Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi there, long time lurker, first time poster. I've been planning on getting into wargames for a while now, and the release of FoW V3 seems like as good a reason as any to get started. I'm eventually planning on building a late war 82nd Airborne force, but since everyone and their brother who's written an "Intro to Flames of War" tutorial feels that you should get started with a tank army I decided to build the 2nd Armored Division from Turning Tide as well. The 2nd A. D. can take a parachute rifle platoon as their infantry support, and the 82nd Airborne can use M4A1 Shermans as their tank support, so there's a fair bit of synergy there.

Anyway, I figured I'd lay out what I currently own and my current plan as far as "what gets painted where", and then see if anyone has any tips for filling out my armies. I've pretty much got the core of both sitting here, but there are plenty of options as far as what else my lists should include, so here we are. I'm not really at the point of building specific lists yet, I'm just curious what sort of options I'll want to paint up and have available when I get to the point of wanting to do so.

For the 82nd Airborne I picked up an old UBX06 Airborne Rifle Company boxed set cheap on eBay, so I've got the full core of the parachute rifle company, plus 3 sniper teams, a pathfinder team and Lt. Turner Turnbull. On top of that I grabbed a UBX15 Airborne Field Artillery Battery, since having some artillery lying around seems helpful. What else do I want here? Off the top of my head the Airborne Mortar Platoon, Airborne HMG Platoon, and Airborne Engineer Platoon all seem like viable options that would be nice to have in my toolbox, is that actually the case? Do I want Air Support of some sort? Is Airborne Anti-Tank worth having, or do the huge pile of Bazookas fill that role for me?

For the 2nd A. D. I'm currently sitting on 2 boxes of Plastic Soldier Company M4A1 75mm Shermans and 1 box of Plastic Soldier Company M4A1 76mm Shermans. That seems like it fills out the basic requirements, although I might want a few more 75mm Shermans in case I want to take the full 3 tank platoons in addition to the HQ. On top of that I've got the infantry covered with my paratroopers, but from there on I'm kind of in the dark. Lots of lists seem to like the M10 tank hunters, are those worth it even if I've already got the 76mm Shermans? I'm thinking a Tank Company probably wants some Anti-Aircraft, but beyond that I'm not sure what I need. Artillery? Recce? Air Support? What kinds specifically? Inquiring minds want to know.

Thanks in advance for the help. Hopefully I'll be getting some time to sit down and paint over the rest of the month, so there should be actual photographic evidence of some progress coming soon...

Hey good effort, could you add in to the Article I have been working on. I have always advised Tank armies but bucking the trend makes life interesting.It would be good if you could put a guide into our article and allow another opinion on the 1st army. I've put a title in and you can write whatever you like!

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Starting_a_Flames_of_War_Force

Nice work. I would advise using colored Spray Primer (army Painter Brown/ Green) as it saves lots of time, and consider buying Grass tufts to go on your flocked bases.
For fighting Tanks your 82nd's Bazooka's will be good, however at range or when the enemy armour is holding an objective it's nice to have AT Guns. An alternative is to take Mortars and small Howitzer's lay smoke screens to protect your troops and charge down tanks and get them in Hand to Hand, as your Paratroops are good in Assault against tanks. Just watchout, as Tanks move, have a high ROF with MG's and sometimes come out on top turning your Veterans into mincemeat ala Arnhem. So AT Guns are always a nice to have.

mwnciboo wrote:Hey good effort, could you add in to the Article I have been working on. I have always advised Tank armies but bucking the trend makes life interesting.It would be good if you could put a guide into our article and allow another opinion on the 1st army. I've put a title in and you can write whatever you like!

Sure thing. I'll put something basic together that describes the options for starting a US Parachute Rifle force.

mwnciboo wrote:Nice work. I would advise using colored Spray Primer (army Painter Brown/ Green) as it saves lots of time, and consider buying Grass tufts to go on your flocked bases.

Yeah, I've already got a can of US Armor paint sitting on my desk waiting for me to assemble the tanks. I may do something similar for the infantry, after I try doing a few of them the old fashioned way. I'll keep an eye out for grass tufts, I do agree they make bases look way cooler than they otherwise would.

mwnciboo wrote:For fighting Tanks your 82nd's Bazooka's will be good, however at range or when the enemy armour is holding an objective it's nice to have AT Guns. An alternative is to take Mortars and small Howitzer's lay smoke screens to protect your troops and charge down tanks and get them in Hand to Hand, as your Paratroops are good in Assault against tanks. Just watchout, as Tanks move, have a high ROF with MG's and sometimes come out on top turning your Veterans into mincemeat ala Arnhem. So AT Guns are always a nice to have.

