Author: Chris Townley

With John Lee

With the launch of D-Day: Waffen-SS release, I can finally look at using a massed Panzer IV force as I have 22 of them! They are Fearless, Trained, Aggressive in the Waffen-SS formations, so should be able to pack them in a 100pt list! We will also explore 80pt list versions (in New Zealand we have Flamescon later this year which is 80pts LW). I also want to see what a balanced list looks like vs a massed Panzer IV company.

The formation’s makeup:

• 1 Panzer IV SS Tank Company HQ
• 1-2 Panzer IV SS Tank Platoon
• 1 Panzer IV SS Tank Platoon OR Tiger SS Tank Platoon OR Panther SS Tank Platoon
• 0-1 Sd Kfz 10/4 SS Light AA Platoon or Sd Kfz 7/1 SS Quad AA Platoon

Looking at the Panzer IV platoons, we get three tanks for 13pts, four tanks for 18pts or five tanks for 22pts. Let us look at the 100pt lists first and what you could do to squeeze them down to 80pts if you needed to whilst keeping as many Panzer IVs as possible.

Starting off with the balanced options first we want to look at making sure we have some high-end AT, formation strength, Infantry and artillery. This list combines those options as shown here:

Five platoons for the Formation break. Ten Panzer IVs and a Warrior to lead the company. Karl-Heinz Prinz allows you to re-roll a failed Reserve roll and you will have at least two tank units in reserve so this can help expedite getting them on the table quicker where you are playing in missions with reserves.

Panthers with AT14 for heavy duty AT work. SPAA to protect your tanks against planes and great for anti-infantry work. Command cards used to upgrade them to armoured and now Careful to help them stay in the game longer. Infantry, upgraded to Careful as well to keep them in the game longer to hold an objective or support an attack. All of this rolled up together makes relatively balanced list depending on your play style.

Now to play an 80pt game and keep the Panzer IVs, we need to make a few changes including changing out the Panthers to 8.8cm guns:

So, we still have a balanced list. I kept the Infantry as Careful, but you can change that out to add a Panzerschreck instead or include the Formation warrior or upgrade the Quad AA Platoon to Careful – your personal choice.

Looking at the attacking force option now, we want to make sure we have some high-end AT, Formation strength, artillery and recon for Spearhead. This list combines those options as shown here:

Fourteen Panzer IVs! Panthers with AT14 for heavy duty AT work. Nebelwerfers with an OP to deal with infantry and gun teams before the Panzer IVs get their assaults in and armoured cars to Spearhead to get the rest of the force into an attacking position!

Now to play an 80pt game and keep the Panzer IVs, we need to make a few changes including changing out the Panthers to 8.8cm guns and losing the artillery:

So, we keep the Panzer IVs – Formation is four units strong and still fourteen Panzer IVs! Armoured cars to Spearhead, and 8.8cm guns upgraded to Careful to take care of heavy tanks. We can still make some changes here depending on your preferences. If we remove the armoured cars and downgrade the 8.8cm guns, we can purchase the “PAK Front” command card for 6pts. This gives us the ability to spread them out across our deployment area. Being nests means that your opponent needs to re-roll firepower tests to take them out and you can control or deny areas of the board if you deploy them wisely and you can focus your Panzer IV attack where you want to.

I hope this has given you some food for thought and if you like massed Panzer IVs like I do; we can run them again now in V4. Happy list building!

~John

With Chris Townley

Almost a year ago (who can believe that!) I started planning out my compact little Tiger Company, themed around the idea of building the force Michael Wittmann rolled in to battle with on the 8^th of August. You can check out my original article here…. 

I’ve drawn pretty much all of my information from  PanzerAce.net and if you want to know more you should check it out. According to their information Wittmann, who had borrowed another tank for the day, went in to battle with a total of seven tanks:

Tiger      Commander
007         SS-Obersturmführer Michael Wittmann
009         Signals Officer Helmut Dollinger
312         SS-Oberscharführer Peter Kisters
314         SS-Untersturmführer Willi Iriohn
304         SS-Hauptsturmführer Franz Heurich
313         SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Höflinger
334         SS-Oberscharführer Rolf von Westernhagen

I’ve chosen to build and paint 8 Tigers as this lets me have Tiger 205, the tank he is more known for using during the Normandy campaign. It also has the benefit that when used as a Heer force I can have all 8 and some AA for 100 points!

