Peasant army part 2 – Romanian Cavalry Battalion (Mid War)



Ok, so in the first post of the series I mentioned my love for Romanian army. This feeling actually extends to all periods so Mid War Romanian Cavalry is not an exception. What can be more charming than an angry mob of mounted peasants charging at the enemy, waving their sabers?!? J 

Anyway, enough with the bullshit. Let us talk analysis. I have already built my favorite list and signed up for a 1650 Mid War tournament  (you should be able to see the details here: Wojna Światów tournament) . Why did I choose this list in the first place? Why not one of the other Romanian briefings available in Eastern Front?

The answer is: cheap infantry, mounted scouts & tons upon tons of firepower. 

Since Romanian Cavalry has no strong mobile elements (not counting mounted infantry), I decided to go for an infantry-like approach to list building. First of all, I upgraded all my battalion commanders with Vanator de Care – I will definitely need that extra anti-tank capability if I go hand to hand with tanks. Then I picked 2 strong infantry units – 13 teams each (dismounted, since It was not realistic to paint all these cavalry stands before the tournament). Considering that Elite rating gives me 66% chance to be veteran, my assumption is that at least one of them will actually be vet in every game. Of course, the commanders were upgraded to carry the Romanian version of the Panzerknacker. 

My next step was to go for some ranged anti-tank. This is where things get interesting. The briefing allows the Romanian player to field tons of guns. So I decided to … take all of them! J I got myself a nice German platoon of 4x Pak40s accompanied by two Romanian companies: 6x captured 45mm obr 1937 + 12x KF 75mm cannons (which are really a dual purpose artillery). In total, the battalion includes 22 anti-tank gun teams! What is more, 18 of them (45mm and 75mm) are horse artillery, which in the right circumstances (and provided I manage to paint all my carts) can increase their mobility.

Moving on, I had to add some offensive capacity to my force. My first choice to do this was to include a recon element. Since I still had quite a few points left, I managed to get a full cavalry scout platoon of 7 bases, including a Vanator de Care upgrade.

Two other platoons that would boost my ability to attack were: a Pz35 unit of three tanks and a 4 tube mortar  platoon for smoke.

In the end, my final list was:

Romanian Cavalry PDF

Elite (except for C/V Pak40s)

HQ 2x Cavalry Rifle/MG + 2x VdC

Platoon 1: 13x Rifle/MG + VdC

Platoon 2: 13x Rifle/MG + VdC
Platoon 3: 4x 81mm mortar
Platoon 4: 6x 45mm obr 1937 + cavalry limbers
Platoon 5: 3x T-35 (Pz35)
Platoon 6: 7x Cavalry Rifle/MG scouts + VdC
Platoon 7: 4x German Pak40
Platoon 8: 12x KF 75mm + cavalry limbers 

Up until now, I only had the chance to test it twice in Fighting Withdrawal against an American Rifle company and British Paras. I intentionally wanted to try this mission as it is a pain in the bottom for such a slow moving force that also has a huge footprint. The result of this practice was more or less satisfactory. This was mostly based on the fact that I am able to attack 2 objectives at the same time – so the enemy does not know exactly where the main effort will be. I won both games but there were cases where I would really get frustrated with my platoons getting pinned and just sitting there for 2 turns in a row (even though they were confident veterans with a commander re-roll). Also, guns did not have the time to do their job properly. I am not really looking forward to be the attacker in this mission but now I am also a bit more positive about it if I am forced to be one.

One overall problem with the list is that it lacks mobility. This is in fact an infantry battalion that is Always Attack vs other infantry and gets a roll-off against other mech forces. I will still stick with the original intention, but my fear is that I will have to upgrade at least one infantry company to the mounted version (and paint some more Romanians - YAY!).

Anyways, since this is a list that I intend to visit 2016 ETC with, you will soon have more chances to read about my ups and downs with Romanian Cavalry. Hope you will enjoy it! J