до свидания Don’t Get Any On Ya! Tank Formations Soviet Forces 1944
By Matt MacKenzie
A hot release of the red machine is upon us, Flames of War has a brand new Soviet forces book for 2020. Grab your vodka, there is a lot to cover, and be careful what you shoot at, most things in here don’t react too well to bullets.
These releases are putting the final touches on the revamp of V4 that Battlefront took on a few years back. With where things are in the world right now, you have ample time to get some models painted and have some socially distanced battles in the very near future.
While Desperate Measures was a decent book and had lots of lists to choose from for your Late War Soviets, Bagration sticks with giving you the basic lists and the addition of command cards once again offers you a few more choices.
Let’s talk about how this sets up, there are a lot of tanks you can squeeze into this list, but you may have to save some points for some of the other units that are available. The basic IS-2 list with a full-strength tank company is going to cost you, these 122mm guns with AT 14 and a firepower of 2+ are 37 points for five of them.
Though you will find these formations to be CONFIDENT VETERAN, you gain the benefit of a 3+ in COUNTERATTACK and also a 3+ for LAST STAND. After Kursk, the Russians began working on building something more in line with the German heavy tanks of the day, after some research and looking into the 122mm gun. I think it is more powerful in real life than the way it is represented here.
This is what I look forward too, as the lists progress in this book, you always have options to go big or go home. The IS-85 offers a little bit more in the way of ROF 2 and loses the ‘Slow Firing’ and ‘Brutal’ ratings of the IS-2. It’s more or less the same template as the IS-2 Regiment, only you will have to further save your points if you want to run anything else or add a command card or two.
Heck of a tank, and will serve you well against some of the Late War tanks found in some of the other books of the period. Not to be outdone by their Comrades, the VETERANS of this formation are once again CONFIDENT and also have the COUNTERATTACK and LAST STAND benefits of 3+ rating. You will find in either option you choose, you will have some mixed mobility and some decent gun stats to back up any games in which you decide to field these lists.
This is where the trackpads hit the pavement, I think these upcoming Heavy and Medium Self Propelled Artillery Regiments are going to be very interesting to play and even more interesting, perhaps even frustrating to play against.
Some awesome flexibility here is going to be given to you by the ability to not only fire directly at targets, but the additional stat lines of being able to bombard using indirect fire is awesome. Throw in the ability to add a few machine guns and you have something that most other nations can’t field. Decently armored vehicles, you get a FRONT/SIDE of 9/8 respectively with the ISU-122 and the ISU-152, they are pretty much the same in that respect.
With you keeping them at distance and using their firepower and 28″ range for direct fire using decent ANTI-TANK ratings and you do suffer a bit on ROF. Mobile artillery? Good AT? Yes, in both cases the two regiments have a decent number of units and of course, support elements are available. I’ve included the formation for the Medium SP Regiment below, you will definitely want to get your hands on this new book and check out the other options and formations for Soviet armor and these self-propelled formations will have you dancing the Prisyadka in front of comrade Lenin’s Tomb in no time!
It doesn’t get any easier to make decisions when it comes to the way this is laid out, being able to run both the SU-85 and the SU-100 is great. You do lose the ‘bombardment’ aspect of these tanks, so the name of the formation is a little misleading on the table.
What you do gain, is some FEARLESS motivated VETERAN tankers who will stop at nothing to defend the Motherland. The SU-85 and the SU-100 are tank killers and have good mobility, hard to hit and the 32″ range of the SU-100 allows you to throw around some AT 15 with a FP 2+.
While it is not the most exciting unit in ‘Bagration’, the SU-76 gives you the mobile artillery and AT 9 direct fire with FP 3+ 76mm gun. The super-low cost of these units and the minimum of two of them with the added T-70 HQ, get’s you a tabled formation of two units, with a maximum of four.
