with Chris Potter (Battlefront UK)
Normally when I put together a list, there is an aesthetic or historical reason behind it and I am able to give (at length) reasons why I have chosen that Army. Alas, and much to the relief of my wife, this time is a little different for the German D-Day book. I won’t be waxing lyrical about specific units or
historical formations. Instead I have actually approached the book from a gamer’s point of view, albeit with some restrictions.
I started as I always do with writing my ideal list, regardless of points, for the units I have seen in the book that I want in my army. This time, it was the turn of copious amounts of Panzer IV, Panthers, and troops to enter the fray and get my appetite whet. One thing to bear in mind with the German Book for D-Day is that there are a lot of options for units. The first thing a player will notice is, similar to Fortress Europe, you can take multiple tank formations of Tigers and the bigger tanks that the Germans employed in the later stages of 1944.
This poses an issue as to take lots of tanks, costs lots of points. Hence my decision to go with Panzer IV, that ubiquitous workhorse of the Heer, in quantity with some elite tanks attached. Hello Panthers! The tracks, the guns, the turrets… I knew I had to take some Panthers to show the American 76mm who was boss of the battlefield. Now with the German D-Day book there is another variant of the Panther – The Panther A.
The key difference between this and the Panther G, which most people will know, is the application of Zimmerit on the hull and turret. And the new plastic kit delivers in bucket loads.
Sculpted directly on the plastic is the Zimmerit and it looks seriously good. To round off my force, from a gaming perspective, I needed some troops.
So I add some Panzergrenadiers, sadly bereft of their Halftracks so as to squeeze them into the army at full stand sized companies. Plus by doing this I was able to keep the model count low.
Time is money and having already committed to building a 100pt army of US Paras, with their lovely high model count, for the UK Office Hobby League, I wanted as few stands and tanks to paint as possible. Then it was time to trim the list. First out were extra Panzers and Panthers to maintain an equilibrium in points so as to make sure any one formation wasn’t too high, but also so I could squeeze in a second formation of troops to hold and contest objectives, and be a pivot for my tanks to run off. I eventually managed to come up with this list:
Now to decide on a paint scheme!