So, as discussed in the last forum, I thought of making up a supplement of Tanks! to suit the Girls und Panzer universe. Partly because I liked the series, but mostly is me always thinking, how we can draw more players into our fascinating hobby without subjecting them to history, shalt they not wanteth thus, and try to pose an introductory to historical wargaming through popular culture. And so this is one of my projects that sprawled up on the theme. So, enough of introductions, to the report. I am writing right after the game before I forget, however it is late at night, and I may have written something a bit hazy, apologies in advance, is something makes no sense, let me know. This game is the first trial of the idea. So the rules were simple:
- Each player is limited only by amount of tanks, for low tier, this becomes 5, mid tier this becomes 10, high tier this becomes 20. No points limit
- Each side, be it combined or individual players decide upon one flag tank. This is the target of the enemy. Once knocked out, your team loses. So it is not a simple matter of knocking out all enemy tanks, but rather getting the flag tank specifically
- Each side then roles for initiative. The one who won, may decide to put their tanks into ambush. You secretely nominate a piece of terrain where your tank is hidden, and write this on a piece of paper. This is done before all others deploy. Once your tank fires, it automatically becomes visible. If an enemy tank goes past within 4 inches, the hidden tank is also revealed automatically.
With these preliminary rules, I set out to get a game going. And so two other players from my wargames club responded to my experimental game. So the table set-up was as follows:
On the one side, we have a combined force of Kuromorimine combined with Saunders academy. Force composition was as follows:
[img=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FFN5FGqNy7MGeQG8oWi0WfjdXhtTXeXKPdY_qu_HpeA/edit]Tanks game[/img]
Thos white playing cars were there for the ease of deploying hidden tanks. Each terrain piece in the attacker deployment area was identified with a playing card. All they had to do is note the number and suit of where each tank is located.
1 PzKpfwIV (long)
2 Jagdpanthers
2 Tiger I’s
1 STUG III
2 Panther
1 Sherman 76 mm
1 Pershing Heavy Tank
Command tank is the Tiger I
On the other side we had the Pravda school with a tank from Jatkosota:
3 IS-2 tanks
2 T34/85
1 PzKpfw III (long) – “borrowed” for an indiscriminate time from “somewhere” by Jatkosota
Command tank is the IS-2
The first turn, I lost the initiative. Which you may guess would have gone badly for me in quite a short amount of time, my opponent wisely chose the forest as the deployment field. My opponent decided to hide both Jagdpanthers and the STUG III, and the Sherman with the Pershing started hidden as well. My opponent kept the command tank in the rear also. So you can see that the situation for Pravda was very bad… I put out my IS-2 to the bridge, facing sideways to attract attention from the surrounding forests so that the hidden tanks uncovered themselves to shoot at the side of my tank, only forgetting that it is a heavy tank and will not subtract dice from defence against side shots. However, this turned out pretty badly of a plan, with the shots from all of the revealed tanks, shell-shocking my crew, getting a lucky shot, destroying the track and starting a fire…. In return however, I did some short work of a Jagdpanther, PzKpfw IV and crippled their STUG III as well, from both my IS-2’s and my T34-85’s. The enemy was closing in from both flanks. I opted out to try shoot off one of the flanks, which I nearly managed to do, and the hope would be to run my break through – (T34/85’s are fast, so move triple speed), and use my movement as protection while getting near to their flag tank. However, my plan did not work out well, as soon as I mauled one of their flanks (containing a Jagdpanther, Tiger I, STUG III, PzKpfw IV and a Panther, loosing a PzKpfw III and a IS-2), the other flank with the other Panther and Jagdpanther, together with a Sherman and Pershing closed in and started to chip away my tanks. That’s when I decided for a general breakthrough, however, I lost both of my T-34/85 and second IS-2, getting a badly crippled second T-34/85, and my command tank with last 4 wounds, I decided to concede, I would just simply not be able to break through the horde…
So, lessons learned. I think I may need to put a restriction on teams that they contain a certain percentage and no more of heavies and up to certain percentage of force value in mediums. So I need to incorporate points somehow, otherwise we will get optimised boring forces that contain only heavies. Second, the command tank needs to be given some offensive benefits, maybe extra amour point, and/or higher defence and/or one higher attack value to “push” the other player to commit their command tank. Otherwise the more numerous player will just hide their command tank somewhere behind and swamp the less numerous opponent. However, this second point will need some consideration…
So, watch this space - more play-testing in the future. If you would like to contribute, feel free to PM or e-mail me, I would like to hear your thoughts, suggestions and maybe play-testing results with feedback or rules you think of adding. I will slowly be starting to build up a document for this thing.
Cheers all,
Tenente