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 Palindrome wrote:
You are getting lost in the weeds here. As I said before the rules currently make running a pure infantry army all but impossible while a pure tank army can do essentially everything. That's bad no matter how you look at it. My suggestion is simple but would make combined arms highly desirable, do you have an alternative?

It's not a bad idea but it won't change the game much, assaulting into buildings is already difficult and generally avoided in all but extreme circumstances. As for the pure infantry army, I don't think even you know what you want since you also want to promote combined arms. There's plenty that armour struggles to do just as there is for infantry,

 George Spiggott wrote:
It's not a bad idea but it won't change the game much, assaulting into buildings is already difficult and generally avoided in all but extreme circumstances. As for the pure infantry army, I don't think even you know what you want since you also want to promote combined arms. There's plenty that armour struggles to do just as there is for infantry,

Your still getting hung up on buildings. Any type of difficult terrain with the exception of rivers (and maybe even then) should force a morale check on an assaulting tank platoon.

I want to promote combined arms and as I have said on multiple occasions the rules effectively force infantry armies to have some kind of mobile armoured anti tank gun. Basically the rules already all but ensure that infantry armies will have some kind of armoured support.

Pure tank armies can do everything themselves, they may not be ideal at assaulting infantry in difficult terrain but they can do it. The rules do not create situations where pure armoured lists require infantry support.

Do you not see the imbalance there?

@Palindrome: As we've discussed woods can already be made a more challenging prospect in assaults by treating them as forests. I'd actually go with any kind of 'concealing' area terrain, purely for game mechanics reasons, as this would cover fields as well which are currently only slog going in the rules. But I'm quibbling, it's a minor change that would only modify an existing rule not add a new one and the game would be improved, to what extent is debatable.

Armies benefit from mobility especially against mobile opponents, mobile AT guns happen to all be armoured (someone will now dig out an exception to this no doubt). This is more a limitation of the period. The only thing infantry cannot do is walk unmolested into rifle/mg range of the enemy. Again this limitation is period specific.

 Palindrome wrote:
I don't think its possible to actually make an army using nothing but infantry at 1750 points, except Strelkovy of course. By pure infantry I mean no armored tanks teams at all and by pure tank I mean no infantry platoons at all, gun teams are neutral.

So long as gun teams are allowed, it's quite possible. My SS list (which I haven't played in a very long time) uses Sturmtigers and Panzer IVHs. But the former cost about the same as a battery of 105s iirc, and a swap of one for the other would take care of that easily enough. As for the tanks, there are plenty of things that I could swap in to replace them. For instance, adding a third infantry combat platoon (the current setup is two combat platoons and a pioneer platoon), adding some PaK 40s, filling out the infantry squads with their full allotment of panzerfausts, etc...

Similarly, back when Ostfront was the Mid-War Eastern Front book, I pointed a Romanian infantry company. The bog standard Romanian infantry didn't have access to *any* armored support at all (I think that's still the case in Eastern Front, though I'm not certain about that), and it was just barely possible to create a 1750 list. It required including cavalry support, though, which might disqualify it. The current Mid-War Romanian use the new Battalion format with company-sized infantry formations instead of platoons, so I suspect that it would be much easier now.

In short, yes, it's possible to create a 1750 list that doesn't include anything with armor.

Eumerin wrote:

In short, yes, it's possible to create a 1750 list that doesn't include anything with armor.

I don't know of a list (aside from Strelk) where you can include nothing but infantry platoons though.

 Palindrome wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

In short, yes, it's possible to create a 1750 list that doesn't include anything with armor.

I don't know of a list (aside from Strelk) where you can include nothing but infantry platoons though.

I thought you'd stipulated that gun teams were okay?


In any event, the Romanian Puscasi Battalion, which uses Combat Companies instead of Combat Platoons (i.e. like the Soviets), can do so. iirc, the Italians now do the same with their infantry, and can probably build a 1750 point infantry-only force as well.

[quote=Eumerin 596839 6960992 null
I thought you'd stipulated that gun teams were okay?

In any event, the Romanian Puscasi Battalion, which uses Combat Companies instead of Combat Platoons (i.e. like the Soviets), can do so. iirc, the Italians now do the same with their infantry, and can probably build a 1750 point infantry-only force as well.

Nope. I ran the numbers on the Puscasi. Admittedly, I used the LW Axis Puscasi PDF (because I'm at work, and don't have Red Bear handy) which was released a year or so before the Red Bear lists, but the numbers should be about the same. Everything in here is an infantry team. There are no gun teams or vehicles.

