Open Fire - What I'm Planning To Do With It - The Germans

Hi All

So this week Battlefront announced their new starter set and wow is all I can say! I'm a big fan of what Battlefront have done with the plastic miniatures, especially the infantry. I'm even more of a fan of the price, £50 for the whole set! And thats going on the basis you don't get atleast 10% off at your local gaming store. Anyway I'm moving away from what I want to talk about today and that is what I'm going to do with the models from the starter set, what lists I'm looking at and how much I need to spend to make these armies.

So first off lets look at what you get, for the Germans you get Grenadier HQ with Panzerscheck, 2 platoons of German Grenadiers, 2 Pak 40's and 3 Stugs. The Allies get 8 Shermans of which 2 are Fireflies and a Platoon of US Paras. So a good amount for both the Allies and Axis (you could even say it's a great amount for a starter set! ;-)) but not enough for you to build a complete army. But I think one and a half sets would give you almost everything you would need for almost a whole army. So a quick conversion with my friend Adam and we decided to get 3 sets between us and split the 3rd set in half. This way I get 3 Platoons of Grenadiers, 6 Pak 40's, 3 StuG's (I'm trading my extra StuG's for Adam's Pak 40's) and 12 Shermans. With this core force I jumped on to Easy Army and set about working out some army lists. 

I'm planning 1575pts lists as I'm becoming a big fan of 1575pts as a stand points value as I find 1750pts gives you too many points. AT 1750pts you don't have to make much of a compromise with the list, you can have your cake and eat it. At 1575pts you still have a fair amount of points to work with but have to compromise on something weather you don't have much artillery support or you drop your armies rating from Veteran to Trained or have to drop to 6 platoons instead of 8. To me this adds an extra interesting challenge and is something I'm quite passionate about.

The Germans

 So I went through Grey Wolf and Earth and Steel looking for an infantry list I liked the look of. I played around with the Light Infantry Company from Earth and Steel, the Sperrverband from Grey Wolf and the SS-Panzergrenadiers from both Grey Wolf and Earth and Steel, but I couldn't get a list I liked the look of. Then I looked at the Sturmkompanie. I have always liked the look of the Sturmkompanie since I first read Stalin's Onslaught all those years ago. The added bonus being they have StuG support and lots of Pak 40's, as the boxed games comes with these it seemed the right choice.

So company decided I now had to work out what units to put into the list. I started with the HQ, from the boxed game I will have the CIC and 2IC plus at least 1 Panzerschreck (need to talk to Adam about the Panzerschreck from the joint set) but I decided to include all 3 in the list as I wanted a lot combat punch in my infantry platoons. 120pts out of 1575pts

Next up was the Combat platoons, I was going to use all three as that was part of the reason to get half of the second set. I up graded all the platoons to have Panzerfausts (lets face it that's a bit of a no brainier really), these with the added Panzerschrecks will mean tanks will have to think twice before charging the Grenadiers. 690pts out of 1575pts

Before I worked out the next part of the list I thought it was best to work out if I would aim for six platoons or eight platoons. I normally like to have all my platoons as strong and fully equippedas possible, but seeing the amount of platoons that can combat attach I decided to aim for eight platoons. With the option to combat attach two of the platoons to the infantry to give me a six platoon list. This way I could have flexibility in half on half off mission to give deploy three or four platoons depending on what I'm facing. So with that in mind I added a Sturm Anti-Tank platoon of two Pak 40's and a Sturm Heavy Platoon with two HMG's. In mission with I combat attach these I can have a two Grenadier platoons with a Panzerfaust, a Panzerschreck, a Pak 40, a HMG and 6 MG, that's alot of firepower, even when pinned down! 870pts out of 1575pts

That's 5 platoons down, time to look at what else I can fit in. Focusing on the models I'm going to get out of the starter set. I have four Pak 40's left so they were included three of them along with the three StuG's. The Pak 40's were an obvious choice because of the Pak Front special rule (this lets one Pak 40 platoon platoon deploy with independant teams, a very good rule) and will give the list some much need ranged firepower. The StuG's were really picked as I had three in the starter set, don't get me wrong I like StuG's both look wise and rules wise but I would have probably picked up some Marder's or Hornisse for the extra anti-tank ability over the StuG's. But anyway the whole point of this was to try and write a list using the starter set so the StuG's are in. 1310pts out of 1575pts

Right then time to round out the list. One thing I haven't included in list yet is any smoke, this led me to one of my favourite units in the game, Nebs. I love Nebs, they are so cheap for what they do. They can fire smoke bombardments, they are ok at killing infantry and can still annoy top armour 1 tanks, this just makes them such a good choice. After the Nebs I had 120pts left, so I thought I would finally buy a Hs 129. I'm a sucker for planes in general, but I do find they tend to have a bigger impact on the opponent than the damage they actually cause. You have to spread out a bit even against sporadic air just in case that's the turn they arrive and take out a big chunk of your army. The only real choice was a toss up between the B or the B3. I like the B version as it hits on a 2+, so even if you only have one plane turn up you will probably still hit something, I find it great for pinning. But I couldn't turn down Anti-Tank 15 hitting side armour! Their is no tank in the game that can save against that, how can you say no! I couldn't. 1570pts out of 1575pts

Confident Veteran

Sturmkompanie

German Late-War

Platoon	Qty	Unit	Points
Headquarters
Sturmkompanie HQ p.53	2 3	Cmd SMG team Panzerschreck team	120
Combat Platoons
Sturm Platoon p.53	1 6	Cmd Panzerfaust SMG team MG team	190
Sturm Platoon p.53	1 6	Cmd Panzerfaust SMG team MG team	190
Sturm Platoon p.53	1 6	Cmd Panzerfaust SMG team MG team	190
Sturm Heavy Platoon p.54	1 2	Cmd SMG team MG42 HMG	70
Sturm Anti-tank Gun Platoon p.54	1 2 2	Cmd SMG team 7.5cm PaK40 gun RSO tractor	110
Regimental Support
Sturm Heavy Anti-tank Gun Platoon p.56	1 3	Cmd SMG team 7.5cm PaK40 gun	155
Divisional Support
StuG Platoon p.59	3	StuG G	285
Rocket Launcher Battery p.169	1 2 2 4	Cmd SMG team Observer Rifle team Kubelwagen 15cm NW41	145
Air Support p.172	3	Sporadic Air Support Hs 129B3	115
Company Points:			1570

www.EasyArmy.com

Source document: Grey Wolf

So there you go my German list. I'm quite happy with it if I'm honest, it's different from most of the lists I have played with before and hopefully as it uses the starter box as it's core it'll be fairly cheap. Gaming wise I think I have enough Anti-Tank shots to stop the horde tank lists. Enough MG's and HMG's to take on infantry and some with a little luck enough firepower to take on Heavy Armour. The only thing I'm missing is recon, but then the only recon option in the briefing is a small bike platoon, so there isn't much I could have done about that.

Shopping List

One and a Half sets of Open Fire - £75.00
4x GSO112 Panzerschreck Teams - £4.60
GE734 HMG Platoon - £7.50
2x GE590 15cm Neb Blisters - £28.00
GE709 German Artillery HQ - £7.50
AC006 HS 129 - £11.00

Total - £133.60

Now the price does include 12 Shermans so it's a little disjointed, but without adding to much to the one and a half starter sets I will have a fairly descent army. I will be ordering all of these once my GW clear out has finished on EBay.

Well this went on for far longer than I thought it would, so I'll save the British for next time.

As always thanks for reading.

Ben