what is your preferred 1,000 pt army?

[dugfromthearth]

Assume you can choose either side, any time CMBO allows and any allowable combination of units.

The restiction is you have 1,000 pts to spend and you know nothing about your mission, the terrain, etc. (Or supposed you have to use the same army list for a dozen random battles)

My current army I am refining is:

2 challengers

2 wasps

2 armored cars

3 u.s. airborne platoons

no artillery which is kind of a problem, so I am thinking about replacing the challengers with lighter armor that still has a 76mm gun. I will probably also pull the armored cars.

all of there are currently regulars. I'm not sure if I want to make any veteran or not.

[Beta1]

Would probably go with UK airbourne to avoid being called gamey

But if you know your facing 1000 points. Lose one challenger and replace with a 90mm armed cromwell (or churchill if affordable). Probably lose the other and take a firefly (if affordable), if not a wolverine or similar.

Lose one wasp and one AC, buy something along the lines of a 4.2" mortar FO.

stay with 3 platoons of airbourne.

Again if there any money left a 75mm pack howitzer or a 6pdr AT gun

I dont think you meed to 76mm tanks in a 1000 point battle. The maps are usually small which gives you a good chance of getting PIATs/zooks into action. The brit daimler AC is a good light armor killer. The 90mm tank gives you the firepower to blow any infantry that get dug in away whereas the 76mm doesnt have as good blast as the 75mm

The 6pdr AT gun is a good buy at any time as it often gets T rounds for KOing heavies and its AP can deal with light armor.

The 4.2" is a good arty unit (you could take the 4.5" if you prefer)

I think your original selection is too tank killing orientated. In a 1000 point battle your unlikely to face a Tiger or a panther and if you do he's only got one armor unit and not as much infantry. I would go for 1 tank capable of killing a heavy then a second all purpose tank.

You could even take 3 vanilla shermans/cromwells and use your numbers to overwhelm his armor.

[dugfromthearth]

in random battles against the germans with the AI choosing their forces I run into tigers with alarming frequency.

and I would rather have more wasps then fewer.

[easytarget]

Originally posted by dugfromthearth:

in random battles against the germans with the AI choosing their forces I run into tigers with alarming frequency.

you can be virtually guaranteed of not running into this against humans in a 1000pt engagement

[Beta1]

Even if you run into a tiger the firefly + cromwell/churchill 8 should be able to deal with it. the firefly can KO from any range/aspect your likley to need and the 90mm C rounds can kill a tiger too although they are less accurate.

Infact I think a 6pdr T round can KO a tiger as well.

If your that desperate to have flame throwers have you considered a churchill crocodile. Expensive but with a 75mm gun and a flame thrower very versatile and much much much harder to kill than a wasp. I think even an 88mm has trouble agasint the 150+mm frontal armor.

[dugfromthearth]

wasps are just godlike against the computer.

after their armor is taken out, or on a flank bare of armor, I can just rush my wasps up to their infantry clinging to cover and devastate it. The wasps eventually get buttoned but rarely get taken out. The key is to move in fast and hug cover. That limits what can shoot at the wasp. The infantry right there gets broken almost instantly by the flamethrower.

crocodile tanks are not a good buy imo. I want armor to take out their armor and flamethrowers to rush their infantry. A crocodile can do both but not at the same time. And the crocodile is at greater risk then the wasp because I would need it for the initial armor engagement.

[Beta1]

I think we're seeing playing v AI and playing against human opposition differences.

Playing against human opposition its not a good idea to assume you will win the armor battle. Infact many player wont let you even see their armor until a long way in. Having 10% or so of your points tied up in units you only intend to use after youve basically won the game is not the best use of points.

One of the advantahes of the croc though is that is pretty much a mobile pillbox. You just keep it facing forward and pretty much everything your likley to meet in a 1000 point game just bounces off it. You can forget killing it with p4s and I played one game recently where my Tiger was blasting a churchill from less than 100m and couldnt kill it. I know people who use the non flame churchill 8 that has the same armor as a way of springing AT gun ambushes as theres a good bet they will survive.

