tournament builds

[BrigadierRitchieHook]

Never having played in a tournament, and indeed having only played against my son and my cousin [plus lots of solitaire play] I read these boards and see "Sherman swarm" and "parabomb" along with a fair number of German builds. I was wondering if there a generally accepted killer army build for the UK, Soviets,and/or Japanese.

[Washington bearers]

If you look back in the old post. You'll be able to find what your looking for. At 100pts it's really tough for the German's to stop a Sherman swarm. :o

[Waffen-SS(leader)]

Sherman Swams are not THAT good... I just use panerfausts and that takes care of that :) I disrupt them and then send in the SS PG to do the rest!

Eric

[Redgar]

As I see it, the US is the force with the "broken" units (i.e. Shermans and "SE" Paras), ergo they have the builds percieved to be "killer" . Case in point: the top Gen Con SoCal bands were all set up to kill the swarm.

Now that Set II has filled in some British, Japanese, and Soviet gaps (especially in the Tank department), they can stand on their own better, but the Parabomb is Set II's "Sherman Swarm": the apparantly "best" warband of the set, a sucha to beat with a "balanced" force, quite ahistorical, and extremely American-unit centric.

So to answer the question, there aren't any "killer" (read: broken) UK, Japanese, or Soviet bands because there aren't any really "broken" units in these factions. (Well, the Crusader, Ka-Mi, and PTRD can be considered broken, but with a different connotation), but there are some solid bands out there. (From a Soviet perspective, a good combo is pairing a Commissair, Cossak Captain, or PPSH with a T-34 or KV-1.)

Just my 2 ep worth,

Redgar

Edit:

I forgot to mention that the Sherman Swarm and Parabomb's problem is not that they can't be beaten, sometimes easily, by the right force. 6 sIG 33's can crush a Parabomb, for example. The problem is that the builds that kill the Swarm and Bomb are weak against almost everything else, while the Swarm and the Bomb are good against most "balanced" bands.

[Domhnall101]

Sherman Swams are not THAT good... I just use panerfausts and that takes care of that :) I disrupt them and then send in the SS PG to do the rest!

Eric

I am with Eric here a heavly infrantry build can, used correctly, handle the swarm the majority of the time. I still find the parabomb a pain when US paras are used. I think the japanese are more viable with their paras.

[Der Leiter]

Sherman Swams are not THAT good... I just use panerfausts and that takes care of that :) I disrupt them and then send in the SS PG to do the rest!

Eric

For an unexperiended or unprepared player the Sherman Swarm army can be quite tough. They are also relatively cheap and easy to build, as the basic army is 4x M4A1 Shermans and 2x Humber Scout Cars (all uncommons), though there are some variants now using Rhinos instead.

[crash beedo]

There are no killer builds for the UK, Soviets, and Japanese. (By killer, I mean something that has a strong chance against all-armor and all-infantry and could win a tournament).

Most armies that use UK units tend to splash American. Here is one build we like to use:

35 Croc
21 Sherman
21 Archer
16 Humber x2
07 Red Devil Captain

4 out of 6 units are UK. (Someone else pioneered the army with 2 Shermans and a Stuart instead of the Humbers, but we like the UK units).