Expanding Vasily's Hammer (SUAB06) - Part Two

Hello all

In part one of this two part post I looked at how to make the new Vasily's Hammer (SUAB06) into a full 1750pts army. As I said at the time I thought that the Hero Tankovy aren't as good as the normal Tankovy, well today I'm going to look at how to expand your box set into a full Tankovy army.

I'm going to be using Desperate Measures again for this list so there is no need to buy another book just yet (you may want to later on when you look at more options and I would highly recommend you do pick up Red Bear (FW117) at some point as it has a lot of Soviet lists in it). This is going to be a very different beast, where you need to think and get used to Hen and Chicks, but at the same time you will have twice as many tanks. So lets look at the list.
Now the first thing you need to do is buy a second Vasily's Hammer box set - yes that's right a second one. You will need 20+ T-34's and the SU-100's are a great unit so you aren't getting anything you can't use double of. This will leave you one short of the number of T-34's you need but I will get onto that in a second. So for the two platoons (Soviet Company's) I would build one as T-34/85's and one as T-34/76's. This gives you one cheap platoon (Soviet Company) to assault with and to bring up your numbers and one stronger platoon  (Soviet Company) that can and will do damage to medium tanks and will scare Panthers and King Tigers if you can get onto their flanks. Thats all the T-34's used out of the box, so what about the HQ? Well you could parts order an individual T-34, but I would recommend getting Brigada Komissar M A Dedov (SU883), he comes with both T-34/76 and 85 turrets and has a nice flag on top of the turret so it'll be easy for you to pick him out in the sea of T-34's on the table. For this list I'm putting him in a T-34/85 (why should your boy not have the best tank he can have!), I had some points left over at the end so I gave the HQ tank a Tank Escort.

So that's all the T-34's in the list, on to the SU-100's, You will now have 6 and I'm going to stay by saying you need more, I would pick up the new OFBX10 SU-85 / SU-100 (plastic), this will bulk you out to 8 SU's. Next up I would not have 8 SU-100's, I would have 4 SU-100's and 4 SU-85M's, the SU-100's are great but I like flexibility and I think a platoon of each even with 11 T-34/85's on the board is a more balanced option. Now with this list I had to save some points and so I had to downgrade the SU-85M's to regular SU-85's so you will need to be careful with them.

So list last time the next thing I added was Recce, I would normally for Tankovy select Spetsnaz as they give you infiltrate, but for this to keep as many models as possible the same I will stick with the BA-64 (SU302) platoon (Soviet Company). It's a very good option, just not quite as good as Spetsnaz.

The final platoon I'm adding is anti-air. I'm going for the armoured version as unarmed trained trucks sounds like something that won't last long! For the armoured version you will need 3 ZSU M17 MGMC (SU160), this is a good platoon for keeping AOP's off your tanks (when you need to stand still to not use Hen and Chicks, anything which keeps AOP's away is a good thing) and secondly it's great at shooting up infantry and armoured cars with.

TANKOVY BATALON (RED ARMY)TANK BATTALION

CONFIDENT     TRAINED   TANK COMPANY POINTS 1750 PLATOON QTY UNIT POINTS HEADQUARTERS Tankovy Batalon HQ (Red Army)   p.9 1 1 T-34/85 obr 1944 SMG Tank Escort 80 COMBAT COMPANIES Tankovy Company (Red Army)   p.9 10 T-34/85 obr 1944 570 Tankovy Company (Red Army)   p.9 10 T-34 obr 1942 with Cupola 360 WEAPONS COMPANIES Anti-aircraft Platoon (Red Army)   p.11 3 ZSU M17 MGMC (quad .50 cal) 110 SUPPORT COMPANIES Medium Assault Gun Company (Red Army)   p.21 4 SU-85 240 Medium Assault Gun Company (Red Army)   p.21 4 SU-100 310 Light Armoured Car Platoon   p.15 FEARLESS  TRAINED 3 BA-64 80 Desperate Measures - Soviet Late-War - Platoon Count: 6

Out of the two posts I would choose this one over the Hero list, but as I said in the last post the Hero list is a good starting point to get playing quickly. You may want to change the ZSU M17 MGMC for DShK AA Truck (SU162) but as I talked about above you will need to be careful with them if you do. With the spare points you could upgrade the SU-85's to SU-85M's or maybe look at Spetsnaz over the BA-64's, but that might be something to look at once you have played a few games.

I hope you have enjoyed this two parter and look out for Fez's take on the US armoured box set coming very soon.

Ben