What are the most effective units?

It’s all about the fire teams and special abilities.

Two or three M-1s supported by a Red Devil Captain’s special abilities compliment each other well.  These units placed together in cover can go a whole game without being destroyed.  Place a mortar or two behind them and you would have quite an impressive field of fire to pin down the enemy.  BAR gunner from Set II makes this fire team even more formidable.

Shermans, Humber Scout Cars, M3 Stuarts to rush German machine gun nests.

Place a Haupsturmfuhrer behind a team of German soldiers in cover (Mausers, SS-Panzergrenadiers, MG42s etc) and out of LOS, this unit can spend the whole game removing face-up disrupted counters without receiving fire.  Particularly annoying to your opponent, especially if you keep making the cover rolls.

Anti-tank guns placed in the rear (edge of map) or within range of objective can have an 8-hex field of fire to protect your heavy German tank from being rushed by Shermans.  My usual opponent likes to rush my Tiger or Panther with 3 or 4 Shermans/M-3 Stuarts early in the game to damage/destroy it.  This stopped once there were two PAK-38s supporting my armor.

I have found taking advantage of the 8 hex range is key for anti-tank guns, because these things don’t last long when they are fired on.  Try to prevent these from ever getting close enough to enemy soldiers to take fire until it’s absolutely necessary.  Most infantry have range of 5 hexes and roll 6 dice at that range, more than enough against defense 3.  Anti-tank guns are 8 hexes.

Close assault units (bazookas, panzerfausts, flame throwers, etc) are great in numbers lurking behind the objective waiting for the enemy tanks to roll in on turn seven when they have no choice but to come in close.  I once had 3 bazookas waiting for my opponent’s panther behind the objective.  Turn 10.  Bazooka in same hex as panther.  Rolled 10 dice.  8 successes.  Rear defense 4.  Goodbye tank.

Basically, infantry should always have a commander along with them and in cover.  I haven’t decided yet if I like my tanks to operate alone or with support.  Operating alone takes advantage of their great speed.

I have found that patience almost always works, that my opponents almost always will “come out” first if I stay back in cover or out of LOS.  DOesn’t make for the most exciting game sometimes, but the last two turns or so are wild.

Di Caro is right when he says that a squand of infantry with an officer is usualy hard to take out.  But for this tactic to work you need to be sitting on the objetive.  Because if you are dug in somewhere with cover and you let the other regroup over the objective, you will be the one in trouble when you’ll run for the objective at the end of the game loosing your cover.

I personnaly think that during a game it’s (most of the time) very good to change tactic so your opponent doesn’t know what’s next.  When I encounter an infantry squad as Di Caro describe, I usually bring up a German SiG 33.  I can stay out of range of the infantry and destroy them ( no cover and all infantry in a hex )

But the SiG33 is tricky to use because it has no turret.  Sometimes in order to be able to fire it has to be out in the open.  So you need a tank to protect it.

But I must agree that a very good situation is where a squad of infantry is dug in on the objective with 1 or 2 tank able to oparate around the objective.

Booster 2 also bring a solution for infantry squad with the snipers.

All of this just to say that as in real war, you must adapt to the situation and surprise the ennemy with tactic changes.  And that there is no “perfect” tactic that will win all battle.

Do keep in mind that when there was only Set I the top tournaments teams had a tendency towards being all armor teams. The allied tanks have an effective enough gun to take out infantry. And infantry, unless they get close enough for close assault, are not as effective against the tanks.

they are pretty useless aganst the tanks, like shooting a bb gun at a frieght train. allthough if i had a tank chasing my i might shoot at it to. :-P

Yes, Yankee Slayer.  You are right.  It is all about the objective.  It is a helpless feeling having to charge the objective with infantry.  Especially if the enemy troops are SS-Panzergrenadiers.  I just played a 10 turn game using the Soviets.  My opponent placed a single SS-Panzergrenadier on one of our two objectives, a forest hex, about 4 turns into the game.  He was still there at the end of the game.  I shouldn’t have decided against including the Soviet Sniper in my army.

However, if you can hunker down in cover in range of the objective with soldiers as your tanks maneuver out in front, flanking the opponent’s tanks and tying them up, then the objective won’t be so hard to attack.

The siG 33 is devastating, but can be destroyed fairly easily because of its light armor.  The Sturmpanzer assault gun is ridiculous!  Front armor 7 to go along with its disregard of cover makes one hide his soldiers far away.  I tried to flank it with T-70s, but lady luck was not on my side.

@General:

  The Sturmpanzer assault gun is ridiculous!  Front armor 7 to go along with its disregard of cover makes one hide his soldiers far away.  I tried to flank it with T-70s, but lady luck was not on my side.

i havnt seen the stat card for this one yet, what are the side arrmor points like? and how slow is it?

The Sturmpanzer has rear defense 4, I believe.  My usual opponent owns the piece, so I have no card to look at.  It has speed 3.

