Yes. The rule indicates that you must have some part of your tank behind the front glacis of the defender to get a side shot. Being behind a tank satisfies this condition.

Yes same as side shot ....but I honestly think there should be another rule for shooting a tank directly from behind... or it should at least negate the Heavy Tank rule.

I know it's difficult to show what you mean using the a,b,v,> but I'm not sure that you are interpreting the rules correctly.

You get a sideshot if any part of your hull is behind the front plane of the target tank.

haha, I see what happened here, the spaces I had made got taken out of the post. The aaa> was some 10-20 (hard to guess) spaces out in the text field. therefor it was ahead (but just barely) of bbb looking down towards bbb - close, but still entirely in front of it. From my understanding this would pan out that aaa would need to target the frontal armor, though any logical assessment would say he is clearly shooting the side armor.

I just went through the waste-of-time to try to more properly visualize, haha, but now saw I cant upload it without an URL. that's silly. I hope my explanation will do

Yes, I like the quick and easy ruling as well, just this particular ruling is difficult for me, not only because it disregards the massive armor differences from front to back, often even just from side to back, even on heavy tanks (jagdtiger/tortoise?), and in the current rules the vague movement rules/ or rather say Spider-Man-tanks make flanking a higher initiative tank basically impossible. This is not even mentioning tanks that shoot across the whole field into the clear side of an enemy, but are a centimeter ahead of its frontal armor and therefor shoot its front, even though that is invisible.

The most stupid example I have encountered was a scenario where one tank was at the side line, his nose right behind a building, another tank across the whole table took a dap at him, being AHEAD of him (we took a measuring tape and drew the line), but for the building the front of the tank was invisible, only the rear side armor was clearly visible. Now this tank took his shot at said other tanks side that had to be counted as this tanks front - because rules - 0 sense and very frustrating (to me)

again: easy rules = great, but for me it seems that the rules are not harmonizing very well (from the 5 games I've played, given, not very much XP)

The rules are fine the way that are. Honestly, there are dozens and dozens of rule sets with more realistic armor depictions, shooting, spotting and movement rules. Tanks is meant to be fun, quick and easy to play/explain.

I can see only a handful of things I would change in the game (bailed out tanks can't contest or capture objectives). I like the way the OP kits add a little chrome (bunkers, mines, trenches, etc) and would like to see more of that.

I originally had problems with the reduced level of accuracy, realism in the rules, but now enjoy being able to play a quick and fun game of Tanks. I might even give FOW 4th edition a whirl (hated FOW before....too many special rules, goofy characters, exceptions, etc), since that looks to have been streamlined and simplified as well.