Turning to my SS Force, this is what I am looking at:

My plan for the list is simple, use the Scout Troop to push up and pick great positions for the Tigers, whilst the Quad AA helps to keep the force on the table should something go really wrong, or drive up and spray things with 2cm cannon fire to suppress enemies. I would like to have the Wittmann Command Card in the force, but at 12 points it is either that or the other troops… Of course I have also been reading some of John’s articles and the idea of dropping a Tiger Platoon, adding a second Tiger to the HQ and wedging in a platoon of Hohenstaufen ‘Best Infantry’ in Sd Kfz 250 halftracks is VERY tempting!

Anyway… I had a cunning plan for this Live Launch to have the Tigers all built and painted but a few little technical issues meant that I am running behind schedule, but I have them so close – just a gloss varnish, wash, tidy up and done! On the good side, with any luck I might actually get them finished this weekend (after the launch sadly) and get a few pics up for people to see.

For my tank commanders I fell into a cunning plan more by luck than good planning. I was thinking about how I can make all eight a little different and interesting. Whilst tidying up I found my Otto Carius Jagdtiger box whilst tidying up I found my Otto Carius Jagdtiger box which comes with a selection of tank crew. With a few clips, filing and scraping I have eight unique looking crew.

I am super excited to get this list completed because it will be a fun self-contained force that is great when I need an easy force to take to an event, that won’t take up a lot of space!

~Chris

With John Lee

I love building recon formations and with the release of D-Day: Waffen-SS, I decided to explore all the recon formations available in the command card pack.  The Half Track SS Scout Company looks interesting and similar to the Armored Car Company.

The formation comprises the following:

• 1 HQ Unit
• 2-8 Sd Kfz 250 SS Scout Troops
• 0-1 SS Reconnaissance Platoon

We end up with a relatively strong formation with a minimum of three units and a maximum of ten units!  So, if we max out the scout troops and take the infantry platoon, we should end up with a unit count of eleven – difficult to break especially if we take some Command Card upgrades.  The scout troops have three vehicles in each platoon so can hang around if you are not too reckless with them.  For this article though, I am going to take six of the scout troops not eight.

Now bear in mind that everything in the formation will be Fearless, Trained, Aggressive.  Fearless means they are more likely to stick around however they are easier to be hit on 3+ so you want to optimize the Scout attribute with the armored cars as much as you can so they are hit on 5s or 6s.

This is how I would look at building the base Formation (which you can tailor depending on points required):

This comes in at 27pts and has eight units in the Formation and six units capable of Spearhead.  Giving the infantry the “Best Infantry” Command Card upgrade, they are now Fearless, Veteran, Careful.  This unit is now harder to hit, can Blitz and Stormtrooper on 3+ and being Fearless make them dangerous.

With the core Formation done, we now need to look at what support options could be taken.  With the ability to choose from either D-Day: Waffen-SS or D-Day: German black box units, you can mix and match what you want to suit your playstyle – especially when choosing between either Fearless and Confident and/or Aggressive and Careful.  Support options need to be taken from the D-Day: Waffen-SS chart.

So, let us look at what we need to consider from a support perspective for this list.  They should be supported by tanks, high end AT, artillery and what we need to cater for around reserves.  Most games are 100pts, but several tournaments are smaller in points – some one-day games have even gone to 50-60pt games to get four or five quicker fast paced games.  This is where recon unit lists shine – more flexibility with smaller points than other formations.  Looking at a standard 100pt game we have 73 points left to play with.

We want to have some high-end AT support and artillery and there are some cool upgrade cards to make some interesting combinations.

First, we take a full unit of 8.8cm Tank-Hunters for 18pts and apply the command card “8.8cm Tank-Hunter” for an additional 1pt to make then dual purpose by giving them an ability to bombard like an artillery unit. Confident, Veteran, Careful 48” direct fire 48” range AT17 guns, with 88” artillery range for bombardment AT2 FP4+.

Second, we take the 8.8cm SS Heavy AA Platoon for 10pts and add the “PAK Front” Command Card for 6pts to give us the ability to spread them out across our deployment area and being nests means they need to re-roll Firepower tests to take them out.  We can also add the Command Card Upgrade of “Best Guns” to make then Careful hit on 4+ for an additional 1pt per gun.

With both units you can control and deny whole areas of the table including digging out enemy infantry and gun teams as well as killing tanks at range. Having multiple Spearhead units in certain missions, you can expand your kill zones.

Now we really should take some sort of armor – I love the StuG, and as we have eight AT14 or higher gun platforms already, I feel Tigers and Panthers would be overkill.  A maxed out StuG SS Tank Platoon of five costs 24pts and upgrade them using the Command Card –“The Best StuG” for an additional 2pts per tank for 34pts.  They become Fearless, Veteran, Careful and they can Assault on 4+ instead of 5+.  At 34pts, they become your main reserve unit and you can put three of the Scout Troops in reserve with them to get to the 40pt threshold for reserves.

