So the concluesion is mechanised infantry for the win, not mechanised int he sense of todays mechanised formations. And bens tourney scores improve with every post.

Pretty sure a modern mech inf battalion doesn't have MBT's a part of its core TO&E. I thought they got cross attached from armored battalions (or is it brigades? I get confused above company level!) and got called "teams" at the company level. But this could be US based and not UK (But how many active MBT's do we have these days?)

Active? Who knows, the damn things break down all the time. I think we have a paper strength of a few hundred Challenger 2's, however most are mothballed, we've a 100+ operational and in all honest likely to cut that further.
A lot of companies are re-equipping with Scimitar light tanks which are an unprintable word and somewhat pointless as I doubt even those formations have an idea what they are supposed to do in a war. But there is a lot of politics over those blue blooded cvalry formations

At division and brigade level they are mixed. A battlegroup would be taken out of a brigade in theory, in reality it could be from a mixture of brigade.

The 4th mechanised Brigade consists of
204 Signal Squadron (Signals and Brigade HQ)
The Queen's Royal Lancers (Formation Reconnaissance)
The Royal Dragoon Guards (Armoured)
1st Battalion, Scots Guards (Armoured Infantry)
1st Battalion, The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment (King's Lancashire and Border) (Mechanised Infantry)
1st Battalion, The Mercian Regiment (Cheshire) (Light Role)
4th Regiment Royal Artillery (Self Propelled Artillery)
21 Engineer Regiment Royal Engineers

Here armoured is mostly challengers though increasingly scimitars. Reccie is a variety but nothing heavier than a scimitar. Amroured infantry is Warrior AFV's, mechanised is Saxon APC's, light is trucks and SPGs are those 155 beasts and rockets. The equivalent in Epic would be Leman Russ, Salamanders, infantry in Chimera, infantry in rhinos, dismounted infantry, basilisks and manticores.

Last time anything like this fought was iraq during the invasion and one incident in Al somewhere or other where they put a shed load of challengers and warriors through a town to shock, awe, lure the muppets there into fighting (it worked, a lot of Iraqi's obviously died for no loss amoungst the brits, they got a bit wiser after one more attack on the base, that or they simple ran out of young men who didn't know what to expect) and resupply the garrison.

The real issue is the fixed nature of the epic formations.

If, for instance, you could buy a mech infantry and leman russ company and then say put 3 tanks with 4 chimeras + Inf and then 6 tanks with the rest of the infantry you would approach the sort of organisation modern formations end up in.

This is all possible using Future War Commander with the Red Guard list.

Well, sort of. The latest iraq invasion had conventional companies next to each other. The urban fighting that followed was a complete mix. That re-supply operation was 4 challengers and 14 warrior IFV's, so a 1-2 company sized op in Epic terms.

1500 points then!

Of course I think the steel legion is really a WWII era soviet force and not a modern nato force at heart.

Haven't read the whole post (can't be bothered), but I agree entirely with the above. Guard never seem to struggle at tournaments as far as I can see. They may not win ll the time, but they don't get pasted constntly either. Dave T wins when he uses them, Tim wins regularly with them... it's all about skill. They just don't have quite the "I win" button that say Air Assault Marines have.

I'd be interested to know if there was a noticable win/loss difference between Guard lists that take Russ Companies and those that don't.

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Over the last 2 seasons I have it as,
No tank co.
W-17 D-18 L-12
With tank co.
W-23 D-19 L-37

This season with new list,
No tank co.
W-6 D-4 L-2
With tank co.
W-4 D-7 L-9

What I found interesting was the stats of individual regular players at events (using %).

Tim Hunt
W-46% D-20% L-33.3% - Overall stats
W-43.75% D 31.25% L-25% -Steel L. stats (with no Tank Co.)

Chris Steele
W-8.9% D-30.4% L-60.7% - Overall stats
W-0% D-50% L-50% - Steel L. stats (with Tank Co.)

Richard Laking
W-51.7% D-13.8% L-34.5% - Overall stats
W-36.4% D-27.2% L-36.4% - Steel L. stats (with Tank Co.)

Matt Arnold
W-42.4% D-35.6% L-22% - Overall stats
W-50% D-25% L-25% - Steel L. stats (with Tank Co.)
W-33.3% D-33.3% L-33.3% - Steel L. stats (with no Tank Co.)

Dave Bartley
W-33.3% D-24.1% L-42.6% - Overall stats
W-50% D-16.7 L-33.3% - Steel L. stats (with no Tank Co. but with Leman Russ upgrades)

I tend to agree with some of the discomfort about Steel Legion IG: like the SM Land Raider, the SL Leman Russ company looks 'cooler' than it is.

The thing is, IG seems to be derived from 1941/42 stereotyped (i.e. non-Siberian) Soviets. By 1943 Soviet armored formations were well-equipped, fairly reliable, and capable of moving fast. By '44 they're pulling off 'deep-battle' encirclements, and playing the 'blitzkrieg' game nearly as well as their German counterparts.

You can set up a 'Soviet-style' Steel Legion army, but it doesn't include Lemann Rus tanks: they're too slow. If you imagine Chimeras as T-34s with lots of Desant infantry, maybe...

WW2 Soviets with Matilda tanks, or Monty's British with Commissars thrown in for good measure -- shades of the 1995 movie, Richard III.

But if I were to proxy my GHQ soviets into any particular army, it'd probably be blitzy Orks.

Can I just say that I have never been any good playing with a Tank Co. Super Heavies yes, 10 Leman Russ and I'm pants.

Seems like nobody's any good playing with a Tank Company!




About the same number of wins, but three times the number of losses. That's a trend.


The year's not over, but less wins, and four times the number of losses.
Less games played can be put down to variant IG lists now being available.


Yup, these stats just back up my feeling about Russes; I'm going to start considering Leman Russ Tank Companies overpriced.

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Matt Arnolds stats would seem to point to IGw tank co being his most successful army, Mark Hargrave took IGw tank co to 3 events coming 3rd, 3rd, 1st with only 1 loss from 11 games - his most successful list.
The losses are padded by a variety of newcomers who bring a tank co and lose heavily.

IMO they are difficult to use but when you get the knack of what to surround them with and how to use them they are very effective.

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Playing against Mark & Matt's Tank Companies was scary, as was Dave B's if I remember correctly.