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I cannot wait for this one!!! http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=3198

Not the battle of the Bulge ,but i think that this one looks promising. pre ardennes offensive.I know Red bear and grey wolf are geared towards the new edition,but this one will be good for being the first book after the launch.
Well fellow gamers tell me what do think?also looks like we are getting some kool new models,Spoiler alert... looks like we have tigers with skirting ouch...

Looks great. Much talk of relectant/veteran or relectant/trained panthers. Will be interesting to see what's actually in the book.

Oh my, this looks very interesting. Germany throwing it's last dice with all the technology and Patton's boys mowing them down. Would be nice to see some Pershings (they did come in Jan 1945 didn't they?) and Firefly Squadron's.

Hmm, nice hopefully we will see something on 11th Armoured Div next and the Great Swan!

FHH (Feldhernhalle) are featured in Grey Wolf, They seem to be getting a lot of lists lately.

I wonder what will be in a Panzersturmknopanie.

iirc, the book will cover through early 1945, so yes there will technically be some Bulge coverage (4th Armored Division led the drive to Bastogne). The primary focus will be Lorraine, though.

No Pershings in this book. Only twenty of them saw combat, split between two different armored divisions, and neither of those divisions were in the 3rd Army.

What we WILL have, however, include the following...

Jumbos
EZ-8s
75mm Shermans with wet stowage (i.e. protected ammo; the M4(76) already has this)
M36 Jacksons

I'm also hearing that 76mm guns will have their AT value increased to 13, which suggests that the Jackson's main gun might be bumped up to AT14. I'm a bit skeptical of the AT value increase, but the informants seem to be pretty certain about that.

I have a sneaking suspicion that we're also going to see M4A3 models released, though there's been no confirmation of that yet. The M4A3 was present on the Normandy Peninsula, but currently the only M4A3 that Battlefront sells is the one used for the M4(105).

No Chaffees yet. Still waiting for the updated Armored Cavalry Recon list in one of the later Bulge books, which will probably be where we first see the light tank.

I wonder what will be in a Panzersturmknopanie.

Might be an assault rifle unit. The Germans started putting them into mass production for general line units (instead of scouts and specialty units like the one shown in the Orsha StuG Batterie list). I know we should start seeing more assault rifles around now. I'm not sure if that's what this is, though.

I'm looking forward to being able to field a Panther horde (and some sources suggest that a Panzer 4 horde might also be possible instead)... and I dont play Americans, but the ability to field the Tank Destroyer Battalion list as a formation of M18 Hellcats turns me on.

Eumerin wrote:Might be an assault rifle unit. The Germans started putting them into mass production for general line units (instead of scouts and specialty units like the one shown in the Orsha StuG Batterie list). I know we should start seeing more assault rifles around now. I'm not sure if that's what this is, though.

Whatever it is we do know it's a mechanised company so expect a fair bit of armour in some form.

olympia wrote:Looks great. Much talk of relectant/veteran or relectant/trained panthers. Will be interesting to see what's actually in the book.

RT Panthers...355 for 3, 600 for 5...Makes them horde possible, at least as much hording as you can do with panthers, but after watching how relutant troops handled in EW I wouldn't play any the list ever.

Skriker

Skriker wrote:

olympia wrote:Looks great. Much talk of relectant/veteran or relectant/trained panthers. Will be interesting to see what's actually in the book.

RT Panthers...355 for 3, 600 for 5...Makes them horde possible, at least as much hording as you can do with panthers, but after watching how relutant troops handled in EW I wouldn't play any the list ever.

Skriker

Yeah, I think I would rather pay more points for good tanks with decent crews than good tanks with awful crews. I have had some bad experiences with my Bersaglieri in EW when they are reluctant (1 game I think I rolled reluctant trained for 3 platoons, that game didn't go well).

It defiantly seems like a bad idea to have reluctant on a platoon that still would cost a lot even being reluctant.

