FoW: Mid War Romanian Companie Tancuri

The curse of 'Ohh! Shiny' strikes again! I hadn't been planning on adding to my FoW forces as I already have four armies but the opportunity arose for an interesting deal. Paul, another of the Exiles, doesn't get much chance to play his Germans so had offered them for sale. I wanted to get rid of some of my 40K stuff so offered him a swap for my Necrons. The deal was done and I'll be picking up the following some time this week:

Company HQ of 2 Pz IV's
Panzer Platoon of 5 Pz IV's
Panzer Platoon of 5 Pz IV's
Panzer Platoon of 3 Stug's
Panzer Grenadier platoon 3 squads in trucks
Gepanzerte Panzer grenadier platoon of 3 squads in halftracks
Heavy Platoon of 2 HMG squads
Anti tank platoon of 3 Pak 40's
Anti aircraft platoon of 2 88 Flak 36 with tractors

Paul was intending to use them as an SS Wiking force but I don't want another LW force at the moment. So now that I've got them what am I going to do with them?

Well with Operation Sea Lion coming to an end in a couple of weeks a few of us are starting to look at what we want to do next. The consensus seems to be to move into Mid War (MW) for a while. Ben and I already have DaK forces we can use, I also have my Soviets which I can adjust to use as MW, Mazz has his Soviet Infantry and Adam looks like he is going for Finns. So after some thought I'm going to use my new force as Romanians.

Romanian T-4 tank

I had a look at the options on EasyArmy.com and decided to go for a Companie Tancuri with the following make up:

Companie Tancuri Tank Company

Romanian Mid-War

Platoon	Qty	Unit	Points
Headquarters
Companie Tancuri HQ p.161	1	T-4 (Panzer IV G)	120
Combat Platoons
Heavy Tancuri Platoon p.161	3	T-4 (Panzer IV G)	355
Heavy Tancuri Platoon p.161	3	T-4 (Panzer IV G)	355
Heavy Tancuri Platoon p.161	3	T-4 (Panzer IV G)	355
Divisional Support
Vanatori Blindata Platoon p.165	1 4 6	Cmd Vanator de Care MG team TB 251 half-track MG team	190
Vanatori Motorizata Platoon p.163	1 6 3	Cmd Vanator de Care Rifle/MG team Rifle/MG team 1.5-ton truck	125
Armoured Car Platoon p.172	1 2	Sd Kfz 223 (radio) Sd Kfz 222 (2cm)	85
Motorised Artillery Battery p.165	1 1 1 4	Cmd Rifle team Staff team Observer Rifle team Skoda 100mm M14 (100/17) howitzer	165
Company Points:			1750

Although this doesn't include everything I got from Paul I can use the leftovers in other forces to give me more options. I need to buy the Armoured Car Platoon, but this isn't a problem as I've been meaning to get one for a while. The artillery are going to be a pain though as the guns plus staff teams etc are going to cost £33.50 retail which is more than I want to spend. I may just see if I have anything I can proxy instead or I may look at Skytrex guns and a Battlefront Romanian Artillery group for the figures.

I think the force is fairly well balanced. I have the Pz IV's as the main offensive arm with the armoured cars to provide the recon to remove ambushes or GtG. My infantry are capable of moving fast to assault or grab objectives, but they can also stay put and deal out a lot of defensive fire. Finally the artillery can provide support fire or smoke and I can also use them as anti-tank guns if necessary. Plus they are Breakthrough Guns which can help winkle out dug-in infantry.

The only problem is that they will need painting. Luckily Romanian tanks were just plain grey so a quick spray of grey primer and a coat of Army Painter dip should sort them out. The infantry will take a bit longer but there's only a few of them. There's also a nice article on the Battlefront site on painting Romanian forces which I can use for inspiration.