February 29, 2024 • 35 mins
This week we discuss the armies of the Netherlands in Bolt Action.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:08):
Welcome to Tales of Tommies. I'm Johnny and I'm Phil and in today's episode
we're talking about the armies of the Netherlands found in the armies of France
and allies book page 54 onwards.
Yeah they're not an army that you see very often and you might see why as we
run through the list but there are some interesting things you can do with them
(00:28):
particularly around the vehicles.
Indeed yeah so I mean they weren't in the war for a huge amount of time.
They very much tried to stay neutral and
failed so it's not a surprise that they are
sort of part of this book rather than getting an entire book
in their own right i believe also because they because
they had that policy of neutrality there wasn't a huge amount of military
(00:50):
spending and training going on which is why again
we're not going to see huge varieties in their troops but actually because they
were purchasing stuff from other nations i think you're right we're going to
see some interesting stuff in the vehicle section i would say they were in the
war longer than other european nations were because because obviously they had
the colony in terms of the Dutch East Indies. Yeah, that's a good point.
(01:11):
So in that sense, you know, in terms of the Pacific, they are there into 1942.
Rather than the rather short-lived period in the early part of the war in Europe.
Yeah, and because of that, we find some of that in New Guinea, don't we?
And so they may feature as we go through the army list.
Before we jump into the units, though, shall we go through the national characteristics? Yeah,
so these will be very familiar to those of you
(01:33):
you who've listened to our other allied minor nation
chats because they all appear in
other allied minor nations so the first one's communication
breakdown which you see in the french for example and
that means that in the first turn of the game if the first order dice drawn
from the cup is one of yours the enemy can decide that the
dice is put back into the cup and a new order die is drawn
(01:54):
instead so don't bring a sniper yeah second
one is forward artillery doctrine again very similar
to the french dutch armies get one free inexperienced or
regular artillery unit this unit can be any anti-tank
gun or any field artillery piece in the dutch
army list except for heavy artillery and this
is in addition to the number of artillery units normally available so bring
(02:18):
a medium howitzer and hurriedly conscripted reserves again very similar to the
french if the force includes three or more inexperienced infantry sections it
may include include a free inexperienced
infantry section identical to the cheapest one already purchased.
This is in addition to units chosen from whatever selector is used.
So bring full, full strength inexperienced squads. There we go.
(02:39):
Job done. End of episode.
Okay, Johnny. So in terms of the HQ, is there anything going on that we haven't
seen elsewhere or anything that is worthy of note beyond the normal worthy of note?
Not really. It's very similar to the national characteristics where...
It's just a mash-up of the other minors, effectively. So you've got the officers
(03:01):
at all the usual ranks, but inexperienced or regular, not veteran.
You've got a medic, only at regular. You've got a forward observer,
both and artillery, but only at regular.
And that's it, basically, for the HQ. So not a lot to write home about.
Cool, okay. What about the infantry squads and teams?
Not a huge amount. We've got four in the Armies of France and Allies book.
(03:23):
You've got regular and inexperienced infantry sections, which
are five to 11 men with the only option is
to add a light machine gun for 20 points so not a
huge amount of flavor there but does what it says on the
tin you then got some indonesian infantry they're again five to 11 men on this
one however your first five men have rifles and you're following six men are
(03:45):
unarmed specifically having the special room special rule that they They cannot
shoot nor attack in close quarters. Their only value is as casualties.
You can give them pistols, which is good. So for six points a man,
you're getting six pistol-armed men, which is actually quite a nice little way to pad the unit.
(04:05):
And you do have the option to give them a light machine gun,
which you're probably not going to use for an inexperienced squad.
But you can, if you are so inclined, like traditionally a Soviet player,
you can give them shirkers to take three
points off per man and have a really cheap squad is
this one of those stupid things where you can get for one point an
unarmed shirker wasn't there a whole thing
(04:28):
about this because they're four points for unarmed then you make them shirkers
for minus three yep so you can in fact you're it's
not all the men in the squad the first five men are going to be four points
a man like normal shirkers but you are right the unarmed men could be one point
a man which is actually really good value however i would pay the extra two
(04:48):
points to give them the pistols i think just so you've got tough fighters because
inexperienced tough fighting shakers.
Yeah they'd be pretty interesting i mean if you took them full
strength you could probably outflank them and then yeah hope
they don't get four pins by the time they they hit
a unit yeah which if you're outflanking they probably can get
to the back lines on turn five because you're getting to re-roll the
(05:09):
reserve check aren't you at full strength so it might be
a way to run them them okay or you could just use them as a
for what you're paying 20 points plus six
26 point squad yeah which would
be pretty tasty for 11 men it's like it's the same as a medic isn't
it 20 26 yeah medics like 25 isn't it or so 23 25 something like that yeah i
(05:29):
mean that is actually quite interesting although not overly useful i would say
yeah i think it's one of those oh we could do some shenanigans in terms of points
and all that sort of thing whether or not you should just because you can is
another thing entirely.
Yeah 100 and i think this is only gonna sort of
this spam a lot list is only going to happen in the unlimited
(05:50):
platoon tournaments rather than because most tournaments
are going to have one or two platoons if all you take is 26
points 11 man squads yeah you're not going to fill your points limit are you
no perfect for that 600 point doubles though yeah just if you just really want
that first order dice love the board yeah although you can't because you'd have
(06:10):
to give it back if your opponent says so well that's all right because you still got 40 dice to their 10.
Moving on moving on we've got the motorcycle
section which is just like all the other motorcycle sections
you're not going to take okay because it's 5 to
11 men but you're paying sort of
15 points a man for regulars and then you've got
(06:31):
a light machine gun i i don't really see the point in motorcycles in
bolt action to be honest so i'm not going to dwell too
long on it sure effectively it's the
alternative to buying a truck for them if you just want to dump them up
the board yeah because they haven't got a lot of special gear i
don't see why you would bother with it hopefully that's a
controversial opinion so someone out in the interwebs can tell me why motorcycles
(06:53):
actually brilliant at five points a model but that's all i've got in the armies
of france and allies book what have we got in the new guinea book phil so you
do get a couple more infantry squads in the new guinea book these represent
the knil gurus both of them are Our infantry squads,
they are both legit in a generic platoon and they're also legit in the KNIL
(07:13):
Guerrillas Theatre Selector, which is in the New Guinea book.
So the first one is the guerrilla rifle section.
These ones you can take inexperienced regular or vets, so opportunity to take some vets.
Five-man squad, normal costings in terms of 7, 10, 13.
You can add an NCO with a submachine gun. What you can also do,
and this is very similar to one of the Australian units from the New Guinea
(07:36):
book, is add a local scout.
So for 32 points in experience, 35 regular or 38 veteran, you can add a local scout.
And what this allows you to do when out flanking is to arrive on the short board
edge of your choice rather than having to choose before the game begins which
board edge that is going to be.
Nice it's i imagine that's useful in objective missions but not really in kill points or.
(08:01):
No well it's certainly not gonna be useful movement ones where there is
no flanking no it's also quite expensive to do
that yeah but because you've got no special gear it
is purely just so you can get into position isn't it the other
one you've got is the guerrilla light machine gun section so
despite this being a machine gun section it is
actually an infantry squad squad it's a four-man base unit
(08:22):
inexperienced regular or vet they're armed
with rifles with one person with a light machine gun obviously
a second person acts as the loader you can add
up to four additional men at the normal price of
7 10 or 13 you can have have a smg if you want and you can add that scout that
we just mentioned as well interesting thing with this is so unlike the the Japanese
(08:44):
MMG squad that replaces the MMG in the MMG section of the army list.
