Reply To: Are the Soviets overpowered? Please convince me they are not! ;)

Home Forums Historical Bolt Action Are the Soviets overpowered? Please convince me they are not! ;) Reply To: Are the Soviets overpowered? Please convince me they are not! ;)

#167466
Andi
Participant

Thank you again for providing useful suggestions.

If your tanks keep getting shut down – stop taking them and take more men. That means all those points he’s spent on AT are wasted.

I will give this a try. Even though it sounds most obvious, I had not thought that direction up to now. The reason here is, I dislike the idea of building a counter army. When I startet playing Bolt Action it was like, hey, every nation can put on the same stuff. Rifles are identical on every side. The same goes for at guns and so on. That was the point I got hooked. This was what I liked about Bolt Action.
Now that I know, I need to build my list and can not field what I like to, but instead have to build an anti soviet list, I am kind of disappointed.

BA-20 Flamethrower is a big threat – if it hits. But it’s flimsy your AT plan should be able to cope with a 7+ armored target with relative ease.

Here I got a problem now. When refering to the first cited paragraph and relying more on infantry, the brits are kind of limited when it comes to dealing with vehicles. I can put in one PIAT squad per platoon. If the soviet gets the first die, which he most likely will, as the soviets are constantly playing 50% more dice then every other nation in our group, then the PIAT is pretty much useless.
An AT gun is a stationary weapon. The BA-20 will never get into sight of that AT gun. So spending 75 points on this thing is a complete waste.
Is giving AT grens to every infantry section the solution here?

Big dice counts – get an artillery obsever or multiple launcher and splatter them.

As I am playing the Brits, I have an arty observer for free, every game. Every now an then, the british arty gets off some very nice shoots… every now an then… It is just not reliable. Most of the time the result is some pins.
Multiple launchers are not available to the brits unfortunately.
The only US multi launcher ist he calliope, as far as I know. Our US player likes to field a cheap and fast M3 instead. Is the cost of the calliope worth it?

Make sure you play a variety of missions too – foce them to attack or defend something. Vastly changes the dynamics.

Dont feel that you have to play Kill Points (order dice scoring) or just stick to the missions in the books… write your own :p

We are playing scenarios all the time. So far, the only scenario where I can see a chance to get a draw at least is scenario 8 from the core rule book where the attacker has to melee down the enemy officer.
Scenarios 1,2 and 11 are deathmatch. Not an option.
Scenario 3 where you have to capture as much mission targets as possible favours the soviet strength in numbers. Very hard to beat the soviets here.
Scenario 4 and 7 where you get points for getting units into the set up zone of the opponent are also quite easy for the soviet player as he has the most units on the table.
Scenario 5 where you have to pick up the mission objective from the centre of the table and get it to your own deployment zone is also more easy if you have more units on the table. You can shield the bearing unit easily and also pass on the mission objective to other units and therefore get it moved like 24 inches during one turn. The more units the faster and more easy the movement of the objective.
Scenario 6 where you have to destroy the enemy base… Ok. There seems to be a chance of getting a draw here as well. Winning? Not against 50% more units on the the table.
Scenarios 9 and 10. Holding mission objectives again…
Pretty much every scenario is more easy the more dice you have in the bag and so units on the table.

The main thing that shows that Soviets aren’t over powered is they don’t win every tournament – there is a fair split of nations usually.

Thats exactly why I am not saying but asking whether the soviets are overpowered or not. 🙂
As I have never attended a tournament I have never seen a Soviet player losing a game, besides one game from our local group.
From the latest impressions I got from playing against the soviets, I am quite curious on how this could be possible. I might therefor sign up to an event. I am expecting to see some errors the soviet players have to do. Otherwise I can not think of how it should be possible to lose a game as the soviet player when playing at least decent.

Sovets have a nice big choice of stuff which allows them to tailor their force extremely well for any occasion – if you are playing similar forces every time it’s easy for him to create a force that will decimate your forces.

Our soviet player is bashing together new lists on a weekly base. He is not going for specific counter lists against know forces. He is trying to play all the models he got. Which I think of as a very nice habbit. Having fun playing all the models you got is wonderful and as it should be, from my point of view.
Unfortunately I can not do this when playing against the soviets as it seems you have to create specific anti-soviet-lists.

Personally I feel the game is written to be played at 1000* points a side…

Yeah, I learned this now and will never play less then 1000 points against the soviets.

One thing came to my mind during the last days: As it is not intended to play western allies against the soviets, but germans instead: do the western allies simply do not have the tools to deal with the soviets properly and this is intended by game design?
Or should pretty much every nation be able to deal with every other one?