Clearly you have the ability to run a two formation list and be happy you don’t have to spend a lot to get a lot. You’ll obviously be sticking them somewhere on the battlefield where they won’t get too shot up and you lose them. This formation is a minimum of 2 units with 1 HQ, round them out with either SMG Company or Hero SMG Company.
In the case of the latter, 7x SMG Teams and 1x Komissar Team for 7 points with CONFIDENT VETERAN stat lines would be a decent option for most people looking to have a few more units in this formation for survivability or hang them out at an objective.
Spoiler! Here is the full card for the SU-85M, a few more points of armor will be a slight trade-off in the movement categories, losing 2″ in Terrain/Cross Country and a further 4″ of total movement lost for Road Dash. You won’t be the only one thinking the extra single point in comparison to the SU-85 won’t be worth it for the extra armor, still packing a decent ROF and AT ratings. If you are willing to spend the 28 points for five of the SU-85 variant, reaching for 29 points for extra 2 points of front armor might be worth it for you, that’s no Bolveshik!
As popular as borscht, the T-34 is the staple of any Russian WW2 diet when talking about Flames of War! The updates that 2013 brought when Desperate Measures was released, validated Soviet armored lists, and the lists in that book containing the T-34 were no exception. Below we look and see what this new book brings us in the way of choices and whether or not the new variations on those that was released seven years ago.
Here we have the Valentine, you can take this tank unit sparingly, you do not get the options to run these like you used to be able to. I think this is one of the most underrated tanks in this book. Sure they don’t have very good stats, armor, and the gun (2 pdr AT 7 or 6 pdr AT 10 for +1 point for all units), but the ability to get 7 of these for 11 points might be just enough to give them a shot and have them push some enemy units around the table.
This is certainly a lot better than debating a Command Card that gives you amphibious jeeps that are more or less useless except for one mission printed in this book. If you’re running a tank formation, they are squeezed into the T-34 Tank Battalion, you will also find them in the Hero Battalion but not the T-34 85mm Battalion.
This is it, we’ve come to the end of the tank lists, there are a few more that were not previewed in this article, but I am hoping I have shown off enough to get you excited about the Russians. The Hero T-34 Tank Battalion, in my opinion, is the cream of the lists contained in ‘Bagration’. You have a lot of choices in Support Units for your formation, the ability to mix and match both the 76mm and 85mm guns is a huge bonus.
The 76mm gun offers you AT 9 versus the AT 12 of the 85mm, both have FP 3+. Slide in the ZSU Anti-Aircraft Platoon and some Anti-Tank guns of which you get a choice of three!! I think this gives you a balanced force and allows you to make some serious moves on the table. The lack of artillery support in this particular formation only means one thing, speed. You need to be on top of objectives quickly, take lots of chances, and keep your opponent on his/her back foot. Soviet forces are victorious for a reason, aggressiveness. If you are a sit back and wait for kind of person, maybe Russian tank lists just aren’t your game. Hungarians for example may be more your speed.
Get out and get your copy. This could pull a lot of new players in, and change the mind of some veteran players alike, I don’t feel like the lists in this book are cookie-cutter type lists. I think there is something for everyone, whether it be the Self Propelled options or the T-34 hordes you will be able to deploy on the battlefield. 30 points for TEN 76mm T-34’s by the way!
But wait comrades, there’s more!! Call 1-800-STALIN [editor: not a valid number – don’t call] for your discount on the jumbo box of T-34 goodies! The team at Battlefront has made it so easy to get into this game if you are a new player and the bigger box sets of tanks is just the ticket for the new or existing Communists to the Flames of War scene.
Putting these tanks together has never been easier, a few coats of green paint, add a few decals and you have a table ready formation ready for the fall season of 2020 and will still be relevant well into 2021. In this case, it’s better Red than dead. I hope you enjoyed the look into some of the tank formations and hopefully, you have an opinion on the book and some of the things I laid out for you.
I know you missed seeing some content from the mind of Matty, I appreciate your feedback. Please leave a comment or visit our forums here: