with Andrew Haught
Wayne and I sat down to play a game of Flames Of War and we wanted to do a beach landing. Since I was still working my 29th Infantry Div beach landing Assault Company I decided to do something a little different than what I normally play for this Beach Landing game. I wanted to play Rangers. Rangers in V4 are incredibly cool. They are assault monsters and if they can get in close they will kill everything with their +2 to hit in Assaults.
Now, when brewing up a list for a Beach Landing mission, as an ally force you want to focus on the units that will cycle back onto the table: the infantry units, so I want at least 3 units, but the way the Rangers work I only get two per formation so I need to bring two formation. This is one of the strong aspects of the Rangers since their formations are small you can get multiple company commanders to help motivate your troops and keep your forces moving. With the core troops I wanted to add some artillery in the form of Mortars and Naval Gun Support. And since we are going D-Day let’s get some Duplex Drive tanks via the DD Sherman Command card.
Here is the list I ran against Wayne in our game:|
Ranger Company 1
Ranger HQ 1 Point
Ranger Platoon 10 Points
Ranger Platoon 10 Points
Ranger Mortar platoon with 6 guns
Ranger Company 2
Ranger HQ 1 Point
Ranger Platoon 10 Points
Ranger Platoon 10 Points
Support
M4 Sherman Tank Platoon with 4 tanks 14 Points
Command Cards
Lucky 1 Pont
Naval Gun Support 12 Points
Sherman DD 0 Points
If you add it up you can see we were playing below the normal 100 point level, at 75 points. This was due to the fact we were playing in a recorded battle report and we wanted to keep it short. But 100 points is where the game truly shines and if you wanted to add 25 more points to this list I would add the following,
Ranger Company 3
Ranger HQ 1 Point
Ranger Platoon 10 Points
Ranger Platoon 10 Points
Add a fifth tank to the M4 Sherman Platoon +4 Points
That gets you to 100 point easy and you will have even more troops on the table to harass your opponents.
Wayne and I were playing the FUBAR mission found in the D-Day: American book, we wanted to show off the basic mission and give players a look into how the mission is played. We could have played the Pointe Du Hoc Variant rules that would have let us play the beach landing the Rangers ran into on D-Day. Both missions work as FUBAR is a great representation of the Omaha beach landings.
I won’t tell you how the game went as you can watch our battle report video to find that out but I will go into the basic tactics of this list.
This list is all about attacking, you move your infantry in and you overwhelm your target with sheer numbers. During the FUBAR beach landing mission you have to take both objectives but your opponent’s resources are quite limited so try and mass up on both objectives. Your Shermans are limited resources so be careful with them and get them up the beach quickly and have them focus on taking out bunkers, start with the AT bunkers and once they are dealt with move on to the MG nests.
Something else to keep in mind when building non-Ranger Tank forces, Rangers formations are cheap point wise to add to your force. For 21 points you get two full units of Rangers and an HQ, so you get re-rolls and some of the best Assaulting units the Americans have to offer. Its easy to build a well forces list and slot the Ranger platoon in, for example,
M4 Sherman Company
M4 Sherman Company HQ with 2 Tanks 7 Points
M4 Sherman Tank Platoon with 5 tanks 18 points
M4 Sherman Tank Platoon with 5 tanks 18 points
M4 Sherman (76) Tank Platoon with 5 tanks 23 points
M4 81mm Armoured Mortar Platoon 2 Points
Ranger Company
Ranger HQ 1 Point
Ranger Platoon 10 Points
Ranger Platoon 10 Points
Support
Priest Artillery Battery with 3 Priests 8 Points
Sherman OP 3 Points
There is a hundred points and the Rangers are the perfect include, if you have to defend well you get two full strength Ranger platoons to dig in on the objectives, with their 3+ moral rating they will rally and stay in the fight longer than most other American infantry units. Add in their 2+ to hit in assaults and you have a defending unit your opponent does not want to assault into.
Ranger weakness to keep in mind, they are easy to hit, so HMGs and other high rate of fire hostiles are a big threat, you want to use your tanks and artillery to deal with those threats before the Rangers move into the assault.
To see the video of our game click here…
Well that’s it for this Army Spotlight, hope to see you on the battlefield,