Also agaisnt humans you cant assume their infantry AT weapons will be as out of position as the AIs. A panzershreck or even a unit with some fasut-100s will really ruin your day as a wasp driver. Even a MG firing from higher elevation will easily kill the crew of a wasp (have you seen one - they really dont have much in the way of crew protection). And thats without the threat of a hidden 20/36mm flak gun or a flak armed AC/HT both of which will shred a wasp.

One of the best tank in the game though is the plain M4 sherman. Dirt cheap but with enough HE and MG ammo to fire pretty much nonstop for the entire day. I think in AK where those MGs are much more deadly than in BO we're going to see the reall effect of these 3xMG tanks.

[dugfromthearth]

Right, the main thing the AI does wrong is expose its armor too soon for me to kill.

But it doesn't have its AT weapons out of place. They are just irrelevant for the most part. I've had wasps charge and destroy panzershrek teams.

The thing is that the normal ideal infantry terrain is the worst terrain for infantry vs wasps.

I do hope that humans make tougher opponents. With my 1,000 point army it has become trivial to defeat the AI in meeting engagements. I routinely achieve a total victory with the loss of 1 vehicle and 50 or so casualties.

I certainly do recognize that the armor fight is the crucial factor in my plans. And this all may change with CMAK (which I have pre-ordered).

[easytarget]

give the AI an extra 250-500 pts and put it on defense - the AI is notoriously bad at ME's and attack

or play humans

[dugfromthearth]

I have tried two attack vs the AI. AI had 700 I had 1050 (but only spent 999).

First one I scouted cleverly with some half squads. Lured their wespe forward. Popped out with my Jacksons (I use those now in place of Challengers) and destroyed it. Then they popped up 3 AT guns in the back and destroyed my Jacksons. My wasps tried to rush the AT guns just to see it could be done. I couldn't. I was left with my infantry clinging to cover being chewed up by their guns and gave up.

I did a second one and held my armor back until I had spotted their AT guns and taken one out with mortar fire (then I ran out of mortar ammo). I ran my Jacksons to where the other AT gun could not fire at them. I was bad about the terrain and ran through a half-tracks LOS and lost a Jackson. My second one took out a jagpanzer but then was taken out by an armord car with a 75mm gun.

I was able to push forward with infantry on the flank. A half squad got behind a machine gun pillbox and took it out. I raced 2 wasps down to help clear out the infantry - one was taken out by the armored car on the way. The surviving wasp cleared out their infantry quickly. I sent my bazookas around my rear to try and get to the armored car. The armored car trundled over and took them out at range, which gave me a chance to race my 3rd wasp down to help clear out their infantry. All they had left was the armored car and a little infantry on one side of the map, but that held 2 flags. I raced a wasp to try and take out the armored car, and ran a squad behind some buildings to close with it as well. My other wasp cleared out some buildings of infantry and then raced into some woods to avoid the armored car, only to be killed by infantry hiding in the woods. The other wasp saw the armored car and backed quickly out of sight, never firing. But my squad entered a building right beside it and took out the armored car. My remaining wasp cleared out their remaining few infantry squads. I won a minor tactical victory but lost 2 Jacksons, 2 wasps, my mortars, bazookas, etc (62 total casualties).

So this would seem to be viable on the attack against the AI, but I have to learn how to handle mortars better and check the terrain better for LOS.

I'm not ready for humans yet. My main problem is being bad at reading the map. I suspect I would be ripped apart by key hole attacks as I stumbled around.

[easytarget]

sounds to me like you're getting the hang of things quite nicely

and that as suspected the AI does a better job on defense and gave you a togher go of it

as for reading LOS on the map, it does take some getting used to - for me the hardest thing to figure out is not where I can get the LOS I want when viewed from units in their current positions, it's figuring out the LOS I want or want to avoid from a new position I don't yet occupy - w/o a LOS tool that allows you to view it from anywhere, you're stuck estimating it till you've actually got a unit in place to view it - the best estimates come from viewing everything from level 1 - more time consuming, but also more realistic and as accurate as you're likely to get

i guess the reason this doesn't bother me that much is because in a RL battle you'd have to estimate on the fly most of the time as well - even with terrain maps

[dugfromthearth]

oh I agree it is realistic not to know los ahead of time. It's just that I expect my opponents to be able to do so.