We played two games… Soviet versus German tank battles.  The Sturmpanzer survived both games.  It so good against infantry but not very good against tanks, so I didn’t feel like my tanks were threatened by it.  I used my heavy tanks to go after my opponent’s Jagdpanther and Tiger, leaving the Sturmpanzer to my light tanks and Russian infantry.  Sigh.

As I mentioned, I flanked the Sturmpanzer with T-70s, and would have blown it away.  But lady luck did not shine upon me.

The stats of the Sturmpanzer IV “Brümmbar” are those :
Cost : 22
Speed : 3
Defense:7/4
Infantry : 9/9/7
Vehicles: 8/6/4
Abilities: Fixed Howitzer  - This unit can attack only units in front of it.
            Blast  - When this unit attacks, make a separate attack roll against each unit in the target hex. (This includes friendly units.)
            Bombardment  - This unit’s attacks ignore cover.

The fact is against soldiers, this guys a total killer, but against vehicles, well, it’s not that good. I have played against it once. I was playing Soviet Union only and my opponent was playing Germany only. I chose to field 6 Mosin Nagant (18), 1 Commissar (5), 1 Cossack Captain (9), 2 Soviet Antitank (16), 1 KV-1 (32), 1 Fanatical Sniper (8) and 1 T-80 (12). My opponent had the new SS Panther IV (32), one 40mm Antitank (14), one Brümmbar (22), one German Sniper (11), one SS officier (7), 2 SS Panzergrenadier (10), one Kar-98 Infantry (3). At the start of the game, I was pretty afraid of the Brümmbar and the german artillery, but luckily, my sniper killed in turn 2 the artillery. After that, I rushed the SS Panther IV and I was able to destroy it quickly too. During those turn, my opponent had killed my T-80 and my both infantry. Unluckily for him, he wasn’t able to do more than disrupted with his Brümmbar against my infantry. Still, with his SS Panther IV dead, his Brümmbar was dead meat too. I rushed him with my KV-1 and he wasn’t able to do anything against me. Should my KV-1 be killed by the SS-Panther, even if I would have been able to destroy it, the Brümmbar would have destroyed me, totally.
In conclusion, I think that the Brümmbar, for 22 points, is pretty powerful. As for the KV-1, it had saved my day, once again !

Otto you were more lucky than me with killercelery’s Brümmbar.

I personnaly think the new rule for no turret restriction is wrong.  It make no sense.  And give the Brümmbar too much power.

Yeah, I think you’re right on this one, no turret isn’t a real drawback anymore. Anyways, who’s going to shoot with his tank showing his back, no one…
Anyways, we’ll see what we can do about it.

No one may decide to expose his rear defense.  It’s up to you to make him do it.  Force your opponent to make a decision by placing several of your units in range.  In the game I recently played, I had three T-70s surrounding the Sturmpanzer from all directions.  One was guaranteed to get a rear shot. Meanwhile my T-34s occupied the Tiger and Jagdpanther.  Unfortunately, my dice rolls were lame and soon they’re were no more (of my) tanks left on the field.

Most German tanks have average rear defense… in the 3 to 5 range, so I always try to use mobility get behind or to the side of them.  If my tanks are going to take fire, I’d rather it be in an aggressive posture.  However, one can only do this with initiative and defensive terrain to block LOS while getting tanks into flanking position.

I know one unit that will always shoot with his back exposed…. the british archer.  :-o :-D :-D  I’m so funny !

Di Caro is right.  Weaker rear armor on german tank is their weakness and you must exploit it.  And most of the time this is done with bold moves and usualy has it’s price.  but you have to break eggs to make an omelette.

We spoke of the best way to get rid of german tanks, what about the soviets ?  Most of their big tanks have the same armor in front and back.  The only way I can figure is multible high power shot.  I think the new PAK-40 in booster 2 is a must against soviet tanks.  The PAK-38 is not powerfull enough for their big boys.  Anyone has another strategy ??

I tried this out to see if smoke could be effective:

SS-Panzer IV
Panzer III
Panzer III
PAK-40
some infantry

The PAK-40 helped tie up one Soviet tank but just couldn’t do more than disrupt it each round. Eventually some SMGs killed it after that it went downhill (bad dice rolls didn’t help ;-)). One thing it does is help deny hexes that your opponent is willing to move into. Maybe if you get 2 PAK-40s into position where any approach to destroy one by armor is a 2 on 1 battle, that might be enough to help slow down the Soviet tanks until you get your Panzers in to get good position.

Best Infantry: SS-Panzergrenadier (U-S Paratrooper looks pretty darn good, haven’t used it yet). Both have Defense 5.

Best Anti-tank unit: PAK-40.

Best Anti-Infantry Assault Gun: The Sturmpanzer.  (This thing is devastating).  :cry:

Strongest Tank: The Tiger. (Haven’t gotten the King Tiger) I’m sure some folks on this site will vote the Croc.

Most Versatile Tank (a much different category): That’s a toughy.  I like the Guards T-34 (Soviet).

Best Tank against Infantry: The M5 Stuart (British) is very tough because it’s so fast.  Sherman also effective.

Best Commander: U-S Captain.  -1 on cover rolls for opponents is huge.  The Haupsturmfuhrer finishes a close second.