This replaces it in the infantry squad.
So if you really wanted to, you could have an LMG section as an infantry squad
and then also have your MMG in your normal choice.
Oh, that's a shame. That was going to be my question, because having a squad
(09:06):
in a team slot is a great way to pad out a platoon when you've got a platoon limit.
And so it's a bit of a shame, actually, that they've done that,
because I don't see a place for this in the infantry sections.
But I do see a place for it replacing the machine gun team.
Yeah and i well if you read the
fluff in the new guinea book it explains why they've
(09:26):
done it in terms of the guerrilla sections because of how they distributed
their lmgs across their infantry squads and i
would imagine it that is reflected in the theater selected from.
That book so yeah 100 and i think
it fits very similar in my thinking it fits
very similar to the last squad where if you want something to
dump on an objective from the flanks it'll do
(09:48):
the job but i wouldn't expect any much kill and power from it no cool
is that all the infantry sections from new guinea yeah
that is it is that everything from new guinea in fact or
do they have anything else in there no no that is it that is
everything brilliant stephanie so
in that case what do they have in the team weapons in armies of
france yeah so team weapons wise fairly straightforward
(10:10):
no great shakes or surprises you can
take an mmg team if you wish you can
take an anti-tank rifle team you can take a sniper team you
can take a medium water team and that is
it what about the artillery phil anything exciting in
there pretty much straightforward so you've got your light
medium or heavy artillery obviously as we said
(10:31):
you can take the you can take a an additional artillery piece but not the heavy
as part of your national rules you've got a light anti-tank gun you've got a
light anti-aircraft gun and you've got a heavy anti-aircraft gun nice it's nice
It's nice that they've got a heavy anti-aircraft gun. That's quite rare.
There is, I did note, one interesting thing on their artillery.
(10:54):
Which is because they're so outdated, these artillery pieces,
you never range in. That is interesting.
Although it is only if you pay the extra points or...
Not pay the extra points reduce the points cost okay yeah
so you can buy it normally or you can reduce the points
cost to add the severely outdated rule which is
the one that meant means they don't range in so i could for
(11:15):
my free one i could choose to have an
outdated one or i could choose to have a up-to-date state-of-the-art
one i would imagine so yeah it doesn't there's no there's no limits is
there on the free artillery piece in terms of it has to reflect
what you've already bought no no so i suppose what you could do is you could
pair a free medium up-to-date artillery piece yeah with an out-of-date heavy
(11:36):
artillery slightly cheaper yeah slightly cheaper but you get additional crew
for that i'm not sure it's worth saving 15 points though when you're on already.
115 points in on the heavy artillery piece and i
guess if you do that though you're you're going to use one as direct
fire and one is indirect fire aren't you so you're you're outdated
one is going to be your static direct firing gun
(11:59):
to you know to close down the firing lane and then
you might use your indirect not outdated one to
start ranging in that's exactly what i was thinking i was
thinking if you are going to pair the medium with
the heavy you put that heavy sort of alongside a building let's say with its
extra crew out of date so you're saving a bit of points and then the medium
(12:21):
behind so you can recrew you're doing the whole 12 inch recrew yeah yeah yeah
exactly And you could even actually pay for the veteran for the one that's going to be outdated.
It's going to work out about the same cost. A veteran outdated is going to cost
about the same as a regular up-to-date.
And so you can start adding the veteracy level to when you start re-crewing. Yeah, exactly.
(12:42):
I imagine there's probably even better shenanigans for players of the armies of the Netherlands.
I imagine I've thought of even wilder shenanigans than what I've just thought up there.
But there we go. I think other than the out-of-date cannons,
it's fairly mundane so far, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah. but we're about to move into vehicles okay just
(13:02):
glancing over i can see there's a wide selection cool
okay johnny so why don't you take us through the armored cars then armored
cars certainly so you've got the the landverk
armored car which is 135 points
regular it is a recce vehicle and it's not open topped
which is very nice for those 135 points
(13:23):
you're getting a light anti-tank gun with a coax mmg and
a hull mmg but in addition to
that you're also getting a rear-facing hull mmg so actually you're getting three
mmgs there yeah admittedly they can't all shoot the same thing because one of
them's facing backwards yeah but it's an interesting one to sort of just drive
up the table and sort of pirouette around spraying bullets yeah okay.
(13:48):
On the theme of MMGs, they've got the Marmon Harrington, which we all know and love.
So a recce, 80 points, armour 7, a pair of MMGs in the turret.
It's interesting in the armies of France and the Allies, it does specify,
it's not a restriction, but in the
fluff it does say, this was not used in Europe, this is used by the KNIL.
So if you do want to theme your generic platoon to a theatre.
(14:12):
Or a theatre of operation, not a theatre selector, in bolt action you do get
some guidance in the book yeah that's good stuff and then you've got the,
Alva Straussler armoured car and again it says the same thing doesn't it not
in Europe on that one turret MMG and a hull MMG so very similar same points
cost same recce same armour so it,
(14:35):
To be honest, I'd probably go for the Mormon. Because of that pad, yeah.
Although I actually haven't said that. The Alvas can put out two pins per turn.
You can put out separate pins, yeah. That's an interesting choice to make.
But I suppose it depends what else is in your list as to whether you need to
put out the second pin or whether you want the full 360 on both guns.
(14:56):
But moving on, you can save yourself 10 points by taking the,
what's that, the overall wagon. Overall wagon, yeah.
The overall wagon. it's probably a better way of pronouncing that but yeah
yeah i imagine it's something like overall wagon
i don't know but it's a patrol truck so
armor 7 70 points pintle covering the
front and both sides but not the rear you
(15:19):
can actually upgrade it with a
full pintle for 360 for five points i don't
think i would to be honest i think i'd save the five points and you
can make it an an hmg for 10 points probably won't but
it'd be nice to pin some armor but the
fun begins when you can add two additional pintle mmgs they are a bit of a faff
(15:39):
because they're sort of left and right and rear and rear yeah but i suppose
because it's recce you could actually drive it around backwards and have all
three mmgs shooting rearwards you could yes yeah there is an option for that. Yeah.
It is open top though so you are going to take the pins. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a risky one but I think there's.
(16:01):
That truck has some merit i think potentially it is
starting to get a bit pricey when you put all the guns on it's 100 points and
with it being open top bit of a risky proposition but i
imagine you're going to have a lot of fun with it and then the
final armored car on a similar theme it's open top this
one isn't recce though it's the the word
that we don't know how to pronounce the overall wagon yeah the overall
(16:23):
wagon this one's a navy gun truck not because
it goes in in the sea or anything i don't know it's just because it's got a
gun on the back of it yeah yeah yeah and it's a rear-facing light howitzer this
navy gun and but it also keeps a front-facing vickers mmg armor 7 as i said
(16:43):
open topped not a huge fan of that to be honest.
Because without the recce having to reverse up to shoot you like howitzer is
a risky proposition yeah yeah also quite tricky to get the angles on when it's
rear-facing and you haven't got recce because you can't turn and reverse.
So that's all the armoured cars.
What about in the tank slot, Phil? Lots of fun to be had there? I wouldn't say lots.
(17:05):
Fun, probably, but not lots. So you've got your Vickers Light Tank,
which is, as you see it in the British list, it's an inexperienced regular or veteran.
It has a turret-mounted HMG, a coaxial MMG. It's a 7-plus armoured car.
