Brigades bringing an infantry HQ and 1 or 2 Motor Platoons to provide some ground holding infantry as well as a compulsory Universal Carrier Patrol so that’s Speadhead sorted.

As a bonus I can get a platoon of Fearless 6pdr AT guns insead of the 2nd Motor Platoon which frees up my Grant platoon to be used as a more mobile asset or they will provide a good ambush platoon when occassion permits, so I will have these in prefence to two infantry platoons. The other benefit of a second Formation is it provides a 2nd HQ platoon which can also perform spotting duties for my 25pdr guns as well provide Motivation rerolls for them freeing up my Crusader HQ from any baby sitting role. The Motor Company is all Careful making my overall Force stronger.

With this list I have now settled on my final phase of painting for March/April – the Motor Company platooons will be the objectiv. Due to personal circumstances I don;’t have much free time but this should be done for Easter just ahead of the widely anticipated Pacific release.

Reserves

Now none of my platoons is that expensive so like nearly all British players I struggle when asigning Reserves and will probably allocate five of my Crusader Troops including the HQ to the Reserve – not such a bad thing when you are hit on 3+ but, which means that under the current Reserves rules its highly likely I wont see all of these before Turn 6 with Immediate Reserves and probably not before Turn 8 with Delayed Reserves. My stance will have to be to Attack (which suits my primarily Aggressive Force) to minimise this risk to my Force, Immediate Reserves I can generally cope with but risking Delayed or Deep Reserves needs to be avoided – No choosing a Defend stance for me.

So there you have it the what and why of my New Year/New Army, now I just need to get it finished and onto a table for a try out, Martin.