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Hey all,
I'm going be jumping into FOW (Late War) with a friend soon and since I drew the Axis straw I was planning on running a Gepanzerte SS-PanzerGrenadierKompanie (pg. 188) from Atlantik Wall. My questions mainly revolve around if this type of company gets access to the special rules on pg. 181 (Panzer Ace, Instant Readiness, & One-Way Trip To Heaven), and if so, what rule is better/more competitive to choose, Instant Readiness or One-Way Trip To Heaven?

Thanks for the read, take care.

Are you planning on playing 12th SS Hitller youth? Thats kewl, usually play them for d day , But the best SS list is in Grey wolf alot more optionsit is kinda like a SS kampfgruppe list.Wiking Division or Totenkopf are the list from the book..But all of the SS cost alot of points to field.

I'd suggest going with regular Panzergrenadiers rather than Gepanzerte (armored). They cost fewer points and are considered an infantry list as opposed to mechanized so they're more forgiving.

With infantry, you're defending against mech and tank companies so unless you're facing another infantry or a fortified company, you know you're going to be defending and can build your list towards that.
You also don't have the temptation to use Mounted Assault which allows you to fight an initial round of assault from your halftracks. While it seems great on paper, you still get pinned from 5 hits in defensive fire. If your opponent has any appreciable AT nearby or decides to stay in the fight, you stand a good chance of losing most of the unit.
Finally, while the extra machine guns on the halftracks are useful against infantry, they're useless against tanks and if you're defending, you'll probably have to deploy without them so now you're just infantry having paid extra points for an asset you won't get to use.

If you're really sold on having halftracks, consider going with an SS Panzerkompanie instead as you can take armored panzergrenadiers as one of your core platoons and you get the panzer ace skill on your company commander.

If you're still going to go with Panzergrenadiers (armored or not), 2nd SS gets Instant Readiness and 12th gets One Way Trip. Neither rule is particularly game breaking and unless you go out of your way to paint divisional insignia on your vehicles, you can play them as 2nd SS for one game and then 12th SS in another and 5th or 3rd SS in yet another game.

The difference between the two rules is mostly a matter of personal preference. Instant Readiness is useful when facing wave attacks and helps you hold ground that you've just taken in assault. Here's a typical situation where it would be used:

I've got a platoon of Panzergrenadiers dug in and gone to ground on an objective. Since they're veterans, my opponent needs 6s to hit them in shooting. They've got an infantry platoon and a tank platoon nearby and it is a timed game so they can't just sit back and shoot at the Panzergrenadiers all day. If the Panzergrenadiers are not pinned, they can potentially put out 21 dice in defensive fire. If the attacking infantry are veterans, they get hit on 5s so about 7 hits are expected which would pin the infantry and prevent the assault. If you can't pin the Panzergrenadiers, you'd typically assault with the tanks first. Since the Panzergrenadiers have at least 1 Panzerfaust, the tanks don't want to stick around too long in assault so they go in, kill at least one stand and either the Panzergrenadiers break or hopefully fail to do any damage back to the tanks. The tanks would then break off and the Panzergrenadiers would be pinned because they took casualties in an assault. The infantry can now assault (or if the Panzergrenadiers had broken, do a follow-up assault to move onto the objective). With Instant Readiness, the Panzergrenadiers have a chance to unpin and get full defensive fire against the follow-up assault.

One Way Trip gives you a slight morale boost to help you stay in the fight a little longer for those key moments. In the same scenario as above, the tanks assault and pin my Panzergrenadiers. I don't have Instant Readiness so the follow-up infantry assault manages to get through defensive fire without getting pinned. A few more Panzergrenadiers get killed and they fail their 3+ morale. Say I need to just hold on one more turn for reinforcements or time. At this point, I'd invoke One Way Trip which allows me to stay in assault and hit back. With luck, my opponent fails morale and breaks, if not, they have to decide if they want to risk another exchange in the hopes of wiping me out or chance that I'll fail another 3+ morale.

 col. krazy kenny wrote:
Are you planning on playing 12th SS Hitller youth? Thats kewl, usually play them for d day , But the best SS list is in Grey wolf alot more optionsit is kinda like a SS kampfgruppe list.Wiking Division or Totenkopf are the list from the book..But all of the SS cost alot of points to field.

i was actually thinking of playing either 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler or 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen, and ignoring the special rule differences between the two I lean towards the 9th due to where they've been.