[easytarget]

well, yeah, i guess they will

but not more so than you can

[JasonC]

Too much armor and light armor at that, not enough infantry.

2 VG companies

4 panzerschrecks

1 Jagdpanzer-70

1 StuH-42

Then the gamey effective way is

2 puppchen

1 75mm infantry gun

But if you are worried about immobile guns, or about realism, instead take

3 HMG

You get 2 rifle infantry platoons, 6 squads. Use one of the company HQs to command a pair of those, making 3 mini-platoons. Give each an HMG or gun and use them from longer range, or to screen half of the front, or both.

Then put the other (better) company HQ with all 4 SMG platoons and overload one sector of the map. Bring all the schrecks with this group, too. If the time is 2-45 or later you have faust-100s, even better. You should have half a dozen 2-faust squads for short range AT plus the schrecks for stuff out to 120m or so. And over 100 automatic weapons.

Don't show the armor early or rely on it. With the force including guns, they can smoke early armor for you. Otherwise close with the infantry to draw out his armor and to restrict its safe locations. Then hunt with the Jagd, using hull down positions and front facing only, pointing straight at what you intend to kill. Relocate after each kill.

The StuH is to hurt his infantry if his armor backs off or if you kill all of it. Its HE will kill anything but a Churchill if it has a side shot. HEAT is limited but effective. Your own armor is only good against armor cars and such. Basically it is an HE chucker. You can take a Hummel instead if you are feeling lucky. 150mm HE is much nastier than 105, but Hummels are thin enough to die to 50 cals which makes them hard to use.

One Allied infantry company, even of airborne, will not find it easy to take on 2 of VG with all their SMGs. And in such numbers, German infantry AT is a serious threat to all vehicles in any kind of tight terrain. The Jagd-70 will kill anything at typical QB ranges, and hull down it takes the best AT shooters to kill it from the front in reply (17 pdr or 90mm).

If you find SMG heavy infantry hard to use, try -

4 SS Motorized Pz Gdr platoons

2 Panthers

1 StuH-42 or Hummel

Panthers are better than even against even the best Allied tanks and TDs. (17 pdr or 90mm kill through the turret front or is exposed the lower hull. The glacis will usually bounce things. The 75L70 will kill anything with its reply).

Use the Pz Gdrs in pairs of platoons - more than enough to outshoot any single platoon encountered, and enough for brief periods to hold off a whole company. Back each up with a Panther. Keep the HE chucker back until late, after enemy armor is mostly dead or restricted. Your own infantry will often be low on ammo by then and will need the help.

Compared to the VG, you are relying far more on good tank driving. The VG way is more effective against strong play, because the infantry AT and small guns are so hard to take out. But if you drive 2 Panthers well, you can often run the table of all enemy armor with one Panther left - plus your late game HE chucker. And it is hard to lose with more infantry, better infantry, and 2 remaining AFVs vs. none.

If you are going to go with Allies and only 3 platoons of infantry, you will need some serious off-map HE to cut down German infantry numbers. The on map TD strength also needs to be high. E.g. with Americans -

2 Jackson 90mm TDs

2 M8 75mm HMCs

3 Platoons

3 Veteran Bazookas

1 155mm FO

Then the zooks and TDs restrict enemy armor movements, the TDs from defilade whenever possible. The 155s must shred the main body of the German infantry whenever it is located and fixed. Infantry just holds them off until it arrives, and mops up afterward. The HMCs can KO buildings (a lot more ammo depth than the Jacksons), make flank runs at AFVs (their HEAT will KO anything from the side), act as bait, etc.