Charge of the light attack company – IDF WW3 TY Force Building

By John Meier

For many days scrolling through the official WW3 Team Yankee Facebook page, I’ve seen many people ask how to play Israel from the oil War book. Many problems that Israel has are low anti-tank and no spearhead unit unless you take a tank formation. Another problem I’ve seen from lists posted or from watching battle reports is that Israeli players don’t take the Pereh ATGM or if they do take it they don’t target anything but tanks.

So the best way I’ve found to play Oil War Israeli is the infantry company. Players get four Galil Assault Rifle teams, three FN Mag team “machine gun” all of these come with LAW AT, one mortar team, 3 RPG teams, one Dragon team, and finally 5 m113 transport with three 50cal shots and two 30cal shots most machine guns on a transport you can find. Their soft stats are fearless vets. Players rally on 3s, last stand on 3s, and counterattack on 3s. Assaulting into a platoon is not advised, for 11 points players get a great objective holder and you have enough stands so take an objective if you need to.

I’d also recommend bringing a platoon of Merkava 2s and the super cheap m113 mortar platoon for only 2 points.

Formation so far:

HQ 1 point

Infantry Platoon 11 points

Merkava 2s 21 points

Mortars 2 points

For a total of 46 points

46 points out of a standard of 105 tournament list. What’s needed with the 59 points left. Next, the best weapon in your support and the best unit in the game(in my opinion), the Pereh ATGM.

The mistake I see players often make is that they see the AT of 21 only good for killing heavy tanks. Your biggest threat is not coming from tanks to dug-in Infantry on objectives, it’s artillery.

Repeat bombardments get double saves rolls and kill Infantry faster than anything especially against Russian players with the TOS. The Perehs don’t need to see the target to shoot it with NLOS, most artillery only comes in platoons of three so one effective kill will make most artillery worthless with rerolling successful hits. After targeting the artillery, I recommend shooting AA assets. Most NATO players only bring one which would allow you Skyhawks to rule the sky. Besides the Perehs, I would recommend getting the AA option VADs for a total of 7 points and finally 4 Skyhawks for 6 points.

Formation so far:

Formation

HQ 1 points

Infantry x2 22 points

3 Merk 2s 21 points

3 Mortars 2 points

Support:

3 Perehs 7 points

4 Vads 7 points

4 Skyhawks 6 points

Total 66 points

So with 66 out of 105, we still need to find a way to fill out the last 2 weaknesses that the Israeli have but don’t have a lot of points to work with we need high AT to deal with T72s, T64s, Abrams, etc. We also need a recon with Spearhead, but how is this achieved with 39 points?

An Allied Formation that’s cheap, high AT, comes with a recon element, and gives access to one of the best ambush units in the game. The best Allied Formation that you could ever want to run in a game the Light Attack Company from the new American book. Why? It’s a formation that comes with a lot of units that are cheap for a very unusual skill of a 3 for American.

HMMWV Tow 2s that come in the formation are blitzing on a 3 up and it costs the same as the 4 skill HMMWV, more economical from a points perspective. Also in the formation, players can take the best ambush unit. RDF guns, or GI Joe guns as older players like to call, are light tanks with Hammerhead are only 9 points, an absolute steal. Finally, Spearhead take the scout platoon it’s 5 points and you only get one Tow 2 and normally wouldn’t be worth it, but it’s a must take for Israeli because of the lack of spearhead units they can take.

Formation so far :

Main formation

HQ 1 point

2 Infantry Platoons 22 points

3 Merk 2s 21 points

3 Mortars 2 points

Support

3 Perehs 7 points

4 Vads 7 points

4 Skyhawks 6 points

Allied Formation

HQ 2 HMMWV with Miniguns 1 point

1 Light Attack Platoon 2 points

(1 50cal HMMWV, 2 Miniguns HMMWV, 1 Mark 19 HMMWV)

1 Light Attack Platoon 2 points

1 Fire Support Platoon 5 points

(4 tow2 HMMWV)

1 Fire Support Platoon 5 points

4 RDF Guns 9 points

Scout Platoon 5 points

(2 Minigun HMMWV, 1 Mark 19 HMMWV, 1 Tow2 HMMWV)

Total 94 points

For 28 points, we added nine Tow2 shots with AT 23, excellent quality for the price. RDF guns with hammerhead ability are hard to kill and make the enemy have to waste lots of shots just to kill a 4 front armored light tank and a Spearhead unit that can harass infantry or tanks with. For the last 11 points, I recommend taking either a Black-Box unit of 3 Magach 6s for 11 points; or staying in the light attack company and taking the big infantry platoon of 10 HMMWV Transports with 6 rifle machine gun teams, 1 heavy machine gun team, and 3 dragoon teams for 10 points. Both platoons have their merits and I would base it off your local meta.

The last thing to go over is how it all plays together, the biggest questions I see asked of me are what goes into reserve and what stance do I pick? My recommendation is to pick defense, I recommend defense because the Israeli Infantry is hard to dig out from the objective, minefields, and ambush. It is inopportune to go second, but in the first turn, if the terrain is favorable they need 6s to hit anything on the board so most times you’ll lose minimum units if any at all.

For reserves, I would throw the Merk 2s in and bring them out first. Second in reserve and second out of reserves would be your Magach 6s or light mortar infantry, third in reserve your Skyhawks or Vads depending on if your opponent has air, and last I would put your light attack platoons and light attack HQ mostly because you need 5 more points and they’re only good against infantry so not really worth anything other then keeping your formation alive by being in reserve.

I’ve found this combo an extremely effective list and has lead to many second and first-place finishes in tournaments. I hope you found this article helpful in building an Israeli list or at least a second formation to help you out on shortcomings in your other lists.