Produktbeschreibung
We are proud to announce that the new Intelligence Handbook on Soviet Armoured and Cavalry Forces will be out in December and it will be called Za Stalina (For Stalin).
The new book includes Soviet tank, motorised infantry and cavalry forces.
However, the imminent arrival of Za Stalina, the new Handbook on Soviet Armoured and Cavalry forces, led to a few extra changes as well. Don't panic though, as usual we have created a downloadable update that you can cut out and paste into your older copy to bring it up to speed.
Starting at the front, we've added a paragraph to the komissar special rule making units with a komissar immune to the pinning effect of nearby friendly artillery bombardments. They still get pinned down if they are actually under the template, but being more scared of the komissar than their own artillery, they are not pinned down by hits from the Friendly Fire rule on page 82 of the rule book.
We made this change to increase the effectiveness of Soviet artillery. Now the guns don't have to cease firing just as they are getting ranged in, They can keep shooting until their infantry are upon the enemy.
Next we simplified the Hen & Chicks special rules. Now if any tank in the platoon moves more than six inches, none can fire. This simplifies the rule considerably and prevents Soviet somehow co-ordinating a tank ballet that the Bolshoi would be proud of, with tanks racing off on their own while others halt to fire, all at the wave of a few flags. The result is tank companies truly operating together using numbers, speed, and firepower, rather than subtlety of manoeuvre, to overcome the enemy.
The biggest changes for most players will be the prices of their tanks and assault guns. Firstly, we reduced the price of T-34, T-70, and M3 Lee tanks to better match their on-table performance and make fielding them in numbers slightly easier. We also corrected the KV-85 giving it heavier armour, but less speed and no hull machine-gun. It's now much closer to its historical prototype.
We gave the assault guns a fairly thorough going over too. While it doesn't directly affect Stalingrad, the SU-85 arriving in the tank corps with Za Stalina meant that we had to take a look at the relative merits of the different assault guns. Most of them turned out to be over-priced, mainly because of over-stated ranges for the heavier guns.
We started by dropping the range of the SU-152 down to a more reasonable 32"/80cm, allowing us to drop the price down to 245 points rather than 315 points, for a pair. This made them much more balanced in points and performance. The SU-122 likewise lost range dropping to 24"/60cm, leaving the long-range tank hunting to the specialist SU-85 and becoming a cheap heavy gun instead at 245 points for four (down from 415 previously!)
The SU-76 was fairly much right, just overpriced for such a lightly armoured chassis, so it too dropped in points from 300 points down to 200 points for four.
The last major change is to the Katyusha. Further research prompted by some of our Soviet players showed that although only 132mm in calibre, the Katyusha rockets carried an unusually heavy payload. As a result we took the opportunity to give them a Firepower rating of 2+/4+ and correct their range. We also reflected their Guards designation by making them Trained rather than Conscript. This should ensure their appearance on plenty of Flames Of War battlefields!
Talking of Guards, we also revamped the Guards Strelkovy Battalion as well by correcting some of the points values and adding in notes for the changed Guards Rocket Mortar Battery and Shtraf Companies.
All-in-all, quite a few changes for the Soviets. The good news is only a few for the Germans, though. The main ones were bringing the special rules into line with Desert Fox and taming Schmidt, the warrior, a little. Schmidt now has to be concealed to get the gone to ground bonus making him a little less devastating! A final tweak to the sniper rules closed the loophole allowing them to contest objectives, and we are there!
Overall I think the changes will make the Soviets play better and give Soviet players a few more difficult choices when making a force.
Za Rodinu! |