Ok, sounds reasonable. With that in mind I'll pick up the Airborne Anti-Tank Platoon boxed set before it's gone from the shelves. This should be more than enough stuff to keep me busy for quite some time, at least when it comes to my Airborne force. I'd still be curious what people suggest for LW American Armor though, beyond the basics I've already got. I mean if I'm going to use the armor for learning (and to have something to play with while I'm painting all those tiny little paratroopers) I'd like to at least have my bases covered there ;-)

Try this thread...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/431600.page

Reading through old threads is a gold mine here, not so many trolls and stupidity as in the 40k thread.

mwnciboo wrote:Try this thread...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/431600.page

Reading through old threads is a gold mine here, not so many trolls and stupidity as in the 40k thread.

Awesome, thanks! You've been very helpful.

Well, the wife's away at a conference and the kid's asleep upstairs, so here I am working on my 2nd A. D. In the interest of forcing myself to make progress by leaving evidence of my half done projects on the internet, here's the latest.

I figured the best way to at least feel like I'm making some progress is to start with the easy stuff, tanks! So today I broke out the first box of Plastic Soldier Company M4A1 Shermans. I've gotta say, those are some tiny parts, but they all came together fairly well. Everyone complains about the tread assemblies on the PSC tanks, but honestly I thought the real pain in the neck was the hatch. It's basically impossible to assemble it closed without shoving some green stuff inside so you have something to rest the bits on, and getting the machine gun, tank commander and the hatch all assembled at once is a true test of your steady hands. I'm also not particularly thrilled with the directions, or lack thereof. I mean it's one thing to have practically nonexistent directions, but to have practically nonexistent directions that are also incorrect is really taking things to the next level...

All that complaining aside, the tanks do look pretty sweet. I mean if I can get 5 of them together in like 2 hours with like no recent modeling experience (and certainly no experience with models this tiny) and they still look decent, that speaks to a reasonable product.

The attached pictures cover today's progress. The first is my first test build, the next is half way through assembly line building the whole box, where you can see the extra ballast spackled into the body for weight, and the last is the actual platoon, sorry for the crappy picture there, less light by the time I finished ;-)

Anyway, that's all for tonight. Later this week some based paratroopers (right now I'm in the middle of sorting the giant pile of metal you get in a parachute rifle company box) and hopefully actual paint on some of this stuff.

I was going to do the same thing with my StuG III's, fill the hull with some bb's

Oh, and my final complaint about these M4A1 Shermans and their lame instructions: There's a pile of stuff that's totally incomprehensible. I mean I get the jerry can and the spare wheel from the treads, you can see them sitting on the shelf on the finished wide manlet version, then there's the bit of tread that's intended to have been welded onto the tank somewhere, but there's this pile of random boxes that have no discernable use. Combined with the fact that a bunch of the parts are actually from different versions of the Sherman (for example, there's 80% of a two hatch turret that's not intended to be used at all) means it's not clear if this is random stowage bits intended to be used for personalization or if it's actually something you want to stick on all the tanks in the platoon, or if it's something that belongs on a totally different model. Sigh.

Okay, i see your frustration but shhhh....don't moan about the extras he might take them away. You won't believe it but the spares + extras are great for your terrain, objectives and other modelling projects, I used 4-5 packs of Jerry Cans to make Opel Blitz Fuel truck models for my desert campaign.

Did you not get a coloured coded diagram? Or has he added these in recently and this is an old box?

Like this...



It's also odd that your tanks look white, mine are all a Dunkelgelb plastic colour like this....



I haven't built the PSC Allied tanks yet...

mwnciboo wrote:Okay, i see your frustration but shhhh....don't moan about the extras he might take them away. You won't believe it but the spares + extras are great for your terrain, objectives and other modelling projects, I used 4-5 packs of Jerry Cans to make Opel Blitz Fuel truck models for my desert campaign.