Way I see it is if that in FOW you have to play to the mindset of your units. If you're dealing with Reluctant units, play cautiously and be reluctant to engage in a fight that you cannot win unless its overwhelming odds... instead of moving forward and trying to tank assault or whatever, draw back and engage at longer range, limit the enemies fire lanes, try to outmaneuver and disrupt rather than engage and destroy.

chaos0xomega wrote:Way I see it is if that in FOW you have to play to the mindset of your units. If you're dealing with Reluctant units, play cautiously and be reluctant to engage in a fight that you cannot win unless its overwhelming odds... instead of moving forward and trying to tank assault or whatever, draw back and engage at longer range, limit the enemies fire lanes, try to outmaneuver and disrupt rather than engage and destroy.

I think this is a key observation. It certainly seems like it'd be possible to be successful with a reluctant army, but the player certainly shouldn't expect the army to play the same as a confident or fearless army.

Also, it's worth noting, that motivation isn't as important for tanks as it is for infantry. If their experience rating is veteran, they'll still be hard to hit, and if they have protected ammo, that will offset the reluctant rating somewhat when trying to remount bailed tanks. Judicious use of your company commander and his re-roll will also be even more important in a reluctant force than in a force that is rated confident or fearless.

Besides that, the Panther is a pretty awesome "Big Cat", compared to the Tigers its the best deal for the points spent, and its one of the best tanks in the game overall... now imagine being able to field 14-15 of them in 1850 pts...

chaos0xomega wrote:Besides that, the Panther is a pretty awesome "Big Cat", compared to the Tigers its the best deal for the points spent, and its one of the best tanks in the game overall... now imagine being able to field 14-15 of them in 1850 pts...

14-15 of them. I just threw up in my mouth. Only a bit mind. Wow, 15 Panthers, even RT, would be pretty brutal to fight against.

Exactly.

Got to say a Tank Destroyer Battalion sounds like mega - fun.

chaos0xomega wrote:Besides that, the Panther is a pretty awesome "Big Cat", compared to the Tigers its the best deal for the points spent, and its one of the best tanks in the game overall... now imagine being able to field 14-15 of them in 1850 pts...

Don't get me wrong I am totally sold on Panthers (I love them, the look, the killer gun), but the Tigers do have an ace *ahem* up their sleeve. It's the Ace skill that makes me err on the side of the inferior gunned, but superior armoured Tiger....

14-15 Panthers would be amazing, at least to PSC!

But Reluctant Veterans? Wow, a target that won't advance, but you cannot hit it? I actually like the sound of RV the toughened troops realising the game is up and Germany is going down and are just trying to survive to get back to their families.

are they RV or RT??

chaos0xomega wrote:are they RV or RT??

They're RT. The tanks in question were part of the short-lived and less than spectacular Panzer Brigade experiment that the Germans tried out in late '44. The rating represents that the majority of the crews were new recruits (with a few vets mixed in among them), and thus hadn't seen any action.

Of course, given that the tanks in question are Panthers, you're still going to need to work for kills even with the lower rating. The improved US AT values should help, but you'll still have less than a 50% chance of penetrating a Tiger from the front with 76mm guns at short range.

Hanging out for this book, always been a big fan of late war anything but armour in particular. Half tempted to max out on M10s purely because I love how they look. Not sure how useful they would be en mass though....

Not sure if mass M-10s are going to be an option. The bits and pieces that I've heard seem to suggest that the Tank Destroyer Company might be limited to Hellcats and Jacksons.

From what I've heard, your options are either Wolverines or Hellcats, and you can have a single "Heavy Tank Destroyer Platoon" of Jacksons.

chaos0xomega wrote:From what I've heard, your options are either Wolverines or Hellcats, and you can have a single "Heavy Tank Destroyer Platoon" of Jacksons.

