The Road to 1500 Points

Well, I’ve spent a lot of time with my Ostfront book and have decided how I’m going to take my 600 point army to 1500 points. In working through this process, I had two parameters that I needed to work with: one was keeping in mind what was already painted; and, the other, was to keep in mind that I already owned two Strelkovy company boxes and a T-34 unit box. I didn’t relish the thought of painting yet another Strelkovy company so I had been leaning toward a Tank battalion using the painted infantry as tank riders.

There are two tank battalion options: the regular tank battalion and the mixed tank battalion. The biggest difference between the two is that the mixed tank battalion cannot have multiples of the same tank unit (so that rules out having two units of 5 T-34’s). In exchange, the mixed tank battalion has access to the heavy KV tanks. Another admittedly “gamey” advantage of the mixed tank battalion is that the Battalion HQ tank is taken from an existing tank unit and you don’t buy the HQ unit separately. Interestingly, it is cheaper in points to buy an extra tank for a unit (which is then turned into Battalion HQ) than to buy a Battalion HQ tank. While reading tactical advice online, it seemed that players who rely more on numbers fare better in their games. This means that a lot of light tanks would probably be better than 3 KV tanks.

In the end, here is the 1500 point army I have selected.

Battalion HQ	(taken from T-34 unit)
6x T-34 tanks	490 points
8x T-70/42 light tanks	230 points
Tank rider company with 3 platoons	320 points
Komissar	5 points
2x Maxim HMG	40 points
Heavy Mortar Company with 2 platoons	135 points
Forward Observer	30 points
2x SU-152	245 points
Total	1495 points

Having three platoons in my tank rider company means that I’ll have to paint up half of my second Strelkovy box and this is intentional! It will make finishing the entire box at a later date seem like I’m heading into the home stretch plus I could always buy 4x KV tanks as a substitute for the SU’s and light tanks at a later date.

So it’s off to the gaming store to do some shopping! If anyone sees problems with my list, please comment before I buy and paint too much of this army.