Flames of War as finally moved to the eastern front with the latest Bagration release! We now have the Soviet forces for late war. The release includes the normal Army Book, Command Cards and Unit Cards. I am not a big buyer of the army books in version four, but am a huge fan of the cards. As such, I have purchased them all and will most likely continue to do so.
Let’s start with the unit cards for now (I will do the command cards soon in the next post). The cards come as usual in a small very tight fitting cardboard box. The set contains the overall force structure fold out card and unit cards for each type of company (or Battalions in the case of the Soviets). This set contains the vast number of formations available to the Soviets (I would say more so than the other nationalities). With the set, you can play most anything you would want and even some forces you never thought about!
Starting with the tank forces, players can select &-70s, T-34 (76s&85s), The T-34s can be mixed or solo. Valentines, JS-!s (Js-85s) and JS-IIs. The mediums come in both Hero and normal formations, with the Heroes giving smaller formations, but with slightly better stats. This gives you your desired form of play. What you do not get are Churchills, M3 or M4 Shermans (I am a little saddened by the lack of these), but I suspect they will use those in the later war period sometime in the future. We shall see. The heavies give a nice option to go heavy penetration vs higher ROF). You do pay a little of a price penalty for the higher rat4e of fire, so an interesting choice). The Soviet tank lists still have the +1 to hit rule on all the tanks. So they are still heavily discounted, meaning you an still field them in bundles.
Next we have a number of infantry lists. There are rifles, SMGs, scouts, engineers, storm groups and assault engineers. Many have both the Hero and regular options, with the same small better vs larger better options of each. A lot of the standard units are hit on a 4+ instead of the 3+ to reflect quality. Most units have the commissar option to help with morale checks. Most of the ratings are aggressive, with a couple of carefuls mixed in. Each force has options for various attachments (flamethrowers, ATGs, MMGs, etc), to make well balance infantry forces. The number of stands for the points can be staggering and with the overall improvement in stats from mid war make for some terrifying forces! None more than the assault engineers (with allow variable force design). These guys eve get a smoke bombardment (30 stands charging in the smoke is terrifying). I suspect these will be the force of choice for tournament play. For the casual or narrative payer, you should be able to field most of what your need.
Supporting your forces with SPGs is covered was well. We have SU76s, SU85s, SU85Ms, SUU100s, ISU122s and ISU152s. I am a little surprised that the 100s are included, as they are a bit later. Further, that they left out the SU122s and SU152, which were active. You can field all as battalions and do a little mix and match. More options are always a plus! They did away with the special rules on these, so no more sniping 100s, in spite of historically poor optics! No SU76i variant either, but you can just proxy that for the regular version. Once again, a little fore everyone.
The artillery support comes with all the regular options. The ATGs have 45mm, 57mm, 76mm and 100mm. The artillery have 76mm, 122mm, 152mm and Katyushas. No long guns, but this covers the necessary range. Each are batteries, with the old battalions now gone (as they did in the mid war release). Normal stats as before and no smoke.
The list has the M17 SPAA, but no AA trucks (what??). No towed guns either… There are two aircraft options. The normal Sturmovick support and a new version with 37mm ATGs. The latter is more expensive, so probably will never be taken (Its all about the rockets baby!). Both flavors give you two planes. Thank god there is not a three plane option! So, even if you go with lighter tanks, you can always rely on these babies to take out the big cats.
Overall, the units give you most of what you would want to create desired forces. They basically take the mid war forces and pip them up a bit in to hit and morale stats. A player should have no problem creating a deadly force. I personally think the Soviets are a bit broken (I have thought that for quite some time). Having large formations with the FOW and pinning and morale rules is problematic at best. This is made worse by the better stats in these lists. You can work around it if the Soviets are the attackers, but when they defend, they end up being the same as the attackers for a fraction of the cost, sometimes being immovable. I wish they would have gone with the Hero organizations throughout to help with that. With that said, Soviet players should be very happy playing these units!
- Manteuffel