Saturday 13 October 2012

A Tale of Two Winter Gamers : The Battered Bastards of Bastogne

Hello All,

So as I spoke about last week, myself and Adam are doing a Tale of Gamers Challenge based around the Battle of the Bulge. It was decided that I would collect the US forces while Adam would paint up the Axis (see Adam's post on his plans here). So I see about reading through Blood, Guts and Glory, Devil's Charge and Nuts to see which US lists interested me. I have always liked US Armoured Rifles and Tank Destroyers but to me the Bugle is about the PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry) trying to hold the German advance while the Armoured forces raced to the front, so they are for now out (well until April/May time). So looking at the Infantry there really was only one option for me Easy Company! I know some people out there will roll their eyes at that but Band of Brothers is in my top 3 TV series of all time (The Wire and BSG being the other two) and US Airborne were my first FOW army way back during my first failed attempt to get into FOW; so I also feel I have unfinished business (plus I can add lots of Band of Brother quotes in the AARs!).

So army decided I moved onto the models. The Battlefront Winter Paras all have winter coats which is a little wrong to me as every account I have read about the 101st Airborne during the Bugle is how under equipped they were for a winter battle. Fortunately I have a load of US Paras from a failed Market Garden project I was going to coolect, so I plan on mixing the bases up a bit have a 50/50 mix of winter clothed and normal clothed infantry.

The list was a lot harder to work out! Every list I wrote seemed to be 35pts over or under with nothing easy to take out or add in to get to 1750pts. But after a complete re think I finally got a lost sorted. I'm happy as I have included all but 2 of the Easy Company Warriors, not only does this give the list a real Easy Company feel but it would also give me alot of points to mess around with if I decided to play a non Easy list when I want to mix things up.

The list:-

HQ
-Spiers (I'm not sure he's worth the points but it's Spiers, he's to cool not to take)
-Lipton - 100pts

Para Rifle Platoon
- Extra Bazooka
- Toccoa Sergeant
- 'Shifty' Powers - 315pts

Para Rilfe Platoon
- Extra Bazooka
- Toccoa Sergeant - 295pts

Para Engineer Platoon
- 3 Bazookas - 275pts

4 M18 Tank Destroyers - 410pts

6 105mm Glider Artillery - 210pts

4 Airborne Recon Jeeps - 110pts

AOP - 40pts

1750pts

So the first month is only 17 days away as I write this. I have bought most of the list already, I'm now mostly waiting on the Winter Paras to turn up but I really can't wait to start this project.

As always thanks for reading and Currahee!

2 comments:

  1. Looks a balanced list, the only thing missing perhaps is aircraft & AA, though I'd imagine in the winter skies not much would be flying?

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  2. I did have AA in ne list but getting to 8 platoons was a pain and lead to 3 or 4 very weak platoons. As for Winter and no air, when we play the campaign at the end their will be very limited air for the first few campaign turns. I'm not going to completely write it out but it will probably be something like 1/6 games will have air and then there will be a chance they can't be used every turn.

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