Late French Breakdown Addendum

  I need to make an addition to my breakdown of the Late War French because I left out two things, an upgrade option and an infantry squad.

I'm going to start with the upgrade because it comes from the same source as the Late War French army list, that being the Battle of the Bulge campaign book. That upgrade is rifle grenades, anyone familiar with early war France will be familiar with these as they are the same as VB launchers. For those unfamiliar it is a 6 to 18 inch indirect fire weapon with a 1 inch HE template. The entry for rifle grenades states that French squads may have up to 3 without specifying which squads specifically can take them so that should apply to any French unit so lets take a look each unit with that upgrade.

Regular Infantry Squad: If you give them stubborn and take the max 3 rifle grenades they can support an FFI heavy platoon.

Inexperienced Infantry Squad: If you're gonna take these guys this is a good choice, inexperienced troops, in my opinion, benefit from these weapons the most since their veterancy does not effect their to hit roll with indirect weapons which makes these guys deadlier on the table.

FFI Squad: These are the inexperienced troops you really want to give the rifle grenades to because of the reasons mentioned above and the cost of the rifle grenades, which I forgot to mention is rather hefty, is balanced out by getting a free unit of FFI.

Moroccan Goumiers: The rifle grenades really contradict the purpose of these guys which is to clos in and assault enemy units, I wouldn't recommend putting rifle grenades on these guys.

Tirailluers squad: Refer to my above statement.

Brigade de Choc squad: Rifle grenades on these guys could be useful, I could kind of see a bigger squad of these with an LMG and the rifle grenades to provide an anchor for a platoon that goes heavy on the FFI but you could build an FFI squad to fill that same roll, these guys are just harder to kill.

D'Eclaireurs Skieurs squad: I mentioned in the last post that I loved this unit and now I have another reason why. Their versatility in options for specific missions has now increased by giving a mountain troops unit three rifle grenades and pairing them up with a squad or two of tough fighting mountain troops. Use this squad to lay down a suppression barrage on your target then move in for the kill with your tough fighters.

SAS squad: They can outflank with 3 HE weapons but your expensive squad is now even more points heavy and honestly a howitzer or mortar can probably already be working on whatever target your SAS took 3 turn to try and attack with outflank.

Prevot Militaire sqaud: Maybe paying for the 4 guys to have rifles so that they can now have rifle grenades is worth it but probably not, that's a lot of investment in a really fragile unit with no real benifits.

French Intelligence squad: My thoughts on giving these guys rifle grenades mirrors my thoughts on giving the SAS rifle grenades. Not much point really.

Rifle grenades, they're an interesting piece of kit that can benefit a couple of France's squads but they are points heavy so I never take them and that's why I forgot to mention them in the initial break down.

The second missing entry from the break down comes from the Campaign: Battle for France book and that is French engineers. The author of that book specified that this unit can be taken in the Late War French list which is particularly nice since a lot of campaign book units don't have it specified where they can be taken.

French Engineer squad: Min 5 max 11, can be inexperienced, regular, or veteran. You can tell this was designed primarily as an early war unit because the NCO comes with a pistol and the rest get rifles and the squad is light on upgrades. The big one is the flamethrower, this is why people love and take engineers, they're flamethrower teams with ablative wounds. Other then AT grenades this is the only weapon option they can take. This kind of makes the unit rather disappointing because if they loose their flamethrower they're just another squad of only rifles, which can at least be stubborn. I guess they can have rifle grenades, which could be interesting if each rifle grenade engages a separate target and the flamethrower shoots a fourth unit making for quite the pin generating squad if everything hits. Their last option is the ability to take motorcycles so you can make them fast moving while potentially saving on a transport.