Banzai! The Road to Art of War III - Part Three

Hello All

As this post goes live it's the day before the Art of War and I only finished the army two days ago. In the last post I had just finished the infantry and I had hoped to get two more posts in before the event, as you can probably tell things didn't go to plan and so this post will be it.

I have been busy and also have a little playing on easy army one night at work I found a list I loved, it did mean buying some more Japanese tanks to be able to run it but I think it will be totally worth it in the end.

I will start with the Chi-Ro's, I think I have fallen in love with this strangely attractive tank. They were fairly quick to build with only a few short issues at the back with the metal "railing" sections. For the paint job I went for the tri-camo with yellow strip and man I'm glad I did. I'm going to be honest I'm really really happy with how these turned out, it's starting to make be think I need to do more tanks with camo and it really seems to jump out at you with the black lining.

Also so far in the games I have played, these guys have been the business, the combination of special rules they have makes them very survivable and great taking out gun teams on the move. They are a little poor in tank vs tank battles but they can surprise a few people thats for sure.

Next up is the Type 41 75mm Infantry Guns. This was the platoon I was most unsure about when I was making the list. I didn't know if a AT 3 FP 6+ gun was going to be worth it. Well I will talk more about the Armies outings in a minute but the short answer is hell yes it's worth it! The only problem with the gun was the bit that joins the gun barrel to the chase is a little bit awkward and weak. Painting wise I painted these the same way I painted the infantry and there isn't much more to say about them.

The army list now looks like this

• HQ + Regimental Banner (Fearless/Veteran)
• Full Infantry Platoon with banners (Fearless/Veteran) 
• Full Infantry Platoon with banners (Fearless/Veteran)
• 2 Type 41 75mm Infantry Guns + Observer (Fearless/Veteran)
• 4 Chi-Ros Tanks (Fearless/Trained)
• 4 Chi-Ros Tanks (Fearless/Trained)
• 4 Chi-Ros Tanks (Fearless/Trained)

The Army as a whole.

Changing the Chi-Ha's & TK from the first list to Chi-Ro's saved me enough points to get an observer for the Infantry guns which has been very useful in my practice games. I have so far used the army 3 times (I would have preferred to have a few more games but the painting took longer than I planned). In the first game I played Adam French Panhorde in Fighting Withdrawal, I let him attack and that was a mistake, I did hold on long enough to kill a few platoons but I ended up losing 4-3. In hindsight I should have attacked but I was too worried about Adam's recon massing MG's on my infantry on the way in.

The second game I played was against Robin's FT Strelkovy in No Retreat with me as the attacker. This was a cracking game with lots of big long combat phases and while I did make a few mistakes that let Robin back into the game I ended up killing everything in Robin's army bar a single Matilda. I did lose a platoon of infantry in a particularly bloody combat but otherwise the army held together well.

My final game was against Army Dave's CC Strelkovy again in No Retreat and this was one of the bloodiest games of FOW I have ever played. I managed to clear a whole infantry company off one objective but it ended when Dave passed the wave attack roll (lucky he did as I had killed the 1IC and 2IC in that combat and dave would have been on company moral tests). I then had two more tries to break Daves company before the rest of his reserves turned up, but I couldn't quite do it before Dave broke my company and ended the game. 4-3 to Dave.

What I have learnt in the 3 games so far is the army is better attacking than defending, the tanks are great at digging out infantry and picking on things that will stop the infantry, once the infantry gets into combat they are almost unstoppable and finally the artillery has been great and picking on reserve infantry as they arrive. I'm pretty happy with the balance of the list as every unit does something and does it well.

Now I know a few people out there will say this isn't historical and I completely agree with you, but I do have more Japanese on my painting table and by the time the Pacific is released I'm sure my army will be pretty much bang on historical.

Thanks for your time and keep your eyes peeled for an AAR of the event in the next week or so.

Ben