Road to Nowhere - Laffly and Renault AMR-35 Army for Art of War

Hi all another update for the project - and more importantly the list and practice games so far leading up to 'Art of War'!

Firstly the AMR-35's, I've got 5 of these mobile MG's, I still view them as being an assault unit more than anything else, with TA1, and half tracked mobility they can get to the enemy pretty quickly, they may still be able to be pinned by 5 shots, but unlike many of the other units can hopefully pin and even remove a couple of infantry teams on the way in with their 13.2mm MG's.

For some reason when I painted them I made the yellow more prominent than the other platoons, not my plan from the start but I think it really makes the unit stand out in the army.

The other platoon is the famous Laffly platoon - famous because they're such a nightmare to put together! with the cab being made of multiple different pieces you can't fit the crewman in, and they're an absolute pain to get them lined up properly. Now in game terms these guys are the absolute daddy! 3 shots, AT9 and FP4+ and range 24, and on an armoured chassis they're just pure win in my books, no one is going to be safe from these guys - except maybe KV's - damn those KV's.

I went with the two tone camo for this platoon like the panhards, and weathered as the rest of the army - I would say that I was really glad to finish this platoon, I'd hit 'the wall' with regards to my french - I've still got some infantry, Somua's, Char B's and AT guns to go, but needed a break by the time I hit these guys having been painting french solid for three months.

So here they are my mighty French 'Escadron de Reconnaissance', I've played a few games so far, thought I'd recap them quickly with learning points.

Game 1 - vs Army Dave's Strelkovy 
This was something I was dreading, hoards of confident conscript infantry, and barbed wire - we rolled dust up which helped loads. I realised quickly that trying to remove the big blob on the objective was pointless, it was never going to lead anywhere, instead I used my mobility and firepower to take out all the ancillary platoons leading to breaking his force. It also really showed how useful the mobility was, moving from defending the middle to protecting my flanks in a turn - with MG fire to boot. 5-2 win to the French

Game 2 - vs Ben's Japanese Infantry
Playing Ben is always fun, we rolled up fighting withdrawal - and suddenly the effectiveness of being able to move and objective and being mobile really hit me. I think one of the great things was that we managed to set up the terrain, take pics for the blog, deploy, play the game, pack up all in 2 hours! I think the one thing I did badly was not keep my AT assets spread out - this led to Hotchkiss with short barrels shooting at enemy tanks - when really infantry is their cup of tea! Also the vulnerability to infantry due to my lack of MG's also came through. 4-3 win to the French

Game 3 - vs Robin's FT Strelkovy

Having played Dave's CC strelk, I hoped for less bodies against Robin. There were less, but not many! It was no retreat, and he placed his two infantry blobs to block the width of the table with some AT guns in ambush. In the end it was a slightly uninspiring game. I sat over 10 inches away lifting GtG and shooting the infantry before they were weak enough to assault. The ambush destroyed only a single Hotchkiss and they all vanished in return eventually.

Game 4 - vs Matt Pullen's 38t's
You'll have to wait for the AAR...

Thanks for reading and until next time

Coxer