Getting Started with Fighting First

Matt

Getting Started with Fighting First
By Ryan Jeffares

For a new player starting Flames of War, Patton’s Fighting First offers an ideal gateway to starting a Mid War US force. But once you’ve bought the army box and book, what do you do next? Well this article’s here to give you some suggestions and ideas.

Formation, Formation, Formation
Patton’s fighting First will give you a total of 5 Sherman tanks, 3 Stuart tanks, and 2 M10 tank destroyers. Looking at Fighting First, these units correspond to three different formations, the M3 Stuart Company, the M10 Tank Destroyer Company and the M4 Sherman Company. However, with only 2 M10s and 3 Stuarts, you won’t have enough models to build either an M10 or M3 Stuart Company straight out of the box. So that leaves us with the M4 Sherman Tank Company.

M3 Halftrack

Getting Started:
Looking at the force diagram of the M4 Sherman Tank Company, you can see three boxes shaded black, which are compulsory units we must take. We’ll start by taking a M4 Sherman Tank Company HQ with 1 Sherman for our compulsory headquarters unit and we’ll use our other 4 Shermans for the compulsory M4 Sherman Tank Platoon. To fill out the third compulsory box, we get a choice of either M3 Stuarts, M3 Lees or M4 Shermans, so we’ll take an M3 Stuart Platoon with 3 tanks. Now we have 2 M10 Tank destroyers left from the Fighting First box, which we’ll add to the army in a M10 3-Inch Tank Destroyer Platoon as a support platoon. Once we’ve tallied all those points together, we get a 62 point US force, which is ideal for learning the rules in games against your friends.

M4 Sherman Tank Company
M4 Sherman Tank Company HQ 8 Points
M4 Sherman (75mm) (x 1)  
M4 Sherman Tank Platoon 32 Points
M4 Sherman (75mm) (x 4)  
M3 Stuart Tank Platoon 6 Points
M3 Stuart (37mm) (x 3)  
Support Units
M10 3-Inch Tank Destroyer Platoon 16 Points
M10 (3-Inch) (x 2)  

Expansion and Advanced List Design
So, after a few games, you’ve started to get the grasp of the basics of Flames of War and you want to expand your US force, so how do you go about expanding your army?  For this example, we’ll start with the army we made previously, but build it to a level of 80 points for standard Flames of War games.

M4 Sherman

Considerations, Reserves and Last Stand
There are several things you need to consider when building an army in Flames of War, the first of which is reserves. In Version 4 of Flames of War, depending on the mission you are playing, up to 40% of your army’s points value might have to be held off the table until it arrives from reserve. So, when designing your list it’s important to take into account how many points you might need to hold in reserve, so you can choose units for your army which function well as a reserve. In our case, an 80 point army may have to hold 32 points in reserve, a role which the 4 Shermans are well suited due to their heavy armour and strong armament which can turn the tide of a battle.

M4 Sherman

Considerations, Reserves and Last Stand
There are several things you need to consider when building an army in Flames of War, the first of which is reserves. In Version 4 of Flames of War, depending on the mission you are playing, up to 40% of your army’s points value might have to be held off the table until it arrives from reserve. So, when designing your list it’s important to take into account how many points you might need to hold in reserve, so you can choose units for your army which function well as a reserve. In our case, an 80 point army may have to hold 32 points in reserve, a role which the 4 Shermans are well suited due to their heavy armour and strong armament which can turn the tide of a battle.

The other factor which needs to be taken into account when you’re building an army is Formation Last Stand, which determines whether or not our Tank Company will fight on or flee the battlefield as it takes losses. In Flames of War, a formation doesn’t need to test for Last Stand as long as it has at least two units in good spirits remaining on table. Therefore, having as many combat units as possible in a formation is effective as it staves off the point at which your formation will need to take a Last Stand test.

Bulking Up
To build up your list to 80 points, you could add any unit from Fighting First that you like, but for this example, I’ll be adding an Armored Rifle Platoon at full strength as a support platoon for 15 points. An Armored Rifle Platoon is an infantry unit which is mounted in halftracks for mobility and is armed with a variety of weaponry to deal with most threats. As an infantry unit, it excels at defending an objective while dug in, but is equally as capable as assaulting enemy infantry backed up with fire from their halftracks. 

M4 Sherman

After adding an Armored Rifle Platoon, we come to a total of 77 points, so we’ll add a T30 75mm Assault Gun Platoon with 3 T30 for 3 points. The T30s are a combat unit for our M4 Sherman Tank Company, so our formation will be harder to break and will keep fighting longer. Furthermore, the T30s provide our army with artillery, giving us the capability to pin enemy infantry or fire smoke ammunition to provide our own troops with cover.

M4 Sherman Tank Company
M4 Sherman Tank Company HQ 8 Points
M4 Sherman (75mm) (x 1)  
M4 Sherman Tank Platoon 32 Points
M4 Sherman (75mm) (x 4)  
M3 Stuart Tank Platoon 6 Points
M3 Stuart (37mm) (x 3)  
T30m 75mm Assault Gun Platoon 3 Points
T30 (75mm) (x 3)  
Support Units
M10 3-Inch Tank Destroyer Platoon 16 Points
M10 (3-Inch) (x 2)  
Armored Rifle Platoon  15 Points
M1 Garand rifle team (x 6)  
M1 Bazooka team (x 5)  
M1919 LMG (x 2)  
60mm mortar (x 1)  
M3 Halftrack (.50 cal MG) (x 1)  
M3 Halftrack (.30 cal MG) (x 4)  

~Ryan