Best Machine Gun: MG-42.
Best Mortar: The U-S M2. (range 8 hexes!)

Worst infantry: The Chinese are useless.  Italians also bad.  So are Soviet Mosin-Nagant with their command dependency.
Worst Tank: The French and all the Japanese tanks are very weak.
Worst Anti-Tank unit: the Soviet PTRD-41 Antitank Rifle.  This is good against hot dog stands, that’s it.
Worst commander: The Commissar, by far.

Personal favorites:
SS-Panther tank.  Moving while disrupted.
Haupsturmfuhrer: I like saying “Fanatic” and “Exert Will” during my games.
Red Devil Captain.

Units I fear: The Sturmpanzer.  As mentioned, this thing is devastating because it can slaughter infantry from 8 hexes while ignoring cover.

Any unit with a flamethrower.  There… I said it.

And the unit that may be the most impossible to deal with… the Nashorn.  RANGE 20 HEXES!!!  Enough said.

you forgot snipers, i know the chances of them getting a kil from a distance isnt easy, but there great for keeping the other guys infrantry out of the way. everything else goes alnog with me, even the flame thrower bit.

Haven’t used the sniper yet.

The Wermacht Expert is 11 points… and rolls 6 dice at all ranges, +1 on each die.  And has head shot special ability.  Woo hoo.

Of course, this all seems to depend on how many points each person uses and what kind of map you are using.  One sniper placed in the right spot in a 100 point game against an army that has just one or two infantry wouldn’t have much of an impact.

Against an opponent who is infantry heavy would make more of a difference.

There is another thread on this board about different set ups.  I have used mostly 100 point armies and 150 sometimes.  Once I used 200 points, but that was to allow more tanks on the map, not a ton of 4 point units.

The map is only so big-- and the game was designed for 100 point armies-- to optimize the use of tactics like cover and flanking.  A bigger map with more objectives would possibly make infantry less useful because they can’t cover as much ground.  Unless you extend the time of the game.  And the possibilities go on and on.

So, some units may be more useful in bigger armies than they would be in smaller armies.  I guess that’s why the German tanks didn’t show up in the winning 100 point tournament armies.  They take up so much “space,” while you can fit in three Shermans and have room for a lot of other stuff.

I managed to play a 300 point game the other day.  Before I go into the team details, lemme just say that we didn’t give two sh*ts about historical accuracy.  So yes, Germans and Japs were fighting together, as well as Brits and Americans alongside Russians.  So here’s the teams. (as best as I can recall)

Axis  :mrgreen:

2 King Tigers - 142
1 Nashorn - 45
1 SdKfz 251 - 14
2 SS Hauptsturmfuhrers - 14
2 SNLF Captains - 12 (I used these as paratroopers by the way)
4 MG42 Machine-Gun Teams - 40
3 Imperial Snipers - 24
1 SS Panzergrenadier - 5
1 Blackshirt - 4
Total = 300

Allies  :mrgreen:

1 IS-2 - 68
2 Guards T34/85s - 66
2 M3 Stuarts - 30
1 Red Devil Captain - 7
2 Screaming Eagle Captains - 22
4 Screaming Eagle Paratroopers - 36
4 Vickers Machine-Gun Teams - 32
3 Fanatical Snipers - 24
3 Polish Cavalry - 12
Total = 297

In short, I (Axis) won the game.  However, the ending was very anti-climactic.  I don’t blame this on the 300 points, but just the units that we had toward the end.  Both of our units held the objective, but my remaining units (both King Tigers) and his units (3 Paratroopers and a Paratrooper Captain) couldn’t kill each other.  So when I say I won, I just mean that we reached round 10, and I had killed more of his stuff than he had of mine.  (The King Tiger is awesome!)

I’m thinking about experimenting with an all-soldiers army… maybe even all of one type of soldier.  Might make for an interesting game.

In considering of tournament play or playing for points.

In Set I, a big problem with an all soldier army is the inability to deal with the big tanks. Rolling 11 or 10 dice on 6 or 7 armor is tough to damage or destroy in one hit. And since the Tiger I has overrun that makes it less likely for that.

The all armor or mostly armor strategy against all infantry is to wander around, kill a few infantry, on turn seven (if you get to turn seven after 60 minutes), you storm the objective. The likely outcome is that the tanks get disrupted or damaged but not destroyed and time expires and the armor team wins.

For friendly games or games that include Set II, it can be fun and this may not apply as much.

You see, i dont know if that is the rules are broken, but it is somewhat refreshing to know that even with 2 king Tigers on the board, you still had infantry running around…even if the two were completely ineffective against each other.

One of my major concerns with this game was that it was going to go the route of most WotC games were the rares are king and commons and uncommons were basicly cannon fodder. I learned playing L5R how important it was to have a balance and while rares gave the advantage in specific situations, it was the commons and uncommons that won the day. It actually makes me more enthusiastic about playing knowing that every unit is important.

By the way, I have a limited amount of pieces right now but it appears that the king tiger is by far the most expensive piece to field. Is that the case and is it really worth it’s cost?