Doesn't fit with deployment patterns, though. US Tank Destroyers were always fielded in independent battalions with only one model in each battalion (grouping the vehicles that way makes the logistics much easier, and a battalion is small enough that you don't have to put much effort into getting a unified group of vehicles together). You wouldn't have a mixed battalion of M10s and M18s or M18s and M36s.

Unfortunately, the Armored Company list isn't much help figuring it out. Clever Battlefront forumites have ferreted out a preview featuring the basic details of the list from the content going up on Battlefront's website tomorrow (new content is always unveiled on Thursday, and is posted - but hidden - on Wednesday).

http://www.flamesofwar.com/Default.aspx?tabid=53&art_id=3162

The page merely shows a "Corps Tank Destroyer Platoon", with a profile that appears to be an M-10 (meaning that the M-10 is probably available, as are the M-18 and M-36). The name suggests that it's different from the Tank Destroyer Platoon that will make up the Combat Platoons in the Tank Destroyer Company (which is the same thing that BF did with the Hellcat Platoons in the Task Force A list).

Yeah, but you're not playing a Battalion, you're playing a company (so your company is either M10s or M18s) and to represent the fact that the M36 is at this point brand new and just arriving at the front line, you can take a Tank Destroyer Platoon which could include M36s as higher support (Corps/Division).

chaos0xomega wrote:Yeah, but you're not playing a Battalion, you're playing a company (so your company is either M10s or M18s) and to represent the fact that the M36 is at this point brand new and just arriving at the front line, you can take a Tank Destroyer Platoon which could include M36s as higher support (Corps/Division).

That's not what they did, though. Each tank destroyer battalion was assigned to support a specific division on an "as needed" basis (for instance, the 4th Armored Division had a battalion of Hellcats assigned as support during the Cobra breakout). A full company of Tank Destroyers would represent a particularly large chunk of a division's currently assigned battalion operating as a cohesive whole instead of being parceled out across the division. A division would only ever receive support from one TD battalion, and a TD battalion wouldn't receive support from a different TD battalion. It was extremely rare that you even had a full company of TDs operating together (which is why the list hasn't appeared until now). The Corps would never assign a TD battalion to support another TD unit.

Further, the M-36s weren't parcelled out a bit here and a bit there. Existing Tank Destroyer battalions (I believe primarily M-10 and Towed TD units; iirc, the Hellcat Battalions weren't upgraded to Jacksons) were pulled off the line for rest and refit, given the new vehicles en masse, and trained on them for a short period of time before being sent back to the front. You didn't have mixed battalions. Once on the front, the M-36 battalion as a whole was assigned to support a division just as was the case with the M-10s, M-18s, and the Towed Tank Destroyer battalions. Within the division, yes the platoons of tank destroyers were frequently parcelled out across the division. But in those circumstances, the tank destroyers were supporting units that weren't tank destroyers.

In short, a situation in which you have two different types of tank destroyers (whether towed or self-propelled) in a company-level engagement at the same time is completely ahistorical.



I actually once found a list somewhere on-line that detailed which tank destroyer battalions were assigned to which divisions at any given point in the war. No clue where I found it, though.

combat engineer wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:Besides that, the Panther is a pretty awesome "Big Cat", compared to the Tigers its the best deal for the points spent, and its one of the best tanks in the game overall... now imagine being able to field 14-15 of them in 1850 pts...

14-15 of them. I just threw up in my mouth. Only a bit mind. Wow, 15 Panthers, even RT, would be pretty brutal to fight against.

But not as bad as you think. Tanks need to engage and attack to be successful. Reluctant troops cannot handle the pressure most of the time. Being trained makes them easier to hit. The easiest way to deal with reluctant troops is to make them have to take morale checks. When they are trained it is easier to get the hits needed to make morale checks happen. Once the morale dice start flying reluctant troops don't stay around long. I'd rather have half as many FV panthers. Harder to hit and much more likely to stay in the game if taking abuse. All a defender needs against an RT panther horde is one turn of decent fire to knock those numbers down to completely non-brutal levels. Yeah if the german player has some good dice rolling in a game they can really bring the pain, but statistically it isn't likely. The only really good way for tanks to remove dug in veteran infantry is through assault and reluctant troops have a tendency to charge in and then run away when they make their first morale check. Thus if the infantry get any tanks bailed they are as good as dead. RT armored forces just aren't all that scary.