Battalion HQ + Panzerfaust Upgrade + Panzerschrecks + 3 Snipers
Three Companies with Panzerfaust upgrades, but *not* the mortars and machine guns (just because this is an "infantry only" list)
Puscasi Scout Platoon + Panzerfaust upgrade
Puscasi Pioneer Platoon + Panzerfaust upgrade (but not the Pioneer Supply Wagon)

The grand total is 1820.

You can also add another Puscasi Pioneer Platoon, or cavalry support (but not both) from the Infantry box in the Divisional Support section.

I didn't even know that there was a late war Puscasi, it doesn't change much though

I put together a couple German Grenadierkompanie lists, both MW and LW, and with both you can pretty easily build 1750 lists without any armored vehicles.

You can do it with the PanzerBrigade150 list in DC, 50+ vet infantry and gun teams, but you count as a tank company.

 Hordini wrote:
I put together a couple German Grenadierkompanie lists, both MW and LW, and with both you can pretty easily build 1750 lists without any armored vehicles.

That's easy, now try it with nothing but infantry teams.

There's no list that I'm familiar with that will let you take 1750pts of infantry teams only.

Infantry and Gun teams? That's easy.

I'm not sure why you think an infantry team only force should be just as effective as a tank only force..

AndrasOtto wrote:
There's no list that I'm familiar with that will let you take 1750pts of infantry teams only.

A Romanian Batalion Puscasi from Red Bear can take the HQ (25 pts), three full-strength Puscasi Companies (1,215 pts without the mortar sections or machine-gun platoons), a Puscasi Scout Platoon (150 pts), a Puscasi Pioneer Platoon (150 pts) and a Pioneer Platoon (160 pts). The HQ has the option of adding two Panzerschreck teams (listed as infantry teams in the Romanian arsenal) at +25 pts per team. That puts you right at 1,750 points. Does cavalry count as an infantry team? If so, then you can add an an extra 185 points to that total.

The japanese 7th infantry list can have all infantry.

3 full platoons with banners and an engineer platoon at full strength will be pretty way up there in points. Maybe even more platoons but I cant remember how many can be taken over all.

Plus fortifications can be purchased which technically enhance infantry based armies.

But its not generally the case, which is the point the other guy was making.

 Ghaz wrote:

AndrasOtto wrote:
There's no list that I'm familiar with that will let you take 1750pts of infantry teams only.

A Romanian Batalion Puscasi from Red Bear can take the HQ (25 pts), three full-strength Puscasi Companies (1,215 pts without the mortar sections or machine-gun platoons), a Puscasi Scout Platoon (150 pts), a Puscasi Pioneer Platoon (150 pts) and a Pioneer Platoon (160 pts). The HQ has the option of adding two Panzerschreck teams (listed as infantry teams in the Romanian arsenal) at +25 pts per team. That puts you right at 1,750 points. Does cavalry count as an infantry team? If so, then you can add an an extra 185 points to that total.

Thanks, I don't have Red Bear and didn't know that.

No problem. You could probably do the same with a couple of the Soviet lists as well (Strelkovy and Motostrelkovy).

 Palindrome wrote:

 Hordini wrote:
I put together a couple German Grenadierkompanie lists, both MW and LW, and with both you can pretty easily build 1750 lists without any armored vehicles.

That's easy, now try it with nothing but infantry teams.

Oh, I didn't realize we're talking about only infantry teams. Yeah, that's a lot more difficult.

But it makes sense that that would be more difficult, considering how companies are organized and how much more expensive most tanks are in terms of points.


If you take multiple companies in the same army you can do it with any infantry force though.

AndrasOtto wrote:

I'm not sure why you think an infantry team only force should be just as effective as a tank only force..

I don't (at least in general) and never said that I did.

"As I said before the rules currently make running a pure infantry army all but impossible while a pure tank army can do essentially everything. That's bad no matter how you look at it. "

AndrasOtto wrote:
"As I said before the rules currently make running a pure infantry army all but impossible while a pure tank army can do essentially everything. That's bad no matter how you look at it. "

 Palindrome wrote:
I don't think its possible to actually make an army using nothing but infantry at 1750 points, except Strelkovy of course. By pure infantry I mean no armored tanks teams at all and by pure tank I mean no infantry platoons at all, gun teams are neutral.

British paras from market garden is a very effective infantry army