How I choose my list for a tournament, day by day.
By Benny Christiansen
At any time, when I participate in a tournament, I have to choose what to field. Most gamers I know change their list from tournament to tournament. In parts because of points, restrictions or new lists being available, but for me, it’s also to continue trying out new things with old lists and seeing how they work.
In this article, I will try to give you a day-by-day look at how I plan my lists for a tournament that I participate in.
As I write this, I’m two months away from my next tournament. This is a great time to begin thinking about the list I want to bring to the event.
The Tournament: Unternehmen Citadel
The lists for the tournament had to be from Ghost Panzer, Iron Cross, Afrika Korps, Red Banner, or Enemy at The Gates. You sign up as either “Red” or “Axis”. I chose “Red” as I do not like playing Germans. There will be three games, but I would only participate in two of the games. The only overall restriction was no use of Tiger Company Command Card and Ferdinand Company Command Card.
The first game is 100 points list. All allowed. “Secret Event” was written on the line of this game. Not sure what that would be, but I decided not to take it into consideration for my list.
The second game is 150 points list. Tanks only. In the notes, it says “+Firestorm units“. Again, I decided not to take the Firestorm units into consideration, as I would not know if it was Infantry, Artillery or more tanks (I suspected it to be more tanks, since it was all about the battle of Kursk, which, to the best of my knowledge, was primarily tanks.
The third game, that I would not be playing, would be 80 pts list. All allowed. “Fog Of War“.
Special Rules
No pre-measurement allowed. Declare your intentions, and then measure.
Air Support increase. If you roll for your Air Support in turn 1 and gain none, you can add another dice to roll for Air Support in turn two etc. until you get Air Support. Then you start out with 1 dice again.
03-04-19 Signing up
I have been chatting with my friends about participating in this event. Its a 2-hour drive and I do not look forward to driving that long alone. So after a friend agreed to participate, I decided to sign up. I looked forward to making and fielding the lists. I liked the chance to build two different kinds of lists, as I often find it boring to go to a 5-game tournament and having to play the same list in all the games.
My first thoughts were that I would use the Hero Motor Rifle list (my “Gun Line” list) in the first game.
I feel pretty confident that the list would bring me a win. Building a list for the second game was more of a challenge.
In general, I find that Russian tank lists have a huge disadvantage against the Ferdinand/Marder or Tiger/Marder lists. Against those, I cannot attack as quickly and efficiently as is needed in order to win. With 150 points, I felt pretty confident that I would have a fair chance of encountering a list with up to 3-5 Ferdinands. I felt a big challenge making a list that could take on several Ferdinands. But I decided to try and build a few lists and see what I could come up with.
Both lists were made from what I have available and ready to play, and did not need to paint. I really wanted to bring Air Support, but I did not have any of my Shturmoviks (I have lost two somehow), but I was hoping to borrow one.
The tanks list consist mainly of Churchills. I really like this tank. It’s ugly and looks mean on the table. I feel that it does the job well. Good armor and a decent gun. SU-85s are expensive, and so I normally do not field them. This would be a good opportunity to try them out and see how they work. The SU-76 is an auto choice at that price, even if the artillery part is not going to be used. I brought the AA since I feel confident Air Support would make many players use it.
05-04-19 Thinking about AA and Air Support
I’m feeling insecure if the AA is needed in my infantry list. It could be the smart move, as again, there is a lot of focus on allowing the Air Support to matter in this event, so I’m estimating, that there will be a lot of planes buzzing around.
09-04-19 Test game
My friend and I are going to the event as Russians. We decided to test two lists, to see what we could learn. Due to time restrictions on the day, we settled for 100 pts tanks.
We had a game, using one of the new test missions, Bypassed, with me as the defender. I put my HQ and a large unit of Churchills in reserve and the SU’s in ambush. He rushed towards me, and I had to pop my ambush in turn 1.
He had T-70’es that I grossly underestimated, while also using my Stuarts wrong. I put them on a Hill, shooting at T-70’es. That ended up badly for the Stuarts. We had a fun, fast and good match. In the end, I won, barely, by breaking his formation. The weakness of the T-34s is being hit on 2+, while my Churchills had a few turns enduring the shots from his SU-85s.