You can replace the coax for twin HMG for plus 10 points.
You can make it amphibious as well if you want to. that's interesting
(17:28):
because the hmg coax
mmg combo because because you
can't fire them both it seems like a bit of a waste but twin hmg
is interesting now i imagine because it's twinned you'd have to fire at the
same target so you're you're not putting out separate pins but that ability
to put six shots with minus one penetration depending on your or plus one penetration
(17:53):
sorry depending upon your range could be interesting if you can get into the
side doesn't have recce though so.
No, but it does have amphibious for five points, so you could catch them off
guard by driving at them from the sea. Yeah, true.
If you don't want to do that, though, you might want to take a Cardan Lloyd
Tankette, which is 44 points in experience, 55 points regular.
(18:15):
It's a 7-plus open-topped, forward-facing, hole-mounted MMG. That's it.
Straightforward. Good fun. I mean, 55 points isn't a lot of points to pay for
a machine gun pillbox. And then your last one is the Marmon Herrington CTLS,
which is an American-made light tank rather than the British version.
This has two forward-facing hull-mounted MMGs and one turret-mounted MMG for
(18:41):
7-plus damage value, armoured carrier.
I really like this. I mean, three MMGs for 80 points, all pointing in the same
direction as well, importantly.
I think that's got some legs, that one. one
what's interesting is there is no at
other than your hmg there's no at capability in
your tanks and in your armored cars
(19:03):
it's just that first one the landsverk armored car or if
you want to take the naval gun everything else is effectively just
mmgs yeah that is it is
really interesting i was thinking about myself first there's really
it's not often you see the tanks having
no anti-tank no and the anti-tank being found elsewhere
but in a game with a lot of infantry a
(19:26):
lot of mmgs really goes a long way and
so i'm actually a big fan of them yeah and if you a lot
of these vehicles obviously reflect the the pacific theater rather than the
european theater and that's exactly what you found you didn't have big tanks
in opposition it was a lot of infantry therefore mmgs and hmgs would have been
perfectly fine historically so yeah shall we move on to transport sir are we
(19:48):
going to see some at options in the transports johnny.
Spoilers but yes the transports the
the dutch really book the trend with
so the miners i always complain don't have
machine guns on trucks that's always my common complaint
yeah bizarrely with the dutch they might
even have too many guns on the transports is that possible
(20:10):
not for me but i think for a
man that runs dodge trucks all the time with mmgs on
them maybe even hmgs is that possible
it's well it's choice isn't it you
know the classic what is it the anyway i
think you are spoiled for choice and it's going to lead to indecision
so i'm going to jump straight in with the most exciting unit
(20:31):
the they have a light truck that carries 12
men 39 points regular yeah which isn't
that exciting yet but just wait you can have a
pintle mmg for 15 points standard and what's
more you can bang an additional two pintle mmgs
on it so you can have a truck with three mmgs admittedly the
additional two can only shoot right left rear but
(20:54):
that coming in from the outflank or
even just driving up the middle of the board three pins out not
a bad little option that there's a
bit like the half tracks isn't it but without paying
the extra points for the carrier yeah yeah yeah i'm the
tricky part is i don't know what i'm putting in this truck when i
rushed up the board no but if
(21:16):
again if you want to just treat it as a pillbox put it behind a wall.
Yeah and sort of you've got all three sides covered on a
funny angle yeah not bad i i'm probably not
going to do that to be honest but it's nice to have the
option yeah now the next one's interesting isn't it the the
utility the the light utility trucks and cars do
you want to talk us through that one so these are the ones that are really interesting so your
(21:37):
a basic option it's inexperienced regular veteran 17
21 25 points it's a soft skin
and it can take three men so far pretty meh
however you can add various
options you can add a pencil mounted mmg for plus
15 points you can then upgrade it to
an hmg for an additional 10 points you could add
(21:57):
another two additional pencil mounted mmgs covering
the right and rear left and rear for 15 points each or and
this is where it gets really interesting you can add a
forward facing or rear facing hole mounted light anti-tank gun for plus 50 points
finally in the transport section we find some decent at yeah and what's amazing
(22:19):
well what i think is amazing is because it doesn't lose its transport capacity you could take.
Basically as many as as you've got yeah yeah because
you can take that 26 point squad
and then take a 71 points regular
truck with a light only tank gun yeah maybe he's
(22:39):
even pushed the boat out for the machine gun as well 86 points
so what's that you're now 112 points in
two order dice you are going to need to put someone
in the in the vehicle to fire
both aren't you because it can only fire one that's a good point
that is a very good point so what i'll do is i'll let them die quickly so
they get down to three men and then jump
(23:01):
in oh it's a real shame actually that like machine gun
squad is four men rather because we could
have snuck them in i suppose actually you've made a good
point there maybe it's just not worth paying for the pintle machine gun no
but the ability for 71 points to take a transport which
has a forward facing like at when you haven't got a
lot of at elsewhere it's obviously not what
(23:22):
they were designed to do but if you wanted to you can
you can so choose given the options yeah yeah and it's quite useful because
you can shoot it with a one-inch shell and that gives you the d2 pins as well
so you can use it as a bit of an anti-infantry threat bit of a sort of even
if you can't kill the tanks with a light anti-tank gun you could just start
pinning them down so it's a really interesting choice.
(23:46):
I think it would probably be the way i would build
this army just for fun to have five
or six of these fellas and to be fair that is
how you like to play your americans isn't it in terms of soft
skins with big guns be that mmgs on
dodges or the uh the little light at dodge what's
it what's it called oh the m6 gmc or
(24:08):
the m6 gmc yeah that's how you like to build your your
americans sometimes yeah that's exactly what how i'm seeing this
truck as a gmc an m6
gmc but with an additional transport capacity it
does make it a bit vulnerable to be installed that's the
only thing but i mean i'll have five others
so you're welcome to steal one as long as
(24:30):
they're not in a live so that one goes the other four go as a consequence yeah
anyway if you want to you could take a jeep and you could stick an mmg on it
and lose your transport capacity because it's not like you haven't got a lot
of options for mmgs elsewhere in the list i don't understand why they added
this entry to be honest because,
why would you take I suppose it defends you against that being stolen option
(24:53):
but it does move it to the armoured car slot yeah
I suppose, actually, there is a place for it there if you just want to save
points on your armoured car, but you do want a machine gun in that slot. True.
You could take a tractor, if you want, the Trado tractor. You could also take a GMC tractor.
They're both tractors. And six plus.
(25:14):
You could take a Vickers Utility tractor, which is a tractor, but seven plus.
Well, the GMC and the Trado, the GMC can be inexperienced.
That's the only difference between them, isn't it? and then so 15
points for a regular gmc or 40 point
oh sorry 50 points for regular vicars but no
no weapons so it's quite a lot of points to spend
(25:35):
yeah just to get that seven plus first versus the
six plus yeah especially because the gmc can drag
any gun whereas the vicars is limited to medium anti-tank
or light howitzers so that that vicars can't
even tow the the free medium howitzer you got now what
you can do is get the m3 white scout car
which is a 69 points in experience 86 regular
(25:57):
or 103 veteran that comes with
a pintle mounted hmg covering the forward arc it's a seven
plus armored carrier with eight men if you want
to you can add a couple of additional pintle mounted mmgs and
if you also want to you can remove the
transport capacity and give it recce which will then shove
it into the armored car slot but that's where
(26:18):
you can get your seven plus recceed hmg with
up to two more mmg dacca armored cars
if you so wish yeah it's exactly the
same as the us entry and i've i really like the
model and i like the idea of this vehicle but i've never really found a use
case for it because it's just a little bit pricey i'm gonna have to try them
(26:41):
at at some point i think just because they've always been on my agenda but i
don't think there's a place for especially in this army where there's lots of
other fun things in the transport slot.
