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Picked up Open Fire! last night and went with the Brits after my demo game. So I pawned off my 3 Stug tank sprues for 2 more Shermans and a Firefly. Where should I take Open Fire from there? I don't see on playing this very often, so buying a book might be out of the idea, but the armoured squadron in the little Open Fire booklet seems to be a good place to start.

So what should I look to add, a rifle platoon? I've got 8 Shermans V tanks and 3 Firefly VC tanks, 32 American Paratroopers. What do you stay dakkanauts?

Armor pretty much can always benefit from infantry.
Grunts are usually cheaper, harder to kill outright (get 'em dug in), and can be placed to hold stuff while you move tanks around to blow stuff up/snag distant objectives.

Infantry would be a good first addition.

Okay, without buying any of the books, I only have the option of adding a rifle platoon (as per the quick little list they give in the Open Fire! book).

A rifle platoon is perfectly fine.

You will need at least 3 more Shermans which will give you 3 Sherman troops and an HQ (may I suggest the Plastic Soldier Company kit, that will get you 5 for about £17 and you can use the spares for Observers or objectives ). This is 1115 points.

After that its really upto you. Artillery is an option (Sextons are a bit better than 25 pounders) as is an anti tank platoon (M10Cs). You may also want to get some recce (Staurts, armoured cars or Carrier patrols).

Go to Easy Army and sign up. The forces from the V3 Forces book are free, so you can list build from their.

Now, I wouldn't add any more infantry in an Armored list - your paratroopers are more than capable of holding down an objective by themselves.

I'd recommend some Recce units, which help to screen your armor from ambushes - Stuarts, Armored Cars (Daimlers and Dingos) or Universal Carriers. With 2 HQ Shermans, 2 combat platoons of a command Sherman, a Sherman with a 50 cal., and a Firefly, and your paratroopers, you've got 160 points to spend to get to 1,000, which is a nice starting point. You could get four Stuarts for 160, or 6 carriers without any upgrades.

The Paras will do ok but I would definately go with a rifle company instead, they are far cheaper for one thing and they aren't an allied platoon. They aren't as impressive on the table of course.

Palindrome wrote:
The Paras will do ok but I would definately go with a rifle company instead, they are far cheaper for one thing and they aren't an allied platoon. They aren't as impressive on the table of course.

Oh yeah, my flgs owner and the guy that gave me the demo were talking about that, 265 points for like 9 bases of infantry... My tanks are cheaper! lol. I think I'll keep them since they're part of the Open Fire! box, but I might pick up a rifle platoon and some reece tanks, I haven't had good luck with air support, so I'm going to avoid that lol.

You can actually make the paras 355 points. It is a 12 team strong fearless veteran beast of a platoon but still.

You could use the free II armored dividion pdf list.This allows all the tanks and paras to be used.
I prefer the universal carriers to stuarts for recon.(They look cool IMO.)

Lots of chioce in this list and its on Easy Army too!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I meant 11th Armoured division pdf..stupid phone.I would get 3 sp bofors aa, and some universal carrier recon...

Check out the FoW website and you'll find some downloadable free briefing lists for the Scotts and Highlander Divisions as well as the Grenadier Guards during Market Garden.

ActionJack wrote:
Check out the FoW website and you'll find some downloadable free briefing lists for the Scotts and Highlander Divisions as well as the Grenadier Guards during Market Garden.

All these PDFs are on easy army for free, as are all (or at least nearly all) Battlefronts current online lists. The PDFs are still useful for the background to the respective units but easy army is alot better for list building.

Also its the 15th (Scottish) and 51st (Highland) divisions. Scott is someones name.

Maxing out tracks on the field is always a good idea with Brit armour, be it a generic brit list, or a list that involves Canadians, the Guards etc.