I found out that the Stuarts had to be used differently. In addition, the quantity of T-70’s makes their ROF-1 less of a hindrance. They are good Stuart hunters, and probably also good for hunting/flanking Marders and other low armor units.
17-04-19 Stuarts. Damn those Stuarts.
After a lot of thinking, I decided to keep the Stuarts in my list. I was not sure if I could play them, the way they had to be played, and I also found myself pondering the T-70’es. His use of the SU-85s also left me wondering if 3 was too many, as it seems that 2 of them are quite capable of scaring of heavy tanks.
They are also very fast, having a cross-country dash of 24″/60 cm. So they could potentially dash to the side of a Ferdinand platoon and shoot. I also found that having five SU-76s are great. Four also work well.
Having done a bit of math, I could now add three KV-1 tanks as a support force. While this is tempting, I’m getting the feeling that a bit of luck on my opponents’ side, would leave me with no formation.
I have to make a choice. Either I will field heavy tanks with some light support, or I will try a spam-list, using the number of tanks to swarm the enemy.
22-04-19 Valentines and Heroes
While preparing for the minor event, I started talking with my friend. We decided to look more into the Hero choices. They cost more, but the improvement from being hit on 2+ till 3+ is a considerable difference, and something we wanted to explore.
In my list, however, I added the two new Churchills I had re-discovered in my “bag of many tanks”. That meant I were going to field nine Churchills. I felt like that was a considerable tank force.
I had also found another three SU-100 (I think they are), that I’d use as SU-85s. This way my friend and I could both field this. I wanted to try out three of them, to see if they are worth the points. I kept the Stuarts, and used the maximum allowed. I also kept the SU-76s.
My friend had acquired ten Valentines. We considered adding these into the lists, somehow, but I wanted to hold off on further changes until I had tested the above list.
27-04-19 MW Madness day
On the day we had a lot of fun. We played several games, and as usual, none of what happened was totally planned. We ended up having 2 games with 2vs2 and a few games of 1vs1.
I learned that the Churchills are magnificent beasts, even in MW. It became clear to me, that maybe the SU-76s are not the best support, as the Churchills can manage tanks themselves.
The SUs can be used vs infantry or gun teams, but the American Shermans found it easy to take out the SUs due to their Stabilizer rule. They moved as much as they could and then would typically be able to see one of the SUs without cover and blast away. Churchills also found it a challenge to deal with them. That was primarily due to my lack of experience vs the Shermans.
The Gun Line list performed as expected. I was up against a lot of German infantry and artillery, and I stood my ground. There is no doubt in my mind that the Gun Line list can take a lot of beating and still do the job.
I need to change one thing, however. The morale of the infantry is not good enough. Unpinning has to be a priority, as they stop the advance. So I have had to make a few changes to find the points for the Guards Motor Rifle command cards.
A few more pictures from that day:
22-05-19 revisiting the thoughts and lists for the tournament.
With little more than a week to the tournament, I’ve decided to spend a few moments to think about the lists. I have been busy with life in general, as well as the Fortress Europe book review, so I’ve not had a lot of time to play or to think. I’ve had one game from the Fortress Europe book and one tank vs tank game, but nothing else has been possible.
I have since learned that the “Tanks only” lists were meant to mean that the formations are required to be tanks, but support can be anything. I have decided not to change anything about tanks/no tanks my lists. Tank battles are fun and fast, and I like that.
I acquire some Valentines, so I have decided to put them in. My experiences with them in MW are good. They perform well and when you put the 6pdr version on the table, hidden among 2pdr versions, I find them to be quite versatile. The Hero Valentines are good assault tanks, while the normal Valentine Company is more of a gun-line. So my 150 pts
My Tank force is now
Now all I had to do, is to paint the Valentines and BA-10s and find the AA trucks in my stuff, and I’m good to go.
How do you prepare for a tournament and do you ALWAYS end up having to paint a few models, even if you have already spent huge amounts of money on models that are just standing somewhere waiting for you to use them?