That makes 100pts – Here is the full list:

For a smaller sided game or tournament, you can change out some of the formation units, remove some of the Command Card upgrades, change the Stugs for Tigers, Panthers or Panzer IVs.

Here is an example list for a 50pt game:

This command card formation can provide some interesting options and can take on the British and American recon formations with similar numbers.  I hope this has given you some food for thought.  Happy list building!

~John

With John Lee

With the launch of the D-Day: Waffen-SS release, I thought I would take a look at how could a new player or someone on a budget, get a force on the table that would be semi-competitive or at least hold its own with such iconic equipment as the Tiger and Panther tanks, and the Puma armored car.  For the new player, it opens the door to playing Flames Of War without needing to buy, assemble or paint too much and get into playing the game quicker.

So, if we look at what we get in the excellent value starter set (Waffen-SS Panther Kampfgruppe), that will help decide what formation to run.  The starter set contains the following:

• Complete A5 Rulebook
• American “Start Here” booklet
• 5 x Panther Tanks
• 2 x Tiger Tanks
• 1 x SS Panzergrenadier Platoon
• 2 x Puma Armored Cars
• 8 x Sd Kfz 250 Half Tracks
• 2 x 8.8cm Tank Hunter Guns
• 2 x Decal Sheets
• 11 x Unit Cards

The bonus here is that the rulebook is included in the box – so the new player makes a saving right away.  Now if we look at what Formations are in the D-Day: Waffen-SS book, we can see what we can maximize from what we get in the starter box.  The best Formation to maximize this is the Panther SS Tank Company.  Let us look at what units comprise this Formation:

• 1 Panther SS Tank HQ
• 1 Panther SS Tank Platoon
• 1 Panther SS Tank Platoon or Tiger SS Tank Platoon
• 0-1 Panther SS Tank Platoon or Panzer IV SS Tank Platoon or StuG SS Tank Platoon
• 0-1 Sd Kfz 10/4 SS Light AA Platoon or Sd Kfz 7/1 SS Quad AA Platoon

Looking at the Formation and what we get in the starter box, we can use all seven tanks in the Formation.  To maximize our investment, we can add a small SS Reconnaissance Platoon in Formation support. We can also add the following support options; 8.8cm Tank Hunter Platoon, Puma SS Scout Car Troop, and Sd Kfz 250 OP.  This leaves just two Sd Kfz 250 Half Tracks not used.  For a 100pt list, to round out the force we need to add a Wespe SS Artillery Battery in support.  So how does this look from list building perspective

So, what does this list have – 7 x AT14 Gun platforms.  Can take on any tanks at range and all our tanks have FA9.  Yes, the Panthers are hit on 3+ being Aggressive but also being Fearless, which means Remounting and Last Stand checks are on 3+ as well.  The Tigers are absolute beasts and with 2+ Morale and Careful, its relatively survivable to take a two-tank platoon.

Infantry to hold objectives or attack out of a Spearhead created with the Pumas.  8.8cm guns with AT17 and 48” range will take care of even heavy tanks at long distance – one hit – dead.  Perfect for an ambush or for sniping and keeping your opponent honest!

Armored artillery to pin down and remove dug in infantry and guns off the objectives whilst not being pinned themselves.

Pumas to Spearhead and cause a nuisance in the backfield with their AT9 gun – a threat to side armor of medium tanks!

For reserves, put the big Panther platoon in reserve with the Pumas.

To buy this army you need to only purchase the following for under $160:

We can also make some additions to the above list to change it a bit depending on your play style. I am a big fan on having some units pulling double duty and/or by making a tweak with a Command Card or two – so let’s have a look at an alternative list with a couple of minor tweaks but gives the army a different profile.

So, as you can see – the Formation and Formation Support itself does not change – just the support options.

The big difference is taking a full strength 8.8cm Tank Hunter Platoon instead of a short platoon.  A full-strength unit should hang around long.  With the upgrade to artillery command card, these guns now become an artillery unit as well as AT gun platforms with an indirect bombardment range of 88”!  This unit can pull double duty, is careful and will cause your opponent all sorts of headaches!

To buy this army you need to only purchase the following for just over $165:

Now you might be wondering what to do with the two extra 8.8cm guns.  In the D-Day: German book, you can take two platoons of 8.8cm Tank Hunters of 2-4 guns each.  My favorite is to take two platoons of 3-4 guns in a D-Day: German Beach Defender list (that is a separate article to explore further soon).  So, as you expand your army, you will have more flexibility to play different armies from both books.

There you have it.  A couple of easy and versatile options to get into Flames Of War that is great on the budget and gives you the most bang for your buck starting a new force and the foundations to expand upon your German force.

~John