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Tenente  
#1 Posted : Thursday, March 1, 2018 2:57:47 AM(UTC)
Tenente

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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



"This is the way Anzio fight!"
―Anchovy
Tenente  
#2 Posted : Thursday, March 1, 2018 2:58:56 AM(UTC)
Tenente

Rank: Gunner

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Was thanked: 9 time(s) in 7 post(s)
Ok, just realized that my image attachment did not work. Can someone give me directions on how to do it?
"This is the way Anzio fight!"
―Anchovy
Ozariig  
#3 Posted : Thursday, March 1, 2018 10:18:17 AM(UTC)
Ozariig

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I'm a newbie on this forum too, but I find it's helpful to try using the Quote button on a post that has a working image (for example the Misprints thread linked in my signature) and then look at how they managed it.

in this case you need the '[img]' tags, with the image URL between them.

Sample:
UserPostedImage

That said, the link in your post is a google doc and not an image file (i.e. it doesn't end with ".jpg", ".gif", ".png", etc) so I don't think it will work when put between the tags:

[img]https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FFN5FGqNy7MGeQG8oWi0WfjdXhtTXeXKPdY_qu_HpeA/edit[/img]
OCD Paul  
#4 Posted : Thursday, March 1, 2018 5:28:24 PM(UTC)
OCD Paul

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Awesome write up! Thank you for taking the time and hopefully even though the dice were against you, sounds like fun was had!

I'm not sure about the points, some teams are just going go be horribly outmatched, I can only imagine the bloodbath of the tv show's final match of 8 mixed tanks vs 20 late war german monsters played with TANKS rules. Plot armor rolls all sixes and then flips the table :)
For sake of competition maybe have a budget for the school that they can only afford so much.

Do you use any of the upgrade cards from the game in this format or do all the tanks roll naked? For smaller teams they could have more GUTS! than a bigger school so they could run some upgrade cards to even things out? Custom commander cards / flag-tank cards could do the bonus like you're talking about too.

The fine folks here (yes I am that much of a suck up) have done a great job keeping the points balanced between realism and fun, if you're determined to make a universal expansion for others using it, I think you're right in finding a way for existing points to matter.
All that said, with my situation its only going to be friendly games without rule fiddlers trying to bend everything to an optimized never-lose combination of tanks so I shouldn't be seeing a horde of CV-33's trying to harass a Maus to death...... hmmmmm maybe i'd pay to see that though :D

Afterall, 'this isn't war.... the tanks would be SAD if we forgot that!'


Also, I LOVE the idea of setting up the ambush for one side. makes it more of a hide-n-seek trying to find the flag tank and get to it. This also lets those little tanks that are practically worthless **cough Type 89 *** turn into scouts that hit up all the terrain to uncover the hidden tanks. Hmmm maybe make Scouts 'sense' hidden tanks from two sticks away instead of just one? I'm typing train of thought here throwing out ideas, nothing too seriously thought out.

What I really like with all of this is the core fun game of TANKS is still in here. Some one years ago predating TANKS came out with a similar idea and last I saw had 20+ pages of detailed rules and sub-rules and special rules. I like that this keeps it simple and besides some tweaks not really any more complex than an official scenario game.

Sorry for the walls of text just super excited to see something I've wanted for awhile coming together like this.
Trying to keep the discussion alive Here
Tenente  
#5 Posted : Thursday, March 1, 2018 11:29:58 PM(UTC)
Tenente

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Originally Posted by: OCD Paul Go to Quoted Post
Awesome write up! Thank you for taking the time and hopefully even though the dice were against you, sounds like fun was had!

I'm not sure about the points, some teams are just going go be horribly outmatched, I can only imagine the bloodbath of the tv show's final match of 8 mixed tanks vs 20 late war german monsters played with TANKS rules. Plot armor rolls all sixes and then flips the table :)
For sake of competition maybe have a budget for the school that they can only afford so much.

Do you use any of the upgrade cards from the game in this format or do all the tanks roll naked? For smaller teams they could have more GUTS! than a bigger school so they could run some upgrade cards to even things out? Custom commander cards / flag-tank cards could do the bonus like you're talking about too.

