Tuesday 5 November 2013

Shermans and Fireflies

Hi all

Doing a post on shermans feels slightly stupid! I would guess that almost all FoW players have played against them, and almost all probably have one kicking around somewhere! They are so ubiquitous appearing in MW and LW with many variants and employed by many different forces.
But I will focus on my commonwealth ones, so what makes them unique? Well two rules, indirect fire - and tow hooks. Tow hooks I have honestly never used, but I keep wanting to take some 6pdrs with my shermans just to use it! Imagine that moving forward and deploying shermans and 6pdrs on an objective... Semi indirect fire is more useful, but probably more useful still on the Firefly. Basically this rule allows you to reroll misses (if stationary) over 16 inches. When combined with the fireflies AT14/15 even the +1 armour is of little hope. On the regular Sherman though AT 10 vs even a panzer 4 at long range (FA6+1) means it's less effective, and against dug in infantry (even trained) less effective too.

But the Sherman has another trick - smoke - I never appreciated direct fire smoke for some time, but having the ability to shoot a target with 'big guns' then use the shermans can smoke away to protect yourself. 

The firefly though has no smoke, No HE either - it dislikes tanks and that about it. I often feel that I want to try the 4th AD list from overlord as a platoon of fireflies and 2 platoons of shermans sounds a good mix to me.

As for painting these guys - not much to say really, but compared to when I did my PSC shermans and didn't decal them - the decals really make a huge difference to the final effect.

Hope you like them and please share your own Sherman tactics (for commonwealth only please - I'm certain some US or soviet shermans will show up soon!)
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5 comments:

  1. Cameron5 November 2013 at 15:55

    They are looking good. They are open fire shermans, right?

    Hmmmm, Sherman tactics. Like you mentioned, fireflies for tough tanks. Shermans can smoke or shoot to destroy depending on the target. Unfortunately smoke has to be fired first for a platoon. Sometimes what I like to do is to save my 1ic and 2ic for last and smoke with them. A challenge with platoons of only 4 is that losing 1 significantly weakens them for assaulting. Joining the 1iC and 2iC for important assaults can help with that weakness.

    I've found the sherman isn't particularly great at any one thing but is good as an all around tank. It is a bit lacking when playing tank vs tank match-ups. It is not as numerous as other anti-infantry tanks. You can really irritate other players with smoke though and fireflys scare armoured opponents.

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  2. Dai5 November 2013 at 16:14

    Can't say much more than what Cameron's already expertly offered aside from the option to add a cheeky .50cal to a firefly makes it's anti-infantry abilities much better.

    With your Shermans marked as Guards, are you planning to also add Joe Vandeleur? Makes Irish Guards Shermans some speedy buggers for sure and re-rolls at short range is lots more attractive than Semi-Indirect-Fire imo.

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  3. Coxer7 November 2013 at 09:24

    Cheers for the thoughts guys. Yes I'm also a big fan of the IC 2IC smoke last! As for whether they will be guards (or Canadian) tanks on their own list - I'm less sure. I think for a decent tank force you need three tank platoons, and my other shermans may be needed for other uses I fear.

    Also I'm becoming more a fan of combined arms and think infantry with tank support is the way to go - but I'm considering getting Joe just to try then out

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  4. Unknown10 January 2015 at 14:34

    These look great! Can you give a step by step on how you painted these, or provide a link? I couldn't seem to find anything. Thanks!

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  5. Coxer12 January 2015 at 05:19

    The way I painted them is detailed on this post http://www.breakthroughassault.co.uk/2013/08/guards-cromwells.html

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