Yeah and then the last one is your overall wagen apc which effectively is a german 250 slash one.
Hanamag so it's 74 points regular for a seven plus
(27:01):
armor carrier for 12 men the reason why it's only 74
is it doesn't come with the mmg but you can add
add the mmg on for 10 points to get it up to 84 and then effectively it's a
12-man half-track with an mmg yeah nice enough yeah i mean it's over-costed
in the same way most of the half-tracks are yeah again i've got an issue with
this army where he's paying all these points of transport that really don't
(27:24):
have a use case for because,
all you've got is like machine guns so you really want them to stay back and
just spray at long distance so it's bizarre that we've got so many transport
options from a game perspective we've got so many transport options and not
much fun stuff to transport.
What you don't have are AT grenades either. So it's not even like you can tool
(27:45):
up one of your squads of AT grenades and use them as anti-tank options.
Yeah. And no SMGs because of the sort of the lack of equipment due to the policy of neutrality.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's weird that you don't even get flamethrowers.
Like they're not even. No.
Couldn't even stockpile them from sort of World War I surplus.
(28:06):
There's just not an existence. So really, I think you want to keep people back.
So you're only buying transports in order to have more guns
is what i'm thinking here yeah if you
like daca this could be the army for you with with
a twist yeah yeah and it it's an
interesting one i'm i think it has legs this army but i'm not sure how well
(28:28):
you could play it sort of as a new player to it i think yeah there's a lot of
fun to be had and a lot of gaming of the system as it were yeah but I think
it's going to require sort of a lot of practice with this army.
So if you went to one of those events where you have like the 750-1250 split
and your first option can't take anything above 6+, you could put a lot of MGs into this list.
(28:52):
Problem is, if you've got to take the same nation at 1250, you're really going
to struggle when you boost it to that level.
But if you were playing some kind of recon patrol or nothing over armor 6.
Actually you can stick a lot of shots out with this list oh 100
and it's the infantry that's letting it down i think yeah yeah if
you took the transport options and put them in a different nation that could
(29:14):
have maybe stubborn or tough fighters or something yeah this would be really
powerful and it's so it's just sort of on the edge of becoming a competitive
force for me but anyway what sort of selectors have we got you have a you have a grand choice of three.
So you've got one that reflects the western front
right at the start of the war you've got one that reflects
(29:37):
the pacific theater and then in
new guinea you've got the gorilla selector as well interesting yeah
they're all fairly straightforward given that given the choices we just talked
through there isn't anything that sort of really jumps out in my view on any
of them no i agree the only thing that's interesting is if you are doing this
(29:57):
in the theaters only and you do the Battle of the Netherlands.
You can't arm the trucks okay which means that actually the thing that we were
just raving about yeah ignore the last 10 minutes yeah if if theaters ignore
the last 10 minutes if generic.
Rewind yeah but you're absolutely right other than that
it's fairly standard choices with sort
(30:20):
of the main perk being you can have one more infantry section so if
you're limited to a single platoon yeah you can throw in that 26 point
squad the the guerrillas do get some interesting interesting special
rules in in new guinea in terms you get field craft which is
where where you can set up hidden and an ambush
and you can also run through rough ground you get
infiltration which affects your outflanking and you
(30:41):
get the isolated resistance rule which means that any veteran units count
as stubborn and jungle warfare masters but they're
also exhausted the reason why you wouldn't do it is your
basic options are infantry a light mortar
team and nought three sniper teams so what
so you got 90 tank you got nothing no no
because they're guerrillas fighting obviously behind enemy
(31:03):
lines japanese invasion they didn't have
a lot of tanks in the pacific they didn't need to these are just you know
annoying pockets of resistance rather than concentrated coordinated
attacks that's crazy yeah mad
that's gonna be really hard to fill the points on
yeah like you're gonna struggle to get past a thousand
points if even to a thousand yeah yeah i
(31:25):
suppose if you take them all fun full strength veteran you
probably get there on a whim and a prayer yeah i mean those that's those special
rules are fun as well but they're not again they're not hugely competitive because
you don't have much in the list to to sort of use those rules no cool so phil.
I'm all excited to play dutch now where can i buy my models.
(31:46):
So they haven't got a huge number of choices the ones to look at are may 40.
And you get some...
And if you're in the UK, you can get them through Great Escape Games. So they have...
Small selection but you know probably sufficient in
terms of infantry squads and so on and they recently released
a kickstarter or they're in the process of that they're actually in
(32:07):
the middle of the kickstarter for the knil units
and options which look pretty cool to be fair nice i
mean you also get quite a lot of stls out there as well
i know on the light utility trucks there are stls on
wargaming 3d a lot of them so
i think dewey cat does one for about five dollars the stl
and obviously you get the file and then you can print as many of them as
(32:29):
you want yeah that's probably the way
i would go personally i i don't like to
3d print troops but for the vehicles i
think i'm gonna be because i actually don't know where else i can get
the models from if i'm looking for the the sort.
Of the peculiar dutch trucks yeah i imagine
a lot of kit bashing and like you said a lot
(32:49):
of stls 3d printing and so on niche effectively
yeah a lot of fun i imagine as a sort of
a hobby project yeah no definitely as a project i can
i can see it being interesting yeah and we've got quite a lot
of sort of loaned vehicles as well so you have got options
there of buying sort of the marman herrington or the the white
scout car yeah the lloyd carrier as well yes if
(33:11):
you're doing the the early war western front yeah then you
obviously got your early war british options and then you got a few more later
on in terms of us options and for the kn il nice well phil what do you reckon
you're going to start a dutch army no that was quite definitive it was quite
definitive that that wasn't my no but actually i will go and do it down the
line this was a no i'm not going to.
(33:34):
Why not there's no
hook for me yet based on what
i have read and seen yeah you see for me i actually have
considered this one before yeah well we've talked about the three-man
vehicles with the forward-facing ats haven't we yeah and
i think that the two barriers for me are the
historically it's been the lack of minis so it's
(33:57):
always been sort of a it makes it a bigger project
than starting a different nation and then
you've also got the those transports seem like
brilliant the idea of having a transport with like any tank gun
but then once you start to think about well what's your
actual infantry that's going to win you the game yeah it starts to
get a little bit more precarious the battle plan and
(34:18):
so that those are my two main barriers historically
for the dutch but i think i imagine
someone who's been playing these quite a while would do really well
with them in even in the competitive tournaments because
we see a lot of sort of armory tanks which the
light anti-tank guns ideal for taking on we did
(34:38):
see one at the welsh open two years
ago i want to say 2022 gentleman brought them and definitely wasn't at the bottom
after five games brilliant so if there are players out there who are successfully
running dutch armies please do Do drop us a message or put a comment on the
Facebook post when we launch this episode.
(34:59):
We'd be interested to hear what you do, how you build it, and where you get your minis from.
Yeah, and I look forward to seeing any photos that you share on the post.
It's always nice when we do the armies and people share their actual armies,
especially these ones that we really don't see very often.
It's really nice to see all the ways you've sort of kit-bashed models, etc.
Absolutely. And in the spirit of sharing, do please like, share,
(35:21):
and subscribe. Ta-ta for now. Ta-ta for now.
