Flames of war : 'Partisan Band' command card

[limburger 21668xp 0]

The Bagration Soviet command cards have a card titled ‘Partisan band’ at 0 points.
Text says :

Field a Rifle Company (LS170) as a Partisan Band support unit with the following ratings :
– Motivation : Confident 4+
– Is hit on : Aggressive 3+
– Skill : 5+
Special rules  :
– ‘Our land’ (may be deployed on table, but counts towards reserve)
– ‘Local knowledge’ (use ‘cross country dash’ instead of ‘terrain dash’ when moving through difficult terrain)

My initial thought was : hey … free soviet infantry …
But I think that’s not how it works as it is too good to be true, isn’t?

This is an upgrade card for a Rifle company that I may already have in my list, right ?

Still … seems rather useful, especially the ‘our land’ rule which seems to imply that I can field this unit on the table while still counting it towards my units ‘in reserve’ in missions that use reserves. The additional movement speed can be useful too, especially if the board has lots of ‘difficult terrain’.

[tacticalgenius 3815xp 1]

Yes, you have to field a Rifle Company and instead of the Rifle Company stats, you take this card and they change the stats to the card. No free units are in Flames of War. Even the old Free T34 was a card you paid points for and every turn , rolled to see if you got a T34.  so , i think it was 9 points….you could get from 0-6 T 34s for 9 points……the question is….do you feel lucky.

[limburger 21668xp 0]

yeah, I figured as much after I was done writing the post, but it never hurts to ask 😀

[redvers 21050xp 1]

@tacticalgenius is correct in that no unit is free. You’ve paid for the rifle company in the main arm listing and the card (of which you are usually allowed just one) allows you to convert a rifle company into the stats you describe.

For me, the huge advantage is being able to deploy this on the table but while counting toward reserves. In many missions, reserves are crucial so this card allows you to reduce the amount that ends up in that 40% reserve rule. If you take a fully kitted out rifle platoon with all the bells and whistles and then slap this card on that platoon, this could really pay dividends and provide you with a unit that can either sit on your objective from turn one guaranteed or start pushing forward and menacing the enemy. It gives you a lot of flexible tactical options.

Also, given that some Soviet armoured units in Bagration can take an infantry company as part of the core formation, this card suddenly provides a lot of strength to the Soviets. So unless you routinely play annihilation (you shouldn’t, it’s not great) then this card offers a lot of options!

[limburger 21668xp 1]

@redvers that ‘reserve’ advantage was one thing I liked.

However it does kind of feel ‘wrong’ to have this card just for that advantage, because (IMHO) it should only work while the army is in (former) Soviet territory.

[redvers 21050xp 0]

@limburger these are the command cards for Bagration, so I guess the Soviets are still in their homeland, at least to start with. But this could also proxy for other local partisans happy to be relieved from German occupation once the battles move out of Russia.

The command cards also stipulates LS170 and as I believe that there is another Soviet book due out some time way into the future covering the push into Germany, perhaps LS170 won’t be a unit from that book and therefore you can only use on a Rifle Company from Bagration.

And don’t forget that FoW is designed to be flexible to allow more historically accurate formations or to run the other way and be far more fanciful (a company of Pumas for example!). So it depends how accurate you want to be when building your force 🙂

[phaidknott 7023xp 1]

….wondering if we might see a re-issue (or probably new ones) of the metal Partizan minis BF did back in the “green box days”? Sounds like they might have plans to do so……

[limburger 21668xp 0]

@redvers the unit card LS170 is in the Soviet Bagration unit cards set as a soviet rifle company.
It has either 22 or 15 stands with DP MG & M1891 rfiles and the 1 Komissar.

The only ‘missing’ unit cards are the ones on the ‘Decoy Tank Company’ card as they reference German Unit cards.
LG167 (Panzer IV), LG266 (StuG), LG104 (Panther) and LG102 (Tiger).

I like how all unit cards are referenced by unique id’s, but finding the matching models and/or unit cards is a real pain in the behind as they aren’t listed anywhere on the Flames of War website.
I suspect that these are the ‘Late War’ variants (assuming ‘L’ = late and ‘G’ = German), but I’m not sure as there’s both SS Germans and D-day Germans at the moment.

The weird thing is that the unit cards do include a German SD KFZ 251 transport with Soviet markings  (LS136).

I am trying to build a list that is at least somewhat historical.
I don’t expect it to be a tournament list.

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