Oh, don't get me wrong, this is the best kind of complaining, the "this thing is awesome and totally worth the money, so awesome that everything I have to complain about doesn't come close to making me not buy his stuff!"

mwnciboo wrote:Did you not get a coloured coded diagram? Or has he added these in recently and this is an old box?

The instructions are there, but they have some issues (I think they may be for a previous version of the sprue, or there's just an error). For example, one of the bits that it says doesn't apply to this model is actually required to build the turret assembly. This, plus the fact that the exploded view assembly "instructions" side of the page doesn't cover any of the random stowage kind of stuff you can add to the model means you end up wondering which parts are "wow this is totally necessary for a historically reasonable Sherman" and which are "random crap you glue on to differentiate each tank from the rest".

mwnciboo wrote:It's also odd that your tanks look white, mine are all a Dunkelgelb plastic colour like this....

Yeah, from reading various reviews it seems like they use a wide variety of different color plastics.

In the end though, very cool models and a huge bargain. I've got two more 75mm Shermans to build for my company command, and then it's on to the 76mm box. First though, some paratroopers!

It's odd I've bought 7 boxes of PSC stuff, and all of them were in the same colour plastic (spaced out over about 12 months).

I will look into this.

EDIT -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwE2scIv_Jc

This guy has highlighted the same issue, must be printed wrong or the original he provided for printing was wrong.

rooneg wrote:For the 82nd Airborne I picked up an old UBX06 Airborne Rifle Company boxed set cheap on eBay, so I've got the full core of the parachute rifle company, plus 3 sniper teams, a pathfinder team and Lt. Turner Turnbull. On top of that I grabbed a UBX15 Airborne Field Artillery Battery, since having some artillery lying around seems helpful. What else do I want here? Off the top of my head the Airborne Mortar Platoon, Airborne HMG Platoon, and Airborne Engineer Platoon all seem like viable options that would be nice to have in my toolbox, is that actually the case? Do I want Air Support of some sort? Is Airborne Anti-Tank worth having, or do the huge pile of Bazookas fill that role for me?

Mortars are helpful for dropping smoke to keep enemy guns from chewing up your lines. The HMGs are really only good if facing other infantry, otherwise they are wasted points since they will have zero effect on most tanks from LW, even from the side. Airborne AT platoons are well worth their points and will do major damage to enemy armor. American Bazooka spam gives you a solid upclose punch at enemy armored forces, but their short range allows enemy armor to sit back and unload on you with impunity. ATGs mean your opponent can't just sit back and shoot you for a bunch of turns first. I generally avoid Air support, except in early war when I had a few points left over I couldn't spend elsewhere to get some fighter interception. I've seen enough games where aircraft have absolutely zero effect I far prefer my points on the table. Of course I also think of my british airborne forces to be those dropped in before D-Day so they wouldn't have any air support during the earliest parts of the invasion anyway.

As for playing armor first instead of infantry, that is really more to do with armor being more mobile and more forgiving when you set things up poorly at first. Enables you to adapt better, while infantry are not as mobile. In general it is easier to win with infantry as a new player against armor than with another armored force. The only time I dislike my infantry force is in games where I am facing other infantry and get stuck as the attacker. ATGs on the attack are just not as effective as tanks. So I recommend that you play whatever you want and don't worry about what the talking heads think about it.

Skriker

Skriker wrote:Mortars are helpful for dropping smoke to keep enemy guns from chewing up your lines. The HMGs are really only good if facing other infantry, otherwise they are wasted points since they will have zero effect on most tanks from LW, even from the side. Airborne AT platoons are well worth their points and will do major damage to enemy armor. American Bazooka spam gives you a solid upclose punch at enemy armored forces, but their short range allows enemy armor to sit back and unload on you with impunity. ATGs mean your opponent can't just sit back and shoot you for a bunch of turns first. I generally avoid Air support, except in early war when I had a few points left over I couldn't spend elsewhere to get some fighter interception. I've seen enough games where aircraft have absolutely zero effect I far prefer my points on the table. Of course I also think of my british airborne forces to be those dropped in before D-Day so they wouldn't have any air support during the earliest parts of the invasion anyway.

