Being a good General and reading the stats heavily to get to know thine enemy, I've run into a couple of problems.

In all the text the MG48 is supposed to be a superior weapon (which it is in DT) but is now exactly the same as the Victory MG, I know you can't always rely on the blurb and definately not DT stats but this is backed up by the example on page 43 where the MG48 indeed has a vale of 4/1 v armour 2 soldiers. So, FFG which is correct, the weapon lines for the Recon Grenadiers or the rest of the book?

And then we have the grenades or rather lack of them. On page 109 it tells us that the Grenadiers "knives.. but ironically, not always, grenades." This would imply that most of the Grenadier units would have grenades, but the problem is that only Snipers have them! Why snipers and not the units at the front of the battle? Even the text for the Recon Grenadiers states that they have grenades - but where are they? Should they have them or not? Has the weapon line been left off?

Both of these issues combined appear to leave the Axis soldier at a severe disadvantage to their Allied counterpart, Take the Battle Grenadiers and The Gunners for example, both the same points, both form the same role in battle, even at long range and in a knife fight all is equal, until things get close. The Gunners with their UGL's are now rolling 13 dice against the BG's 7 - almost twice as many and it gets worse if there is a street fight as the Allies ignore cover as well! It certainly looks like that a grenade line has been left of the Grenadiers weapon lines. Can you please add the genades to balance it up. This isn't just a one off, it's with every unit.

So, seeing that I find all my standard grenadiers at a disadvantage to the Allies, I start looking at the fancy stuff.

Laser Grenadiers - pathetic, with only being able to re-roll once, on average you might get 3 hits, 4 on sustained. Not so good compared to the cheaper recon boys 15 dice and 5 hits - and ignoring cover. The AT ability of the lasers is only marginally better than the UGL. So, the LG are not up to it, lets move onto the heavies…

Now it's looking bad, ok if I can keep the enemy at 16" range, but if they move a few inches and get those UGL's in range The Gunners still retain their 13 dice attack armour 3 having no effect and to make it worse Damage Resilience is now almost worthless granting just an extra dice against attack, The Gunners will wipe out the more expensive heavies in a firefight, unfortunately as the Axis weapons have been downgraded from DT, the reverse isn't true.

Now I know that crunching numbers isn't everything and luck, situation, tactics and other factors come into play, but the Axis infantry do seem to be at a disadvantage due to the Allied UGL's, not having any grenades themselves, and all their MG's downgraded.

Do the Axis have any advantages over the Allies to compensate?

Ouch. I wish I could say that you'd read something wrong, but I can't. And still I have trouble winning with the Americans (the only 'allies' are the British paratroopers), thanks largely to the German (again, I see no Italian, Romanian, or Japanse forces here. I call it as it appears) Kampfaffan and Untertoten units. These are blindingly fast, take no suppression whatsoever, are tough, and put out a lot of dice (20 attack dice vs. Infantry armor 2 for the zombies, 12 for the gorillas). And with Marcus leading a unit of affen, they get to attack as part of their move action, meaning they can attack from outside of 12", and the reply must be close combat weapons…with which very few units can affect armor 3 infantry.

That's my answer to but I don't want to have to rely on Apes and Zombies all the time. The problem I see with these guy's is if you can't suppress the enemy target first, can't the Allies just walk away before being attacked with a reaction?

FFG call the Armies Axis and Allies, not by individual nations, so I've done the same.

i cant say i disagree with any of your comments Major, but i cant say balance has been an issue so far in the games I've played. Right now i can see there are slight balance issues but i cant say i feel axis infantary are bad. The issue resides in the fact that allied infantary have a great number of "ignore cover" weapons, designed to give the allies an agressive play style, yet the damage output is also boosted. Id like to see recon boys played as WYSIWYG, with only 2 underslungs in a unit.

As for lasers, this comes up a lot. My sugestion is to use them in sustained fire mode to really maximise that damage output. The beauty of lasers is their flat damage lines against the majority of targets - they can damage any target, but pay for it in raw damage out put.

I had noticed the grenades (lack thereof), but hadn't noticed the MG downgrade. Sad.

It could be that play testing had the axis grenades taken out to balance them out. Lazer might have been a little op with grenades? Axis has advantages in walkers that might compensate for allies troops. Try taking more anti infantry walkers. Also iv found that Snipers are a must add for axis, one team per platoon and Angela as well. The snipers can take down 1/3rd of those pesky heavy teams at extreme range, also Ang added to a lazor squad can react with overwhelming firepower. Bulkrutz platoons allow you bring back lost infantry as zombies that can quickly turn the tide of CC back in your favor as well.

But yeah i noticed that as well. Seems like Grenades should have been standard issue for most infantry.

I hope it's an omission due to error, not design for play balance. While fluff = rules, I'd like to think Grenadiers would have grenades. Play balance should have been achieved in other ways. Also, having trained Scout-Sniper teams in CQB irl, I find it laughable they are the only units with grenades. Grenade use wasn't in any of my courses. Not sure about WWII era though. Perhaps they were then, as second rifles weren't issued, so they could probably hump a few grenades.

The recon grenadiers could really use their grenades back. The battle grenadiers are fine as is and the lasers are really down to dice rolls. So far I love using them. But I find they work best in the standard battle platoon for the axis with the Blitzkrieg order. That special order is so flexible it is almost a must have with laser troops. You get to issue a move order to which no one can respond and leaves no reaction tokens on the unit. This makes the lasers lethal especially with Sigrid joined to the squad. You can either move to safety, move in to sustain attack, or move in to force your opponent to consider the laser troop's reaction fire which is lethal to the level 3 infantry and not bad vs level 2. In fact that's where I'd say the lasers fit in combating level 3 infantry. Really I think we are going to have to play enough to categorize where these units fit. Laser troops like picking on high cost infantry where 5 shots can kill 3 troopers very quickly. I'm still lost on our medium walkers though. So far mine has rolled less than 5 hits in our 150pts games. The dice really kill you in this game with or without lasers.

As to balance, the Axis forces OWN range. With a 20 pt Heinrich, you can severely hamper the Allied rush. In fact at every level of mech, the Axis have better, longer, and cheaper… period. Toe to toe at range is an easy Axis win. The Allies have to sneak up, the Axis have to use their range. Our games have seemed really balanced and very smooth. But I'm looking from a purely game mechanic point of view…. not a fluff one.

The Walkers are unbalanced also. Consider

Heinrich vs Wildfire
Heinrich has additional 6" range
Wildfire rolls one additional die vs infantry
Wildfire is Fast
Bottom Line: Wildfire is clearly superior, except in terrain with long LOS

Ludwig vs Pounder
Ludwig rolls one additional die against vehicles
Pounder rolls 3 additional die against class 2 infantry, 1 against class 3 infantry
Pounder has a turret (do not underestimate the value of 360 degree arc of fire- worth a few points at least)
Pounder has Jump
Bottom Line: off by at least 5 points

Dr.Cornelius said:

what about the Mickey in this equation Fast, Jump and Self Repair for 35pts a bargain even with the 75mm howitzer…… i defy anyone to provide any logic to support the Walker points values.

Kasper Hauser is korrect (sorry; silly German accent inspired). The Mickey is my choice for American walker - it's good against almost everything in the game! And should be at least 40 points.

And, yes, walker point values are off. And I couldn't tell you just how to remedy them.