Well done Martin for keeping the site ticking over. I’m so ashamed.
I have not been idle though and have now finished painting (though not basing) my third FJ platoon. Thats 39 FJ dudes all painted and ready to be glued to bases. However I’m now wondering whether I should ….
a) Paint up three Flame Throwers and sub them onto three of the stands and call it a pioneer platoon. Is it worthwhile? Are Flamethrowers all that useful? I can’t even remember the rules for them and I’ve never used them before.
b) With your (Martin) explanation as to why FJ have been robbed of their STG44 stands perhaps I should be painting these up and mixing them into the platoon as well. So instead of having a 9 stands of Rifle/MG’s and 6 stands of STG44’s I could have 14 stands of Rifle/MG/STG44 (albeit counting as Rifle/MG teams) which with the three guys I’d reclaim from sub’ing in the Flamethrowers would give me 2/3 strength 4th platoon with command.
Thoughts?
Flamethrowers… Yes!
Reasons:
Against tanks they are very usefull. They bail tanks almost automatically.
With FV troops you caneasily move, flame adn thene the remainder of teams can assault with thier vetran skill tests.
You could use magnets to change the Flamers .. or just leave them on as it doesn’t really matter except when you pay points for them or you probably get them free.
What matters is once they have had thier two shots the entire base is removed from the table as they bugger off for chargrilled vienna sausage..
If I was you I would place your teams of STG 44 in units of four. And for every four bases of STG 44 you should have two bases of MG42 and those other special guns the airbourne had. 48’s?
This is similar to the Wermacht STG 44 platoons.
I have noticed that teh FJ teams with STG44 are mixed into the rifle PLT’s on the articles and the store photos. But that makes no sense.
I would keep them separate.. you can always call them rifle / MG teams until a new book comes out with scout platoon format.
Look for schnellplatoon in Ostfront.
Seems to me that your Stg44’s are supposed to be interspersed with Rifles to achieve a rifle/mg status.
check here http://www.flamesofwar.com/Portals/0/all_images/Productspotlight/German/GE762-19.jpg
pp 27 Diving Eagles has specialrules for STG44 and FG42.
2 x squads per platoon (max of 2plt) equip asault rifles at assault rifle stats.
FG42’s rof 3 stationary to 8″ and rof 2 on move, otherwise asa rifle MG team.
But this might be an old book… ???
yeah the Diving Eagles is old, of the same vintage pretty much as my original purchase of the STG44’s.
I figure it’s not really valid anymore.
I started painting my HMG platoon and three flame throwers. I’ve left the combat platoon unbased for the moment as I still haven’t really made a decision.
I might just do what diving eagles suggest though, as 24 Assualt rifles don’t really disperse nicely through a single platoon, I really needed to think about this earlier. Two platoons or even three would have been a better spread.
Further to the above I noticed with some other books that Assault rifle squads and teams are entirley equiped with said weapon.
If you were to gain any bonus for being STG II equiped then you should base all your atg 44’s to thier own stands. Assuming there is enough poses.
Well to be fair there are neither enough poses or posers. 18 figures and 4 poses. So I couldn’t create a full combat platoon with all stg44s. The old FJ book says you equip 2 of your 3 squad with the weapon the remaining squad armed normally. The fact that there are 9 figures per squad and 18 stg44s tends to bear this out. Of course that said the rules seem to have moved on. I figure I’ll just paint them up and treat them like regular dudes.
BTW I haven’t painted for like uhm forever… work has been quite busy and as a result I’m too tired and unmotivated to actually do anything after work.
However last night I picked up a model and a brush and started again will try to repeat the effort tonight.