We are up to mission 23+, liberating the 6th army from the clutches of Stalingrad, after repelling the Dieppe raid.
https://youtu.be/KSG4yM9KM14
Core has grown reasonably, with the weakest advance in infantry. The thing is, I don't see needing beyond 3-4 infantry, as rockets and tanks (Flamm later if needed; they work great on fort hexes) can cover most things. Star are experience, which I'm having a very hard time getting up in FM. Experience cap is currently 400 just recently, and core deployment is 48, which means infantry are sitting out a lot. Letters are heroes. I currently have somewhere between 24-26k prestige, after I resell some units I have been fishing heroes on. Doing very well on surrendering full strength T-43/41 and KV-1s.
Infantry: have some nice defensive infantry for the defensive maps. No spotting yet STILL, very annoyed about that.
FJ 250 XP A2 A2 D1
Pio 250 XP D M
Cavalry 200 XP A D2
Kradschutzen 310 A D2 I
Kradschutzen 189 M D2
MG42 180 A2 A
MG42 297 A3DI (bonus hero) D A
MG42 301 A D2 I
10 × Osttruppen. These are 60 prestige throaway units with 2 hard attack, like later Volkssturm. They bait out enemy units and artillery hits for cheap cheap replacements. Currently one has M and one has A. You can watch videos for how I use them to save random chip damage on my more precious units.
Tanks: Still favoring movement and initiative heavily for late game Tiger II and Maus candidates. Stars are rare. KV-1's have finally been captured, however, so I retired the Matilda with 3 defense.
PzIIIJ/1 287 M D3
PzIVG 313 M I A
PzIVG 255 M S
Char 313 M A A
Char 306 I A3
Matilda 250 A D3
KV-1B 264 S A3
KV-1B 202 A D (throwaway unit that's just used for tanking now)
KV-1B 255 S I
SE PzIIIN 325 M M A2. This has 9 soft attack, which is the highest out of everything we have now and does great against infantry on hills. Also 4 close defense.
SE PzIVF 172 A3 D2. Great heroes, but not as useful on the super expensive tanks. May sidegrade to a Flamm. (Just kidding, no SE Flamms. Guess it might be a IIIN)
SE PzIVG 260 M D2
SE PzIVG 312 M I A3
Recon: favoring spotting and moving, although haven't lucked into these at all. Relying a lot on trying to surrender enemy units, including the massive waves of guns spawned by AI rommel prestige. Recon moves help with that; the SS versions have base 9 movement.
SE Sdkfz 232 239 I D3
SE Sdkfz 232 102 S M. This guy has died 4 times.
SE Sdkfz 232 244 A3 D3. Wow on all the defense heroes. Unfortunately they're all still hard targets.
Big guns:
Gustav M R D2
Karl Gerat D. Really want range heroes on this guy, or at minimum move heroes, else it gets unwieldy to use later. May just scrap it.
Armored train 400 R A2 D
Armored train 338 A3 D3. Armored trains are excellent, coming in at 210 prestige and being cheaper than 10.5 cms to overstrengthen. Can't buy more, though.
Artillery: still low on the attack heroes front, but excellent on the utility heroes. Have disbanded quite a few wuhrframen, with the idea being that an A3 hero is basically equivalent to 3 stars (we don't care about defense/initiative from experience on artillery, or hopefully you shouldn't be
)
Nebelwerfer 42 374 M M
Nebelwerfer 42 335 M A. The 42 versions cost 323 prestige and have 21 soft attack. Quite a good value.
10.5 cm(p) 400 A3DI (bonus hero) A. Still chilling and haven't upgraded.
K 18 (4 range these babies have) 400 M A2
K 18 400 M D
K 18 400 A R
21 cm Mrs 18 A R R. This has 3 base range but 19 soft and 15 hard attack. Useful for knocking a few suppression points onto KVs, especially the KV-5 with 24 defense.
Wuhrframen cloning grounds: have ten or so currently in the core taking up about 20% of our equity. Notably, one (R) one (R M A) one (M D) and one (A2 A). Ones with movement and range I would like to sidegrade to the eventual 30 cm nebelwerfers with 30 soft attack, which can suppress Allied infantry with full entrenchment.
StuG/anti-tank: I've grouped these including the artillery ones together. Note that this mod does not have switchable modes past what vanilla PzC offers.
StuG 400 D2 D. Weighing in at 251 prestige, I've been keeping these minimally overstrengthened for now so that they are cheap front-line tanking units with 11 ground defense. Now in late 1942, need to reconsider by either upgrading to StuH 42 with 15 defense or not having them exposed as much.
StuG 344 A3D3
StuG 322 A3DI (bonus) A. Note that despite getting this earlier, it has less stars, because the attack/defense differential is too large.
StuG IV prototype (no hero sadly). Just received. These are great switchables that can get experience off artillery mode then transition to anti-tank mode.
StuG III/F 211 A2DI2 (bonus hero) I. 3 initiative bonus will make this a monster invulnerable later.
StuG III/F 73 D3
StuG III/F 82 A2. I'm mostly interested in initiative heroes, since the Jagdtiger later will have plenty of penetrating power. 3 defense is pretty nice as a front-line bait unit, however...
Antiair: still a lack of attack heroes, and surprisingly no range heroes yet (these don't really matter too much). Also have a hard time getting experience still due to my tendency to clear the skies early as possible. I don't disband these as much because experience matters (2 attack value per star)
8.8 221 A D
8.8 341 M D A2
8.8 257 A D
8.8 240 M D2
8.8 159 A
Sdkfz 7/1 336 M D2 A (ugh)
Sdkfz 7/1 125 A (ugh)
plus several new ones
Luftwaffe: the elephant in the room. We will be expecting up to 15 strength 5 star enemy fighters in the distant future, so this arm needs to be strong, strong, strong. In FM it's extremely difficult pickings, so I have relied on strafing runs for 1-2 experience. I disbanded about 3 fighters due to bad (1 attack or defense; or movement for my first two) heroes. Overstrengthening now at 12-13. I haven't upgraded to Bf109G because it is 2 attack at the cost of 1 initiative.
Bf 109F 342 A3 A1 A1
Bf 109F 369 D A3 A
Bf 109F 320 S I
Bf 109F 354 A3 D M
Bf 109F 356 A2 A1 A2
Fw 109A 368 A2 A1 I. As we see, most heroes are maxed out. They will be excellent interceptors but the lack of initiative heroes will really hurt later on. I plan on running a half Me 163B and half 262 force. The former has the highest initiative in the game.
Bombers: I've run through about 10 Stukas with bad heroes thus far. Bombers need only attack heroes. Very lucky on level bombers.
Ju 87D 360 A3IS (bonus hero) M I. Unfortunate 2nd and third rolls.
Ju 87D 171 A3I3 (bonus hero received at Stalingrad). Not sure what the 3 initiative will really do, as I'm still not going to drop it on a Bf-110, but the starting out 3 attack helps!
Ju 87D 327 A2 M A2 A2
Ju 88 371 A2 D2
He 111 344 A2 D2
He 111 400 A2 A2
Do 217 100 A3
Plus 3 others in training. We only care about attack heroes here.