As for playing armor first instead of infantry, that is really more to do with armor being more mobile and more forgiving when you set things up poorly at first. Enables you to adapt better, while infantry are not as mobile. In general it is easier to win with infantry as a new player against armor than with another armored force. The only time I dislike my infantry force is in games where I am facing other infantry and get stuck as the attacker. ATGs on the attack are just not as effective as tanks. So I recommend that you play whatever you want and don't worry about what the talking heads think about it.

Thanks for the advice. I'm certainly interested in playing Paratroopers, but let's be clear, it's going to take me a lot less time to paint 1 platoon of Paratroopers, 12 Shermans and some random other vehicles than it would take me to paint 3 platoons of Paratroopers, so I might as well start there and then finish off the company of the 82nd.

In related news, made some progress on the Paratroopers yesterday and today. Yesterday I broke open the box and sorted everything out (man it's a pain to sort 159 15mm miniatures, finding all the random guys that are intended for the supply cart, mortars and bazooka squads among all those rifle and SMG guys is fun, not to mention digging out the LMGs and loaders, they love to hide!), and today I cleaned a platoon up and glued them on popsicle sticks for priming. I would have painted them on the bases, but I'm just not comfortable getting my brush in around miniatures that are that close together. Anyway, a few pictures for proof!

I glued mine 4 to a stick too.

rooneg wrote: Everyone complains about the tread assemblies on the PSC tanks, but honestly I thought the real pain in the neck was the hatch. It's basically impossible to assemble it closed without shoving some green stuff inside so you have something to rest the bits on, and getting the machine gun, tank commander and the hatch all assembled at once is a true test of your steady hands. I'm also not particularly thrilled with the directions, or lack thereof.

The hatch is my least favourite part too. Lots of filing before attempting to put them together and inevitably when I do go to glue it all down, one side won't fit anymore.

rooneg wrote:]Thanks for the advice. I'm certainly interested in playing Paratroopers, but let's be clear, it's going to take me a lot less time to paint 1 platoon of Paratroopers, 12 Shermans and some random other vehicles than it would take me to paint 3 platoons of Paratroopers, so I might as well start there and then finish off the company of the 82nd.

Certainly cannot argue with that logic. Painting infantry stands takes quite some time. I have found with my 8th army figs that base coating, washing and dry brushing and then painting in the flesh areas makes a big difference to appearance on the table, even if I haven' t had a chance to paint all the other details in yet.

Skriker

Oh, so one random question as a result of all my sorting and cleaning of paratroopers. Why does the US Paratrooper Company boxed set (the older one, UBX06, with three platoons, not UBX18, with two platoons) come with so many miniatures that are holding what appear to be SMGs? The force lists in Turning Tide and North Afrika (the two books I have available that have paratroopers in them) hardly have any squads that seem to fit. Some of the command bases are carbine teams, I suppose that could use them, and you've got room on the mortar squads for like one of them, but there's a lot left over. Are they intended to be mixed in with the more obvious rifle and LMG/loader miniatures to make Rifle/MG squads? Or is there some other paratrooper list that has SMG or Carbine (whatever these are supposed to be) squads? The pictures on the battlefront page for UBX18 seem to have a few of this type of miniature mixed in, but it's like one or two, and this boxed set seems to have a higher percentage of them than I'd expect.

rooneg wrote:Oh, so one random question as a result of all my sorting and cleaning of paratroopers. Why does the US Paratrooper Company boxed set (the older one, UBX06, with three platoons, not UBX18, with two platoons) come with so many miniatures that are holding what appear to be SMGs? The force lists in Turning Tide and North Afrika (the two books I have available that have paratroopers in them) hardly have any squads that seem to fit. Some of the command bases are carbine teams, I suppose that could use them, and you've got room on the mortar squads for like one of them, but there's a lot left over. Are they intended to be mixed in with the more obvious rifle and LMG/loader miniatures to make Rifle/MG squads? Or is there some other paratrooper list that has SMG or Carbine (whatever these are supposed to be) squads? The pictures on the battlefront page for UBX18 seem to have a few of this type of miniature mixed in, but it's like one or two, and this boxed set seems to have a higher percentage of them than I'd expect.

Just mix them in. Yeah the US lists don't have much by way of SMG teams. I know the brits get more SMG teams in their airborne lists and have the Glider Pilot Platoons that are made up completely of SMG teams. Definitely a nasty surprise for someone assaulting into one of your objectives to find out that all of the stands are SMG stands. Talk about painful defensive fire!

Skriker