Music.
Music.
(00:08):
Welcome to Tales of Tommies. I'm Johnny and I'm Phil and in today's episode
we're talking about the armies of the Netherlands found in the armies of France
and allies book page 54 onwards.
Yeah they're not an army that you see very often and you might see why as we
run through the list but there are some interesting things you can do with them
(00:28):
particularly around the vehicles.
Indeed yeah so I mean they weren't in the war for a huge amount of time.
They very much tried to stay neutral and
failed so it's not a surprise that they are
sort of part of this book rather than getting an entire book
in their own right i believe also because they because
they had that policy of neutrality there wasn't a huge amount of military
(00:50):
spending and training going on which is why again
we're not going to see huge varieties in their troops but actually because they
were purchasing stuff from other nations i think you're right we're going to
see some interesting stuff in the vehicle section i would say they were in the
war longer than other european nations were because because obviously they had
the colony in terms of the Dutch East Indies. Yeah, that's a good point.
(01:11):
So in that sense, you know, in terms of the Pacific, they are there into 1942.
Rather than the rather short-lived period in the early part of the war in Europe.
Yeah, and because of that, we find some of that in New Guinea, don't we?
And so they may feature as we go through the army list.
Before we jump into the units, though, shall we go through the national characteristics? Yeah,
so these will be very familiar to those of you
(01:33):
you who've listened to our other allied minor nation
chats because they all appear in
other allied minor nations so the first one's communication
breakdown which you see in the french for example and
that means that in the first turn of the game if the first order dice drawn
from the cup is one of yours the enemy can decide that the
dice is put back into the cup and a new order die is drawn
(01:54):
instead so don't bring a sniper yeah second
one is forward artillery doctrine again very similar
to the french dutch armies get one free inexperienced or
regular artillery unit this unit can be any anti-tank
gun or any field artillery piece in the dutch
army list except for heavy artillery and this
is in addition to the number of artillery units normally available so bring
(02:18):
a medium howitzer and hurriedly conscripted reserves again very similar to the
french if the force includes three or more inexperienced infantry sections it
may include include a free inexperienced
infantry section identical to the cheapest one already purchased.
This is in addition to units chosen from whatever selector is used.
So bring full, full strength inexperienced squads. There we go.
(02:39):
Job done. End of episode.
Okay, Johnny. So in terms of the HQ, is there anything going on that we haven't
seen elsewhere or anything that is worthy of note beyond the normal worthy of note?
Not really. It's very similar to the national characteristics where...
It's just a mash-up of the other minors, effectively. So you've got the officers
(03:01):
at all the usual ranks, but inexperienced or regular, not veteran.
You've got a medic, only at regular. You've got a forward observer,
both and artillery, but only at regular.
And that's it, basically, for the HQ. So not a lot to write home about.
Cool, okay. What about the infantry squads and teams?
Not a huge amount. We've got four in the Armies of France and Allies book.
(03:23):
You've got regular and inexperienced infantry sections, which
are five to 11 men with the only option is
to add a light machine gun for 20 points so not a
huge amount of flavor there but does what it says on the
tin you then got some indonesian infantry they're again five to 11 men on this
one however your first five men have rifles and you're following six men are
(03:45):
unarmed specifically having the special room special rule that they They cannot
shoot nor attack in close quarters. Their only value is as casualties.
You can give them pistols, which is good. So for six points a man,
you're getting six pistol-armed men, which is actually quite a nice little way to pad the unit.
(04:05):
And you do have the option to give them a light machine gun,
which you're probably not going to use for an inexperienced squad.
But you can, if you are so inclined, like traditionally a Soviet player,
you can give them shirkers to take three
points off per man and have a really cheap squad is
this one of those stupid things where you can get for one point an
unarmed shirker wasn't there a whole thing
(04:28):
about this because they're four points for unarmed then you make them shirkers
for minus three yep so you can in fact you're it's
not all the men in the squad the first five men are going to be four points
a man like normal shirkers but you are right the unarmed men could be one point
a man which is actually really good value however i would pay the extra two
(04:48):
points to give them the pistols i think just so you've got tough fighters because
inexperienced tough fighting shakers.
Yeah they'd be pretty interesting i mean if you took them full
strength you could probably outflank them and then yeah hope
they don't get four pins by the time they they hit
a unit yeah which if you're outflanking they probably can get
to the back lines on turn five because you're getting to re-roll the
(05:09):
reserve check aren't you at full strength so it might be
a way to run them them okay or you could just use them as a
for what you're paying 20 points plus six
26 point squad yeah which would
be pretty tasty for 11 men it's like it's the same as a medic isn't
it 20 26 yeah medics like 25 isn't it or so 23 25 something like that yeah i
(05:29):
mean that is actually quite interesting although not overly useful i would say
yeah i think it's one of those oh we could do some shenanigans in terms of points
and all that sort of thing whether or not you should just because you can is
another thing entirely.
Yeah 100 and i think this is only gonna sort of
this spam a lot list is only going to happen in the unlimited
(05:50):
platoon tournaments rather than because most tournaments
are going to have one or two platoons if all you take is 26
points 11 man squads yeah you're not going to fill your points limit are you
no perfect for that 600 point doubles though yeah just if you just really want
that first order dice love the board yeah although you can't because you'd have
(06:10):
to give it back if your opponent says so well that's all right because you still got 40 dice to their 10.
Moving on moving on we've got the motorcycle
section which is just like all the other motorcycle sections
you're not going to take okay because it's 5 to
11 men but you're paying sort of
15 points a man for regulars and then you've got
(06:31):
a light machine gun i i don't really see the point in motorcycles in
bolt action to be honest so i'm not going to dwell too
long on it sure effectively it's the
alternative to buying a truck for them if you just want to dump them up
the board yeah because they haven't got a lot of special gear i
don't see why you would bother with it hopefully that's a
controversial opinion so someone out in the interwebs can tell me why motorcycles
(06:53):
actually brilliant at five points a model but that's all i've got in the armies
of france and allies book what have we got in the new guinea book phil so you
do get a couple more infantry squads in the new guinea book these represent
the knil gurus both of them are Our infantry squads,
they are both legit in a generic platoon and they're also legit in the KNIL
(07:13):
Guerrillas Theatre Selector, which is in the New Guinea book.
So the first one is the guerrilla rifle section.
These ones you can take inexperienced regular or vets, so opportunity to take some vets.
Five-man squad, normal costings in terms of 7, 10, 13.
You can add an NCO with a submachine gun. What you can also do,
and this is very similar to one of the Australian units from the New Guinea
(07:36):
book, is add a local scout.
So for 32 points in experience, 35 regular or 38 veteran, you can add a local scout.
And what this allows you to do when out flanking is to arrive on the short board
edge of your choice rather than having to choose before the game begins which
board edge that is going to be.
Nice it's i imagine that's useful in objective missions but not really in kill points or.
(08:01):
No well it's certainly not gonna be useful movement ones where there is
no flanking no it's also quite expensive to do
that yeah but because you've got no special gear it
is purely just so you can get into position isn't it the other
one you've got is the guerrilla light machine gun section so
despite this being a machine gun section it is
actually an infantry squad squad it's a four-man base unit
(08:22):
inexperienced regular or vet they're armed
with rifles with one person with a light machine gun obviously
a second person acts as the loader you can add
up to four additional men at the normal price of
7 10 or 13 you can have have a smg if you want and you can add that scout that
we just mentioned as well interesting thing with this is so unlike the the Japanese
(08:44):
MMG squad that replaces the MMG in the MMG section of the army list.