I was actually also looking at the list in Grey Wolf also lol I just personally prefer some of the options in the Atlantik Wall list (though the lack of air support irks me on so many levels). Per example, if I did roll with the list in Grey Wolf I'd definitely be playing Wiking (there's a special place of hatred in my heart for Totenkopf and Hitler Juugend that I just can't get over unfortunately), and the issue comes that if I wanted tigers they'd have to be death's head, and there's not as many places for STUGS, lol.

Is the Grey wolf list honestly that much better?

Thanks for the reply btw



Automatically Appended Next Post:

cannonfodr wrote:
I'd suggest going with regular Panzergrenadiers rather than Gepanzerte (armored). They cost fewer points and are considered an infantry list as opposed to mechanized so they're more forgiving.

With infantry, you're defending against mech and tank companies so unless you're facing another infantry or a fortified company, you know you're going to be defending and can build your list towards that.
You also don't have the temptation to use Mounted Assault which allows you to fight an initial round of assault from your halftracks. While it seems great on paper, you still get pinned from 5 hits in defensive fire. If your opponent has any appreciable AT nearby or decides to stay in the fight, you stand a good chance of losing most of the unit.
Finally, while the extra machine guns on the halftracks are useful against infantry, they're useless against tanks and if you're defending, you'll probably have to deploy without them so now you're just infantry having paid extra points for an asset you won't get to use.

If you're really sold on having halftracks, consider going with an SS Panzerkompanie instead as you can take armored panzergrenadiers as one of your core platoons and you get the panzer ace skill on your company commander.

If you're still going to go with Panzergrenadiers (armored or not), 2nd SS gets Instant Readiness and 12th gets One Way Trip. Neither rule is particularly game breaking and unless you go out of your way to paint divisional insignia on your vehicles, you can play them as 2nd SS for one game and then 12th SS in another and 5th or 3rd SS in yet another game.

The difference between the two rules is mostly a matter of personal preference. Instant Readiness is useful when facing wave attacks and helps you hold ground that you've just taken in assault. Here's a typical situation where it would be used:

I've got a platoon of Panzergrenadiers dug in and gone to ground on an objective. Since they're veterans, my opponent needs 6s to hit them in shooting. They've got an infantry platoon and a tank platoon nearby and it is a timed game so they can't just sit back and shoot at the Panzergrenadiers all day. If the Panzergrenadiers are not pinned, they can potentially put out 21 dice in defensive fire. If the attacking infantry are veterans, they get hit on 5s so about 7 hits are expected which would pin the infantry and prevent the assault. If you can't pin the Panzergrenadiers, you'd typically assault with the tanks first. Since the Panzergrenadiers have at least 1 Panzerfaust, the tanks don't want to stick around too long in assault so they go in, kill at least one stand and either the Panzergrenadiers break or hopefully fail to do any damage back to the tanks. The tanks would then break off and the Panzergrenadiers would be pinned because they took casualties in an assault. The infantry can now assault (or if the Panzergrenadiers had broken, do a follow-up assault to move onto the objective). With Instant Readiness, the Panzergrenadiers have a chance to unpin and get full defensive fire against the follow-up assault.

One Way Trip gives you a slight morale boost to help you stay in the fight a little longer for those key moments. In the same scenario as above, the tanks assault and pin my Panzergrenadiers. I don't have Instant Readiness so the follow-up infantry assault manages to get through defensive fire without getting pinned. A few more Panzergrenadiers get killed and they fail their 3+ morale. Say I need to just hold on one more turn for reinforcements or time. At this point, I'd invoke One Way Trip which allows me to stay in assault and hit back. With luck, my opponent fails morale and breaks, if not, they have to decide if they want to risk another exchange in the hopes of wiping me out or chance that I'll fail another 3+ morale.

Thanks for the advice (and sorry for double post, lol you must've answered this when I was doing my reply), definetly some things to think about. Do you have a specific suggested list (book and page number?).

Thanks for the Reply

EDIT: Woops, found it lol, only a few pages down.

I'm prefer the Grey Wolf lists over Atlantik Wall as well though I try to pick a list appropriate to the front my opponent is from.

WIth Grey Wolf, you've got slightly different kit like the Sturmtiger, but more importantly, Wiking is Fearless Trained instead of Fearless Vet so they're a little cheaper, allowing you to get more things.

There's also the Panzer Kanonen which allows you to upgrade your Panzer platoon leaders with aces. Wiking also has rules that allow their artillery to hit like veterans

As For the GRey Wolf list i prefer VEterans as you need a 4 plus to hit them.Also on the grey wolf list i like the fact that you can add Ifantry suppport weapon teams to the PAnzer list as that is what i play for the SS.Mortars ,HMg and At guns .I just make them mech.