I am a new player looking to buy into the game, but I am also a long-time WW2 wargamer and military historian.

I am a little puzzled by the long moves being given to the Tiger and Panther, their speed matches the Sherman, etc, (two sticks) plus they also get the Blitzkrieg move. To be truthful the Germans were on the defensive by the middle of 1943 and it got worse into '44 and '45. I would favour dropping the Blitkrieg ability for the Tiger and Panther as unrealistic. It also adds value to the Panzer IV and the Panzer III. A few Panzer IIIs were still in use in Normandy after D-Day.

Also - most tanks are slowed by obstacles and bad terrain. Why is the two-stick move and the Blitzkrieg move allowed inside of the woods?

To be fair to all I have had very similar discussions on this subject with Wings of War/Glory and Axis and Allies: War at Sea players in the past.

The normal answer is along the lines of: "It's a beer and pretzels game…" which is a fair answer but the historian in me recoils at a 'quick' game which then throws out the baby with the bath water - sacrificing much historical accuracy for speedy game play or at least creating 'movie accuracy' instead of historical accuracy. The Tiger in 'Saving Private Ryan' showed a level of agility which could only be accomplished by a post-war Russian tank carrying no armour, no ammunition and very little fuel. Which is what that movie's Tiger really was.

Watch the Tiger in 'Fury' (Bovington's real Tiger on loan) and you see a very much more ponderous beastie. When I get set up and start playing properly I intend to house rule that Tigers and Panthers cannot use 'Blitzkrieg' and that any tank moving in bad terrain such as the woods moves at just one stick and cannot play the blitzkrieg rule at all.

I am also considering how to house rule the 'one shot hit and kill' phenomenon which was an unfortunate feature of so many tank actions in WW2. My best guess, so far, is that three '6's on hit dice which cannot by removed by the defence roll means an automatic kill on any vehicle but this reduces to two '6s' (which cannot be removed) for Shermans. The Sherman had an unenviable reputation for burning which lead to these nicknames:
'Tommy cooker' (from the Germans)
'Flaming coffins' (from the Polish Armoured Division in Normandy and North West Europe')
'Ronsons' (from the British - Ronson was a famous brand of cigarette lighter whose advertising slogan was 'light first time')

The Sherman only improves from the end of '44 with the appearance of 75mm (wet) and 76mm (wet) versions, the 'wet' referring to the new water jackets around the ammunition. It had been discovered that many burned out Shermans recovered in Normandy had unburned fuel tanks and engine compartments thus indicating it was the cordite propellant in the main gun cartridges which was catching fire so quickly. The wet stowage never fully replaced the dry stowage and was only introduced in replacements as tanks were hit. It is likely that less than 25% of frontline US Shermans had been replaced with wet stowage by the end of the war, the figure for British and other Allies is unknown. I am not even sure if the British received wet vehicles as they were also introducing the Comet.

Barry

Edited by user Tuesday, November 21, 2017 7:10:00 AM(UTC)  | Reason: correcting an error

My wargaming goes back to the late 1960s (yes I am that old!) and I was struck by the mechanism of Tanks which is somewhat similar to the rules quoted in Don Featherstone's 1960s book. Guns were assigned an AP value of 1 to 6 while armour went from 11 or 12 up to about 18 or 19. Three dice were rolled, the AP value was added to their scores and this had to equal or exceed the armour value to indicate a hit and a kill. Tanks had two armour values (front and side/rear) while soft targets and vehicles had just one. The AP value was adjusted due to range and other factors.

The Tanks move stick resembles the one from the 1970s naval game Sea Strike.

Yes I will be forming my vehicles in historical units, typically tank troops of around three to four vehicles. Germans are supposed to have five per troop but they were often understrength from 1944 onwards which is the period which interests me. My late father was with a 17-pounder unit - towed and M-10 - and he told me many stories from Hill 112, Carpiquet, and Holland. BTW the name Achilles was NEVER used in his unit, they always called them M-10s or 17-pounder M-10s. He and I suspect it was a post-war name which has been applied to WW2.

I already have a lot of 15mm wargames terrain so substituting 3-D buildings, woods and other terrain features will not be a problem.

B

Edited by user Tuesday, November 21, 2017 10:21:45 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Added two lines

I think I get the drift about the other game! :)

I have done WW2 is 1/72, 1/300th and 1/200th at various times over 40+ years. I also collect hardware items like WW2 anti-tank solid shot (I have five) and English Civil War roundshot (I have two).
The appeal of Tanks is that the 15mm models will allow me to 'nose into' WW2 at a simple skirmish level. I have seen the 'other' 15mm war-game but the rules appeared a little too much for me.

As my other main period is 15mm Wars of the Roses (hundreds of figures and my own rules) I am not short of 3-D terrain features such as bridges, buildings and trees. I might need some bocage hedging though.

B

Edited by user Tuesday, November 21, 2017 12:07:22 PM(UTC)  | Reason: added four words

I have no problems with terrain. I use 12 inch by 12 inch sculpted polystyrene blocks which include rivers and streams on some, a variety of polystyrene hills and for bushes I use railway modellers' lichen. Some of my lichen is 40 years old and still OK, I keep it in a plastic tub with a little water. That keeps it fresh as a daisy.

For trees I get twigs and bits from bushes, I bake them in an oven or over a radiator for several hours to dry them right out and then cover them in stick-on green foam material, again sourced from a model railway shop. I will need to make some bocage hedging in due course.

Thank you.

B

Id heard it was zippos, not ronsons as the nick name, again dont know if there was any truth to it.

Also, simple fact was this, tiger and panthers were just lethal to Shermans regardless of the ammo stowage, their main guns just had a superior penetrating ability against a shermans armour.

As the Tanks starter set pointed out, Michael Wittman in his Panther conducted a savage ambush on a Sherman column during the Normandy campaign. The Shermans needed to ideally get in close where as German tanks like the Tiger and Panther were quite able to sit back and play sharpshooter.

It was basically two different approaches to armoured warfare, the US favoured more lighter tanks, whilst the Germans went for bigger yet more expensive and complex tanks, ultimatley the US strategy was more effective, but cost a lot of lives. I read it usually took 3 to 4 Shermans to effectivley deal with a well placed Tiger.

The Germans wasted time and effort producing numerous over-engineered tank designs, rather than settling on one design. This significantly decreased the total output of tanks available to the German army, an army that was fighting a two-front war against industrial giants. The total number of standard Sherman tanks, both those armed with 75mm guns and those up-gunned with a longer 76mm weapon, almost equaled the German’s entire tank production numbers for WWII! The Soviets had also settled on a standardized medium tank design for the war, the excellent T-34. Soviet T-34 production outstripped the production of all German tanks combined. The sheer number of tanks fielded by the Allied nations went a long way to dealing with the superiority of German tank designs. Quantity has a quality all its own.

Sean, thanks for chipping in. Personally, I get it and I generally like the mechanics that distinguishes one Faction from the other. I roughly know FoW rules so I read National Rules as the closest approximation of them into TANKS meta (for example, Coordinated Fire being kind of Hen and Chickens with Attack Bonus).

But while I got You here, I will not waste the opportunity to grumble, that You not always get it right. I'm really sour about von Luck, as I was expecting a flamboyant Recce Commander and I got a semi decent Tank Destroyer Ace.

On this note. What do You think about opening a thread in which we could discuss the design decisions with You Guys?