This replaces it in the infantry squad.
So if you really wanted to, you could have an LMG section as an infantry squad
and then also have your MMG in your normal choice.
Oh, that's a shame. That was going to be my question, because having a squad
(09:06):
in a team slot is a great way to pad out a platoon when you've got a platoon limit.
And so it's a bit of a shame, actually, that they've done that,
because I don't see a place for this in the infantry sections.
But I do see a place for it replacing the machine gun team.
Yeah and i well if you read the
fluff in the new guinea book it explains why they've
(09:26):
done it in terms of the guerrilla sections because of how they distributed
their lmgs across their infantry squads and i
would imagine it that is reflected in the theater selected from.
That book so yeah 100 and i think
it fits very similar in my thinking it fits
very similar to the last squad where if you want something to
dump on an objective from the flanks it'll do
(09:48):
the job but i wouldn't expect any much kill and power from it no cool
is that all the infantry sections from new guinea yeah
that is it is that everything from new guinea in fact or
do they have anything else in there no no that is it that is
everything brilliant stephanie so
in that case what do they have in the team weapons in armies of
france yeah so team weapons wise fairly straightforward
(10:10):
no great shakes or surprises you can
take an mmg team if you wish you can
take an anti-tank rifle team you can take a sniper team you
can take a medium water team and that is
it what about the artillery phil anything exciting in
there pretty much straightforward so you've got your light
medium or heavy artillery obviously as we said
(10:31):
you can take the you can take a an additional artillery piece but not the heavy
as part of your national rules you've got a light anti-tank gun you've got a
light anti-aircraft gun and you've got a heavy anti-aircraft gun nice it's nice
It's nice that they've got a heavy anti-aircraft gun. That's quite rare.
There is, I did note, one interesting thing on their artillery.
(10:54):
Which is because they're so outdated, these artillery pieces,
you never range in. That is interesting.
Although it is only if you pay the extra points or...
Not pay the extra points reduce the points cost okay yeah
so you can buy it normally or you can reduce the points
cost to add the severely outdated rule which is
the one that meant means they don't range in so i could for
(11:15):
my free one i could choose to have an
outdated one or i could choose to have a up-to-date state-of-the-art
one i would imagine so yeah it doesn't there's no there's no limits is
there on the free artillery piece in terms of it has to reflect
what you've already bought no no so i suppose what you could do is you could
pair a free medium up-to-date artillery piece yeah with an out-of-date heavy
(11:36):
artillery slightly cheaper yeah slightly cheaper but you get additional crew
for that i'm not sure it's worth saving 15 points though when you're on already.
115 points in on the heavy artillery piece and i
guess if you do that though you're you're going to use one as direct
fire and one is indirect fire aren't you so you're you're outdated
one is going to be your static direct firing gun
(11:59):
to you know to close down the firing lane and then
you might use your indirect not outdated one to
start ranging in that's exactly what i was thinking i was
thinking if you are going to pair the medium with
the heavy you put that heavy sort of alongside a building let's say with its
extra crew out of date so you're saving a bit of points and then the medium
(12:21):
behind so you can recrew you're doing the whole 12 inch recrew yeah yeah yeah
exactly And you could even actually pay for the veteran for the one that's going to be outdated.
It's going to work out about the same cost. A veteran outdated is going to cost
about the same as a regular up-to-date.
And so you can start adding the veteracy level to when you start re-crewing. Yeah, exactly.
(12:42):
I imagine there's probably even better shenanigans for players of the armies of the Netherlands.
I imagine I've thought of even wilder shenanigans than what I've just thought up there.
But there we go. I think other than the out-of-date cannons,
it's fairly mundane so far, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah. but we're about to move into vehicles okay just
(13:02):
glancing over i can see there's a wide selection cool
okay johnny so why don't you take us through the armored cars then armored
cars certainly so you've got the the landverk
armored car which is 135 points
regular it is a recce vehicle and it's not open topped
which is very nice for those 135 points
(13:23):
you're getting a light anti-tank gun with a coax mmg and
a hull mmg but in addition to
that you're also getting a rear-facing hull mmg so actually you're getting three
mmgs there yeah admittedly they can't all shoot the same thing because one of
them's facing backwards yeah but it's an interesting one to sort of just drive
up the table and sort of pirouette around spraying bullets yeah okay.
(13:48):
On the theme of MMGs, they've got the Marmon Harrington, which we all know and love.
So a recce, 80 points, armour 7, a pair of MMGs in the turret.
It's interesting in the armies of France and the Allies, it does specify,
it's not a restriction, but in the
fluff it does say, this was not used in Europe, this is used by the KNIL.
So if you do want to theme your generic platoon to a theatre.
(14:12):
Or a theatre of operation, not a theatre selector, in bolt action you do get
some guidance in the book yeah that's good stuff and then you've got the,
Alva Straussler armoured car and again it says the same thing doesn't it not
in Europe on that one turret MMG and a hull MMG so very similar same points
cost same recce same armour so it,
(14:35):
To be honest, I'd probably go for the Mormon. Because of that pad, yeah.
Although I actually haven't said that. The Alvas can put out two pins per turn.
You can put out separate pins, yeah. That's an interesting choice to make.
But I suppose it depends what else is in your list as to whether you need to
put out the second pin or whether you want the full 360 on both guns.
(14:56):
But moving on, you can save yourself 10 points by taking the,
what's that, the overall wagon. Overall wagon, yeah.
The overall wagon. it's probably a better way of pronouncing that but yeah
yeah i imagine it's something like overall wagon
i don't know but it's a patrol truck so
armor 7 70 points pintle covering the
front and both sides but not the rear you
(15:19):
can actually upgrade it with a
full pintle for 360 for five points i don't
think i would to be honest i think i'd save the five points and you
can make it an an hmg for 10 points probably won't but
it'd be nice to pin some armor but the
fun begins when you can add two additional pintle mmgs they are a bit of a faff
(15:39):
because they're sort of left and right and rear and rear yeah but i suppose
because it's recce you could actually drive it around backwards and have all
three mmgs shooting rearwards you could yes yeah there is an option for that. Yeah.
It is open top though so you are going to take the pins. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a risky one but I think there's.
(16:01):
That truck has some merit i think potentially it is
starting to get a bit pricey when you put all the guns on it's 100 points and
with it being open top bit of a risky proposition but i
imagine you're going to have a lot of fun with it and then the
final armored car on a similar theme it's open top this
one isn't recce though it's the the word
that we don't know how to pronounce the overall wagon yeah the overall
(16:23):
wagon this one's a navy gun truck not because
it goes in in the sea or anything i don't know it's just because it's got a
gun on the back of it yeah yeah yeah and it's a rear-facing light howitzer this
navy gun and but it also keeps a front-facing vickers mmg armor 7 as i said
(16:43):
open topped not a huge fan of that to be honest.
Because without the recce having to reverse up to shoot you like howitzer is
a risky proposition yeah yeah also quite tricky to get the angles on when it's
rear-facing and you haven't got recce because you can't turn and reverse.
So that's all the armoured cars.
What about in the tank slot, Phil? Lots of fun to be had there? I wouldn't say lots.
(17:05):
Fun, probably, but not lots. So you've got your Vickers Light Tank,
which is, as you see it in the British list, it's an inexperienced regular or veteran.
It has a turret-mounted HMG, a coaxial MMG. It's a 7-plus armoured car.
