Second Steps, How to Grow Your Starter Sets – West German Panzeraufklärung Kompanie

Today, guest writer Mike Robinson returns with another deep dive of the starter sets.

Welcome back! I know, I’m as surprised as everyone else that Lee is letting me do this a second time! Even if he did call my use of correct spelling weird. This time we are making the jump from World War II to the FUTURE of 1987 with Team Yankee’s West Germans. 

The Panzeraufklarungs Kompanie gives us a good mix of cutting edge armor, solid recon units, and quality air units. So let’s take a look at what comes in the box:

• Three Leopard 2A5 tanks
• Two Leopard 2 tanks
• Four Marder 2 scouts
• Three M109 self-propelled guns
• One M113 OP
• Two PAH helicopters
• Two Tornado aircraft

So what makes these units good?
The Leopard 2A5 has the toughest front armour in the game at a massive 22. T-80s can’t touch it, Challengers weep in frustration, even the American behemoth that is the M1A1 can only hope to bail them out and only if they’re in short range.
Even the side armor at 13 is game leading, making things difficult for fast IFVs, or hordes of T-55s aiming for flank shots. The only real danger to these monsters is enemy aircraft and really only A-10 warthogs and SU-25 Frogfoots with their AT27 ATGMs.
In the firepower department it’s more of an even game, sharing AT22 with the T-80 and Challenger, while coming just short of the M1A1’s AT23.
But, compared to the FA20 of the T-80 and base Challenger, as well as the FA19 of the M1A1, we have better odds of coming out on top when trading shots with other third generation tanks. Now we only have to be careful of ROMOR Challengers and M1A1HCs with their FA21.

The Leopard 2s are solid; they keep the AT22 main gun but only have a front armor of 18 so they’re just as dangerous as the 2A5s, but not as survivable. They do however come at a 6 point discount. 

The Marder 2 is dangerous to opposing IFVs; with it’s base gun’s AT11 you can sail right through the front armor BMP3s, Bradleys, and Warriors, all while getting 3 shots on the move. Having advanced stabilizers, giving us a 14 inch tactical move, we can threaten most tanks on the side armor. It’s rare to see anything with a side armor of 10+ unless we are talking about top tier tanks.

Moving on to the support weapons we have, M109s provide a firepower 2+ artillery template that can dig out enemy infantry and with AT4 can threaten the top armor of any tank in the game. We also get the option of taking bomblets giving us a salvo option to pin down any infantry hordes.
The PAH helicopters give us decent AT23 ATGMs that can be devastating to mid tier tanks and will make the high end ones think twice.
The Tornado aircraft are a personal favorite of mine with their AT8 FP3+ salvo they are a THREAT to everything in this game.
The M113 OP is a nice to have, letting the M109s range in on 2s but with the standard West German skill of being 3+ they’re not as mandatory as their Soviet counterparts.

The downside to all of this amazing equipment with rock solid stats is that it’s EXPENSIVE, the West Germans are a points hungry army.

Let’s take a look at the formations we can run from this box. We have the Panzeraufklarungs Kompanie, but with some modifications and some more stuff you can also run a Leopard 2 or Leopard 2A5 Kompanie. Since this box was built for the Panzeraufklarungs Kompanie we’ll stick with that for now. If you want to field more tanks then I would recommend looking at the standard Leopard 2 Kompanie.  As before we are looking to maximize our use of what comes in the box, but once you get comfortable run what you like playing with and leave other bits home. 

So here’s how our list looks with what comes in the box:

The box comes in at 99 points, like I said earlier it’s a points hungry army. Our goal for this list is actually 120 points using the recent (at time of writing) 2022 US Masters tournament as our points benchmark. 

Let’s begin with covering our biggest weakness: enemy aircraft. Like I mentioned earlier it’s going to take dedicated anti-tank aircraft to bring down our 2A5s. So we’ll be adding four Gepards for 10 points.

These are fantastic anti-air units with 5 shots stationary and 4 shots on the move and with radar they’re got plenty of range. There is the added bonus of being AT11 so they can protect themselves from IFVs or even be used more aggressively if the enemy isn’t bringing aircraft or choosing to leave them off table. The Gepards come two to a box at $27 per box. 

We’re going to double down on the Tornados buying an additional two for $35. Running four Tornadoes makes the deadly salvo more consistent and having more jets makes it harder for enemy anti-air to stop while only costing us 4 more points. Remember unlike Flames of War in Team Yankee aircraft are subject to the normal penalties for a two “gun” template.

Let’s finish by filling up our core formation with a box of Marder 2s for $50. Using all four from the box to get an additional two recon units, at 3 points a unit. Our individual units might be small but with a lot of them we get a desirable amount of mass in the formation.

This all comes out to a grand total of 119 points, now we can’t take a lucky card; they don’t exist in Team Yankee to Duncan’s joy. Instead we’ll use that last point to take bomblets on the M109s and get that useful, but situational salvo template. So let’s take a look at our final list. 

The final monetary breakdown at Battlefront prices. Remember to check your friendly local game store for deals or if you’re in the UK Breakthrough Assaults lovely sponsor Battlefield Hobbies.

• Panzerauflkarungs Kompanie $110
• Mardar 2 box $50
• Tornado flight $35
• Gepard box $27
• Gepard box $27

      Grand Total $249

Once again we’ve come in under $250 and we used everything in the box.

In the next article, we’ll take a look back at WW2 with the “Enemy at the Gates” starter.