Following Campaign 2016 it is clear the 1942 Tiger list is fun, but not overly viable, its good but basically lacks the number of shots to work. Poor tigers, a victim of equal point values, do wonder if they should be a lower cost but you start with a victory point penalty or something — i.e. you have something valuable, so are expected to do better as a result.
That aside its clear the list is not viable in a tournament environment so what to do? Especially with a 1,750 event in four weeks and not really the time to do anything that needs further models.
Haans is going back to 2. Panzer, with a Mottler Panzerkompanie that we have used with, lets be honest, mixed results, varying from poor to catastrophically bad. On the plus side we do know a lot about how not to run that army.
Ok so what are the issues?
The tigers are good but too small, the smaller panzers are typically glass hammers, still normally outnumbered and very fragile, the trick is gaining a balance of keeping the numbers of the basic panzer III and upgrading them to be able to actually
do something.
Current proposal and thinking is thus:
CiC: Panzer IV G (late) — selected for decent armour with a decent gun, if associated with other tanks with the same gun the higher armour means the boss has to be hit last.. Thats the theory.
2iC: Panzer III G — no upgrades, specifically to be able to run with other non-upgraded tanks and be impossible to pick out, plus cheap.
3x Panzer IV F2 — same gun as the CiC, this is the tank hunting platoon, AT:11 they can hurt pretty much anything they will face, but have serious issues at dealing with return fire, so they are designed to be reasonably small and thus easy to hide. This has to be fair worked previously, right up until something like light armour or armoured cars get behind them.
5x Panzer III G — high rate of fire but weak anti tank, these guys are tasked with two missions, keeping light stuff from getting behind the tank hunters while they do their job and secondly being able to hurt dug in infantry and then have the numbers to actually assault….
1x Tiger 1e — here to be an irritant and a road block, plus able to handle anything the Pz IV F2 has trouble with and able to hold an objective and ignore the lighter enemy stuff.. also able to work with the lighter armour against infantry reasonably well..
2x 8-Rad — provides some recce support, specifically for lifting GtG on irritating infantry, plus more light firepower for handling infantry hordes should anyone
else be mad enough to run such a list.
2x armoured 37mm flak half tracks — need something to deal with aircraft, plus more anti light infantry firepower and an irritant to armoured cars, briefly.
Comes to 1,740, could upgrade a light panzer, and may take one of the non leader ones up slightly so if he’s picked out it doesn’t matter, Could put Schutzen on the CiC but then he can be picked out, and he’s not going to assault anything so not worth it. Recovery half track is possible but not that useful, doesn’t give up a point if killed.
11 armoured hulls, plus the recce and flak half tracks, only five platoons but can work with just two, and a good range of options in that case as well depending on what the enemy has.