You can replace the coax for twin HMG for plus 10 points.
You can make it amphibious as well if you want to. that's interesting
(17:28):
because the hmg coax
mmg combo because because you
can't fire them both it seems like a bit of a waste but twin hmg
is interesting now i imagine because it's twinned you'd have to fire at the
same target so you're you're not putting out separate pins but that ability
to put six shots with minus one penetration depending on your or plus one penetration
(17:53):
sorry depending upon your range could be interesting if you can get into the
side doesn't have recce though so.
No, but it does have amphibious for five points, so you could catch them off
guard by driving at them from the sea. Yeah, true.
If you don't want to do that, though, you might want to take a Cardan Lloyd
Tankette, which is 44 points in experience, 55 points regular.
(18:15):
It's a 7-plus open-topped, forward-facing, hole-mounted MMG. That's it.
Straightforward. Good fun. I mean, 55 points isn't a lot of points to pay for
a machine gun pillbox. And then your last one is the Marmon Herrington CTLS,
which is an American-made light tank rather than the British version.
This has two forward-facing hull-mounted MMGs and one turret-mounted MMG for
(18:41):
7-plus damage value, armoured carrier.
I really like this. I mean, three MMGs for 80 points, all pointing in the same
direction as well, importantly.
I think that's got some legs, that one. one
what's interesting is there is no at
other than your hmg there's no at capability in
your tanks and in your armored cars
(19:03):
it's just that first one the landsverk armored car or if
you want to take the naval gun everything else is effectively just
mmgs yeah that is it is
really interesting i was thinking about myself first there's really
it's not often you see the tanks having
no anti-tank no and the anti-tank being found elsewhere
but in a game with a lot of infantry a
(19:26):
lot of mmgs really goes a long way and
so i'm actually a big fan of them yeah and if you a lot
of these vehicles obviously reflect the the pacific theater rather than the
european theater and that's exactly what you found you didn't have big tanks
in opposition it was a lot of infantry therefore mmgs and hmgs would have been
perfectly fine historically so yeah shall we move on to transport sir are we
(19:48):
going to see some at options in the transports johnny.
Spoilers but yes the transports the
the dutch really book the trend with
so the miners i always complain don't have
machine guns on trucks that's always my common complaint
yeah bizarrely with the dutch they might
even have too many guns on the transports is that possible
(20:10):
not for me but i think for a
man that runs dodge trucks all the time with mmgs on
them maybe even hmgs is that possible
it's well it's choice isn't it you
know the classic what is it the anyway i
think you are spoiled for choice and it's going to lead to indecision
so i'm going to jump straight in with the most exciting unit
(20:31):
the they have a light truck that carries 12
men 39 points regular yeah which isn't
that exciting yet but just wait you can have a
pintle mmg for 15 points standard and what's
more you can bang an additional two pintle mmgs
on it so you can have a truck with three mmgs admittedly the
additional two can only shoot right left rear but
(20:54):
that coming in from the outflank or
even just driving up the middle of the board three pins out not
a bad little option that there's a
bit like the half tracks isn't it but without paying
the extra points for the carrier yeah yeah yeah i'm the
tricky part is i don't know what i'm putting in this truck when i
rushed up the board no but if
(21:16):
again if you want to just treat it as a pillbox put it behind a wall.
Yeah and sort of you've got all three sides covered on a
funny angle yeah not bad i i'm probably not
going to do that to be honest but it's nice to have the
option yeah now the next one's interesting isn't it the the
utility the the light utility trucks and cars do
you want to talk us through that one so these are the ones that are really interesting so your
(21:37):
a basic option it's inexperienced regular veteran 17
21 25 points it's a soft skin
and it can take three men so far pretty meh
however you can add various
options you can add a pencil mounted mmg for plus
15 points you can then upgrade it to
an hmg for an additional 10 points you could add
(21:57):
another two additional pencil mounted mmgs covering
the right and rear left and rear for 15 points each or and
this is where it gets really interesting you can add a
forward facing or rear facing hole mounted light anti-tank gun for plus 50 points
finally in the transport section we find some decent at yeah and what's amazing
(22:19):
well what i think is amazing is because it doesn't lose its transport capacity you could take.
Basically as many as as you've got yeah yeah because
you can take that 26 point squad
and then take a 71 points regular
truck with a light only tank gun yeah maybe he's
(22:39):
even pushed the boat out for the machine gun as well 86 points
so what's that you're now 112 points in
two order dice you are going to need to put someone
in the in the vehicle to fire
both aren't you because it can only fire one that's a good point
that is a very good point so what i'll do is i'll let them die quickly so
they get down to three men and then jump
(23:01):
in oh it's a real shame actually that like machine gun
squad is four men rather because we could
have snuck them in i suppose actually you've made a good
point there maybe it's just not worth paying for the pintle machine gun no
but the ability for 71 points to take a transport which
has a forward facing like at when you haven't got a
lot of at elsewhere it's obviously not what
(23:22):
they were designed to do but if you wanted to you can
you can so choose given the options yeah yeah and it's quite useful because
you can shoot it with a one-inch shell and that gives you the d2 pins as well
so you can use it as a bit of an anti-infantry threat bit of a sort of even
if you can't kill the tanks with a light anti-tank gun you could just start
pinning them down so it's a really interesting choice.
(23:46):
I think it would probably be the way i would build
this army just for fun to have five
or six of these fellas and to be fair that is
how you like to play your americans isn't it in terms of soft
skins with big guns be that mmgs on
dodges or the uh the little light at dodge what's
it what's it called oh the m6 gmc or
(24:08):
the m6 gmc yeah that's how you like to build your your
americans sometimes yeah that's exactly what how i'm seeing this
truck as a gmc an m6
gmc but with an additional transport capacity it
does make it a bit vulnerable to be installed that's the
only thing but i mean i'll have five others
so you're welcome to steal one as long as
(24:30):
they're not in a live so that one goes the other four go as a consequence yeah
anyway if you want to you could take a jeep and you could stick an mmg on it
and lose your transport capacity because it's not like you haven't got a lot
of options for mmgs elsewhere in the list i don't understand why they added
this entry to be honest because,
why would you take I suppose it defends you against that being stolen option
(24:53):
but it does move it to the armoured car slot yeah
I suppose, actually, there is a place for it there if you just want to save
points on your armoured car, but you do want a machine gun in that slot. True.
You could take a tractor, if you want, the Trado tractor. You could also take a GMC tractor.
They're both tractors. And six plus.
(25:14):
You could take a Vickers Utility tractor, which is a tractor, but seven plus.
Well, the GMC and the Trado, the GMC can be inexperienced.
That's the only difference between them, isn't it? and then so 15
points for a regular gmc or 40 point
oh sorry 50 points for regular vicars but no
no weapons so it's quite a lot of points to spend
(25:35):
yeah just to get that seven plus first versus the
six plus yeah especially because the gmc can drag
any gun whereas the vicars is limited to medium anti-tank
or light howitzers so that that vicars can't
even tow the the free medium howitzer you got now what
you can do is get the m3 white scout car
which is a 69 points in experience 86 regular
(25:57):
or 103 veteran that comes with
a pintle mounted hmg covering the forward arc it's a seven
plus armored carrier with eight men if you want
to you can add a couple of additional pintle mounted mmgs and
if you also want to you can remove the
transport capacity and give it recce which will then shove
it into the armored car slot but that's where
(26:18):
you can get your seven plus recceed hmg with
up to two more mmg dacca armored cars
if you so wish yeah it's exactly the
same as the us entry and i've i really like the
model and i like the idea of this vehicle but i've never really found a use
case for it because it's just a little bit pricey i'm gonna have to try them
(26:41):
at at some point i think just because they've always been on my agenda but i
don't think there's a place for especially in this army where there's lots of
other fun things in the transport slot.