Skriker

Slightly sideways but still relevant, will there be more special Characters in this book? I'm thinking Lt Col Creighton Abrams or similar? Seems that Characters have been very ad hoc.

mwnciboo wrote:Slightly sideways but still relevant, will there be more special Characters in this book? I'm thinking Lt Col Creighton Abrams or similar? Seems that Characters have been very ad hoc.

From what I've heard, both Abrams and Patton are in the book.

Eumerin wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:Yeah, but you're not playing a Battalion, you're playing a company (so your company is either M10s or M18s) and to represent the fact that the M36 is at this point brand new and just arriving at the front line, you can take a Tank Destroyer Platoon which could include M36s as higher support (Corps/Division).

That's not what they did, though. Each tank destroyer battalion was assigned to support a specific division on an "as needed" basis (for instance, the 4th Armored Division had a battalion of Hellcats assigned as support during the Cobra breakout). A full company of Tank Destroyers would represent a particularly large chunk of a division's currently assigned battalion operating as a cohesive whole instead of being parceled out across the division. A division would only ever receive support from one TD battalion, and a TD battalion wouldn't receive support from a different TD battalion. It was extremely rare that you even had a full company of TDs operating together (which is why the list hasn't appeared until now). The Corps would never assign a TD battalion to support another TD unit.

Further, the M-36s weren't parcelled out a bit here and a bit there. Existing Tank Destroyer battalions (I believe primarily M-10 and Towed TD units; iirc, the Hellcat Battalions weren't upgraded to Jacksons) were pulled off the line for rest and refit, given the new vehicles en masse, and trained on them for a short period of time before being sent back to the front. You didn't have mixed battalions. Once on the front, the M-36 battalion as a whole was assigned to support a division just as was the case with the M-10s, M-18s, and the Towed Tank Destroyer battalions. Within the division, yes the platoons of tank destroyers were frequently parcelled out across the division. But in those circumstances, the tank destroyers were supporting units that weren't tank destroyers.

In short, a situation in which you have two different types of tank destroyers (whether towed or self-propelled) in a company-level engagement at the same time is completely ahistorical.



I actually once found a list somewhere on-line that detailed which tank destroyer battalions were assigned to which divisions at any given point in the war. No clue where I found it, though.

There are multiple divisions in a corps, and its entirely possible that multiple divisions are assigned to the same area of operations, meaning that however unlikely it might be, its not completely out of the question for 2 divisions w/ their associated tank destroyer formations to attack the same area, one with M10s/M18s and the other with M36s

You still wouldn't have mixing like that at the company level, though. A division might assign a platoon of a general unit type that was unavailable to a company of another division - for instance, a rifle platoon assigned to support an armored company. But you wouldn't assign support options that were already available - for instance, a TD platoon to a division that already had a TD battalion assigned to it.


It's possible Jacksons never fought in company-sized formations (TDs fighting in company-sized formations was extremely rare). That would explain why you can't take a full company of them. But any option that has them fighting alongside Hellcats and Wolverines in a company level engagement is, as I mentioned, ahistorical.

I'll wait til the book drops and see what Battlefronts research turns up. Assuming the allies saw the German armored buildup in Lorraine, there is no reason to assume that the allies didn't pile in their own armored and tank destroyer units into the same area as a counter (much like the Germans and Russians did at Kursk). Attaching a handful of Jacksons to support a larger formation of Wolverines or Hellcats would make sense, considering that the Jackson was more effective at dealing with German armor directly/head-on whereas the other two had to maneuver to engage weaker side armor.