For a 1250pt list you could have

2 Sherman V's
3 Sherman V's, 1 Firefly, 1 .50 cal
3 Sherman V's, 1 Firefly, 1 .50 cal
3 Sherman V's, 1 Firefly, 1 .50 cal
3 Stuart V's
Infantry Platoon (Full Strength)

With Brit Armour, you need lots of tanks to make them effective, seeing how they are trained (don't for vet Brit Armoured though, waaaay to expensive for vets). With this list, you have some recce to prevent ambushes and what not, a good amount of AT, plenty of anti-infantry and an infantry section to hold a key objective/assault one.

May I ask why only 1 .50 cal in each platoon? And on which tank I might ask.

While toying around with EasyArmy, I was adding a .50 cal gun to each of the Sherman Vs and leaving the Firefly as is.

And for the Infantry Platoon, are you talking regular British Rifle Platoon?

Only one .50 cal per troop was historicaly accurate on lots of British Armoured lists.As they gave the other 50 cal to motor platoon half tracks.
I usualy put it on the Troop leader, as he is the last to get shot.(I keep him at the back...)
Yes Regular British rifle platoon .
(You can take the option of 2 three ton lorries as transport for them in some lists.its only 5 or 10 points and lets them grab objectives quickly.But its personal preference realy...

So that's being true to real life huh... hrm... FoW boards, you've placed me in a weird situation...

I want multiple 50 cals, but I don't want to stray too far away form the source material...

.50 cals are not that useful to be honest. They are unlikely to down/drive off an aircraft and if you actually fire it as a standard MG you become alot more vulnerable to assaults and artillery.

Historically they were quite rare on British Shermans; they weren't that effective, the commander had to get out of the tank to actually use it and it basically got in the way. This resulted in most units handing them out to their supporting Motor battalions.

Apparently they were a lot more common in the Polish and Canadian armoured divisions.

Hi Palindrome.
Talking of Polish Armored divisions.Have you used the Fearless Trained Polish 1st Armored Division list in any games?
I do not know if its worth paying the extra for fearless trained over confident trained?

Fearless vs trained really depends on the list IMO. I always prefer fearless infantry lists as they will need good motivation to pass the inevitable pinning checks. Armour can function well as trained and armour lists tend to be short on points so I prefer to run confident armour lists.

I have never run a Polish list though.

Buy some Cheap infantry (forged in battle British Infantry) then add in some artilery (as Brits have some serious advantages in both infantry and Artillery) hey presto good little Battle group.

How do the forged in battle British Infantry compare to Battlefront's British Infantry?

Reasonably, though the ethos of the mini's is different. By which I mean BF is more Heroic Scale 15mm, Fat hands, heads and limbs. The Forged in Battle stuff is actually often better but has a limited Range. The FiB tend to be slimmer and slightly shorter, but not a huge amount.

Skytrex and Peter Pig are also pretty good, but beware for those occasional *stinking* Models.

I mix my models up, and drop out any that look *wrong* so to speak. But 90% look great and add a greater amount and variety of poses, plus FiB is cheap for Weapons Support Platoons, like HMG's and Mortars etc which are great value for money. Skytrex stuff, is actually really nice. These are 50 man packs, so are fantastic value....

http://www.skytrex.com/216/15mm-british-figure-packs/

I'm not sure if the FiB are cheaper for me to buy I will look into it, thanks man

Been reading through the rulebook, hoping I work through enough Malifaux before I start assembly of my Brits (want to get one game finished off before I start on the next >_<

But here is what I'm looking at:

Headquarters:
Armored Squadron Command - 2 Sherman V

Combat Platoons:
3 Armoured Platoons - 2 Sherman V, 1 Firefly VC with .50 cal AA MG

Weapons Platoon:
Reece Patrol - 4 Stuart V

Brigade Support:
Rifle Platoon - 1 Cmd Rifle/MG team, 1 PIAT team, 1 Light Mortar team, 4 Rifle/MG team

Divisional Support:
Parachute Rifle Platoon - 1 Cmd Rifle/MG Team, 1 Bazooka team, 6 Rifle/MG teams, 1 M2 60mm mortar

Limited Air Support:
Typhoon

That should round me out nicely to 1500 points, and the only thing that I have to purchase is the Rifle Platoon,

Question: What's the difference between Priority and Limited Air Support?