Yeah and then the last one is your overall wagen apc which effectively is a german 250 slash one.
Hanamag so it's 74 points regular for a seven plus
(27:01):
armor carrier for 12 men the reason why it's only 74
is it doesn't come with the mmg but you can add
add the mmg on for 10 points to get it up to 84 and then effectively it's a
12-man half-track with an mmg yeah nice enough yeah i mean it's over-costed
in the same way most of the half-tracks are yeah again i've got an issue with
this army where he's paying all these points of transport that really don't
(27:24):
have a use case for because,
all you've got is like machine guns so you really want them to stay back and
just spray at long distance so it's bizarre that we've got so many transport
options from a game perspective we've got so many transport options and not
much fun stuff to transport.
What you don't have are AT grenades either. So it's not even like you can tool
(27:45):
up one of your squads of AT grenades and use them as anti-tank options.
Yeah. And no SMGs because of the sort of the lack of equipment due to the policy of neutrality.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's weird that you don't even get flamethrowers.
Like they're not even. No.
Couldn't even stockpile them from sort of World War I surplus.
(28:06):
There's just not an existence. So really, I think you want to keep people back.
So you're only buying transports in order to have more guns
is what i'm thinking here yeah if you
like daca this could be the army for you with with
a twist yeah yeah and it it's an
interesting one i'm i think it has legs this army but i'm not sure how well
(28:28):
you could play it sort of as a new player to it i think yeah there's a lot of
fun to be had and a lot of gaming of the system as it were yeah but I think
it's going to require sort of a lot of practice with this army.
So if you went to one of those events where you have like the 750-1250 split
and your first option can't take anything above 6+, you could put a lot of MGs into this list.
(28:52):
Problem is, if you've got to take the same nation at 1250, you're really going
to struggle when you boost it to that level.
But if you were playing some kind of recon patrol or nothing over armor 6.
Actually you can stick a lot of shots out with this list oh 100
and it's the infantry that's letting it down i think yeah yeah if
you took the transport options and put them in a different nation that could
(29:14):
have maybe stubborn or tough fighters or something yeah this would be really
powerful and it's so it's just sort of on the edge of becoming a competitive
force for me but anyway what sort of selectors have we got you have a you have a grand choice of three.
So you've got one that reflects the western front
right at the start of the war you've got one that reflects
(29:37):
the pacific theater and then in
new guinea you've got the gorilla selector as well interesting yeah
they're all fairly straightforward given that given the choices we just talked
through there isn't anything that sort of really jumps out in my view on any
of them no i agree the only thing that's interesting is if you are doing this
(29:57):
in the theaters only and you do the Battle of the Netherlands.
You can't arm the trucks okay which means that actually the thing that we were
just raving about yeah ignore the last 10 minutes yeah if if theaters ignore
the last 10 minutes if generic.
Rewind yeah but you're absolutely right other than that
it's fairly standard choices with sort
(30:20):
of the main perk being you can have one more infantry section so if
you're limited to a single platoon yeah you can throw in that 26 point
squad the the guerrillas do get some interesting interesting special
rules in in new guinea in terms you get field craft which is
where where you can set up hidden and an ambush
and you can also run through rough ground you get
infiltration which affects your outflanking and you
(30:41):
get the isolated resistance rule which means that any veteran units count
as stubborn and jungle warfare masters but they're
also exhausted the reason why you wouldn't do it is your
basic options are infantry a light mortar
team and nought three sniper teams so what
so you got 90 tank you got nothing no no
because they're guerrillas fighting obviously behind enemy
(31:03):
lines japanese invasion they didn't have
a lot of tanks in the pacific they didn't need to these are just you know
annoying pockets of resistance rather than concentrated coordinated
attacks that's crazy yeah mad
that's gonna be really hard to fill the points on
yeah like you're gonna struggle to get past a thousand
points if even to a thousand yeah yeah i
(31:25):
suppose if you take them all fun full strength veteran you
probably get there on a whim and a prayer yeah i mean those that's those special
rules are fun as well but they're not again they're not hugely competitive because
you don't have much in the list to to sort of use those rules no cool so phil.
I'm all excited to play dutch now where can i buy my models.
(31:46):
So they haven't got a huge number of choices the ones to look at are may 40.
And you get some...
And if you're in the UK, you can get them through Great Escape Games. So they have...
Small selection but you know probably sufficient in
terms of infantry squads and so on and they recently released
a kickstarter or they're in the process of that they're actually in
(32:07):
the middle of the kickstarter for the knil units
and options which look pretty cool to be fair nice i
mean you also get quite a lot of stls out there as well
i know on the light utility trucks there are stls on
wargaming 3d a lot of them so
i think dewey cat does one for about five dollars the stl
and obviously you get the file and then you can print as many of them as
(32:29):
you want yeah that's probably the way
i would go personally i i don't like to
3d print troops but for the vehicles i
think i'm gonna be because i actually don't know where else i can get
the models from if i'm looking for the the sort.
Of the peculiar dutch trucks yeah i imagine
a lot of kit bashing and like you said a lot
(32:49):
of stls 3d printing and so on niche effectively
yeah a lot of fun i imagine as a sort of
a hobby project yeah no definitely as a project i can
i can see it being interesting yeah and we've got quite a lot
of sort of loaned vehicles as well so you have got options
there of buying sort of the marman herrington or the the white
scout car yeah the lloyd carrier as well yes if
(33:11):
you're doing the the early war western front yeah then you
obviously got your early war british options and then you got a few more later
on in terms of us options and for the kn il nice well phil what do you reckon
you're going to start a dutch army no that was quite definitive it was quite
definitive that that wasn't my no but actually i will go and do it down the
line this was a no i'm not going to.
(33:34):
Why not there's no
hook for me yet based on what
i have read and seen yeah you see for me i actually have
considered this one before yeah well we've talked about the three-man
vehicles with the forward-facing ats haven't we yeah and
i think that the two barriers for me are the
historically it's been the lack of minis so it's
(33:57):
always been sort of a it makes it a bigger project
than starting a different nation and then
you've also got the those transports seem like
brilliant the idea of having a transport with like any tank gun
but then once you start to think about well what's your
actual infantry that's going to win you the game yeah it starts to
get a little bit more precarious the battle plan and
(34:18):
so that those are my two main barriers historically
for the dutch but i think i imagine
someone who's been playing these quite a while would do really well
with them in even in the competitive tournaments because
we see a lot of sort of armory tanks which the
light anti-tank guns ideal for taking on we did
(34:38):
see one at the welsh open two years
ago i want to say 2022 gentleman brought them and definitely wasn't at the bottom
after five games brilliant so if there are players out there who are successfully
running dutch armies please do Do drop us a message or put a comment on the
Facebook post when we launch this episode.
(34:59):
We'd be interested to hear what you do, how you build it, and where you get your minis from.
Yeah, and I look forward to seeing any photos that you share on the post.
It's always nice when we do the armies and people share their actual armies,
especially these ones that we really don't see very often.
It's really nice to see all the ways you've sort of kit-bashed models, etc.
Absolutely. And in the spirit of sharing, do please like, share,
(35:21):
and subscribe. Ta-ta for now. Ta-ta for now.
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