The fine folks here (yes I am that much of a suck up) have done a great job keeping the points balanced between realism and fun, if you're determined to make a universal expansion for others using it, I think you're right in finding a way for existing points to matter.
All that said, with my situation its only going to be friendly games without rule fiddlers trying to bend everything to an optimized never-lose combination of tanks so I shouldn't be seeing a horde of CV-33's trying to harass a Maus to death...... hmmmmm maybe i'd pay to see that though :D

Afterall, 'this isn't war.... the tanks would be SAD if we forgot that!'


Also, I LOVE the idea of setting up the ambush for one side. makes it more of a hide-n-seek trying to find the flag tank and get to it. This also lets those little tanks that are practically worthless **cough Type 89 *** turn into scouts that hit up all the terrain to uncover the hidden tanks. Hmmm maybe make Scouts 'sense' hidden tanks from two sticks away instead of just one? I'm typing train of thought here throwing out ideas, nothing too seriously thought out.

What I really like with all of this is the core fun game of TANKS is still in here. Some one years ago predating TANKS came out with a similar idea and last I saw had 20+ pages of detailed rules and sub-rules and special rules. I like that this keeps it simple and besides some tweaks not really any more complex than an official scenario game.

Sorry for the walls of text just super excited to see something I've wanted for awhile coming together like this.


The ideas are awesome. Especially the school competition budget system and scouts rules... Since I really am skeptical on the points limit, I would consider using them only as a last resort if all my dancing around just fails horribly. As to the friendly game... well, it will be directed to an friendly match that may become a competition between clubs. However, you will always find those people which will tweak everything they have to their advantage, always endeavoring to find gaps in rules, it takes one swine in 30-50 people to ruin it for everyone in the game. And I think your idea of leveling it out somehow with upgrade cards is a great idea. What I may think of is depending on the ratio of tank weights, the underdog gets a certain amount of upgrades depending on how much they are an underdog.

Anyway, as for the game yesterday, I knew I was going to lose once I lost the roll off - 10 heavies against 6 half heavy half med, I would only have a chance of a win if I could manage to deploy hidden instead. But it was more of a fun thing yesterday and I am really only testing out my developments. "All is fair in love and war" says may second favorite character about this situation.

I'll keep this forum updated with my madness as I develop more stuff. Expect to see a supplement book in development within this month.

And as said before to everyone here, feel free to jot down any suggestions, and if you had or having similar GuP games played, feel free to add in or even put down your reports. Will be great to hear.
"This is the way Anzio fight!"
―Anchovy
thanks 1 user thanked Tenente for this useful post.
OCD Paul on 3/2/2018(UTC)
CmdrRook  
#6 Posted : Friday, March 2, 2018 2:07:16 AM(UTC)
CmdrRook

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Tenente, Paul; I would like you to know that I've never seen or given serious thought to watching GuP despite the recommendations from people I trust. Your enthusiasm on the subject, however, has changed that, and I'm making a point to watch it all as soon as possible. I'll let you know what I think, and anything that comes to mind when I'm done.
thanks 1 user thanked CmdrRook for this useful post.
OCD Paul on 3/2/2018(UTC)
Tenente  
#7 Posted : Friday, March 2, 2018 5:49:16 PM(UTC)
Tenente

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Posts: 28

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Was thanked: 9 time(s) in 7 post(s)
Originally Posted by: CmdrRook Go to Quoted Post
Tenente, Paul; I would like you to know that I've never seen or given serious thought to watching GuP despite the recommendations from people I trust. Your enthusiasm on the subject, however, has changed that, and I'm making a point to watch it all as soon as possible. I'll let you know what I think, and anything that comes to mind when I'm done.


Brilliant, please do so, would like to hear opinions and suggestions. Suggest to start from the original episodes (there are 12 of them). Good tank action starts off from half episode 2 and on-wards, before then it is more of introductions into the plot, but still, it is very good. Happy watching.

Cheers!

Tenente

EDIT: I must add, myself I am not a big fan of anime, most of it is crap. But this when I watched it, I forgot that it is anime - it simply did not register on my radar as that. One of the very rare good movies in that genre.

Edited by user Friday, March 2, 2018 9:36:42 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

"This is the way Anzio fight!"
―Anchovy
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