 Alfndrate wrote:

Question: What's the difference between Priority and Limited Air Support?

The number of dice you get to see if air actually turns up; priority gets 7 dice while limited gets 5. Each time that you roll you reduce the pool by 1. Priority is very likely to have something turn up each turn until about turn 5 while limited will only last until turn 3, depending on the dice of course.

Okay cool, when I got aircraft demo'd we had 5 dice

Im kind of in the same situation. Picked up a open fire box ~2 weeks ago. Since i didnt want to play germans i gave them away and took the british.

After some test games and the certainty that this game is great i bought the following;

British Rifle Platoon from Forged in Battle -> Gives me more flexibility infantry wise. I can run the paratroopers + the rifle platoon or have a cheaper option for lower point games for a infantry slot
Sherman Box from Plastic Soldier -> Whats wrong with more shermans? -> Also really good models for their price. I was surprised by the quality of the kit
Stuart Tanks from Forged in battle -> A recce platoon to learn use those in game and they give me some variation from the shermans "main force"

Price for all this was around 50 Euro and with the open fire box stuff you get to up to 1600 pts for relatively cheap (I paid 20 euro for my part of the open fire box). Next i plan to buy a platoon of sextons. I dont really care if that is a competitive force or not. My goal at the moment is to use and therefore learn most of the specialised unit types in the game. After that im going to rebuild the force or add an additional with more tactical thought going into what i buy .

I bought the whole Open Fire! box during my flgs's black friday sale, so it was 20% off. I was thinking of building both armies, painting, etc... so I would have two forces to demo with. And then I realized I would only be playing the game at my flgs where others know the game better than I did lol. So I got some shermans in trade for my stugs.

I'll look into the Forged in Battle stuff, I wonder what shipping to the US is like in both time and money... I think I can pick up 5 Stuarts for 45 bucks after my store discount. Which is only 10 USD more for 1 more tank, and I can pick it up Friday instead of waiting for shipping lol

Though the Forged in Battle stuff does look good


Edit: So does my list look good? Should I remove the Rifle Platoon and add something else? I want a bigger Rifle Platoon, but that would put me at 1530

The problem with FiB is that all their vehicles have a moulded resin base which is extremely difficult to remove. They are good quality sculpts but I really don't like the bases.

Thats personal preference though.

As for your list I would only include the rifle platoon and use the points spent on the paras to bulk out your Sherman platoons (ideally 4 Shermans per platoon).

Palindrome wrote:
The problem with FiB is that all their vehicles have a moulded resin base which is extremely difficult to remove. They are good quality sculpts but I really don't like the bases.

Thats personal preference though.

As for your list I would only include the rifle platoon and use the points spent on the paras to bulk out your Sherman platoons (ideally 4 Shermans per platoon).

I'll look into it. I've got a month or two before I can see these guys assembled and on the table, but I'll test it! Thanks guys

Any books that might have something similar to what I own? Or should I just stick with the V3 forces since this is a play once in a long while game?

 Alfndrate wrote:
Any books that might have something similar to what I own? Or should I just stick with the V3 forces since this is a play once in a long while game?

I also just got Open Fire and was able to trade to double up on the Allies and I used this free site (http://fowlists.blogspot.com/) and Easy Army to figure what applied.

Hell's Highway is the main book for the Allied forces in Open Fire as the Guards Armoured and US Parachute lists both combine UK Shermans and US Paratroopers. However, there supposedly a Market Garden compilation book that is coming out in January that may revise Hell's Highway so it's probably best to wait for it to be released.

North Africa could also be good as the Armoured (Italy) and (Tunisia) lists are based on British shermans and it would allow you to play midwar.There's also Turning Tide has a late war Canadian Armoured list based on the Shermans.

There's also several PDFs of interest: 11th Armoured Division, Grenadier Guards, and Polish 1st Armoured Division - Pancerny, that center on the Shermans. You can find them on FOWlists and/or Easy Army but here are the links to the articles with the actual PDFs themselves.

http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=2596

http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=2101

http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=644