At the moment, Tanks is my game of choice for Tuesday nights at my Local Gaming Club (Forest Outlaws in Mansfield), especially as we are in the planning stages for a Tanks game at next year's Hammerhead show. Tonight took the planning a couple of stages further as:

i) We were playing USSR against Germany
ii) It was the first tentative steps in creating the mission we will be using.

The basic set up was a couple of areas of forest in the German deployment zone while the Russians deployed just beyond some buildings and fields set around a muddy t-junction. The forces used were:

Germany

1 x Panther
3 x Stug Gs

USSR

1 x T34/85
3 x T34s

The aim of the mission was the attacking Germans to break through the Russian lines and exit the battle field through the Russian deployment area. The defending Russians simply had to stop the Germans doing so.

For the first game, I played the Russians while my son played Germany. It was quite disappointing that he manged to destroy my T34/38 in round 2. I have to confess that my apalling dice rolling didn't help the Russian defence (2 T34s getting close ranged side shots on a single Stug, only hitting once and doing no damage - allowing it to escape off the board during ts blitzkrieg move). On the other hand, I did manage to destroy the Panther but was unable to prevent any Stugs escaping.

Victory to the Germans.

For the second game, we swapped sides and I took on the role of the Germans. My sons tactic of having his T34s in a staggered line allowed him to take advantage of the Co-ordinated fire rule. This, along with a few critical hits, allowed him to destroy one of my Stugs quite early on. Slitting my forces allowed me to get my Panther and one Stug off the board at the cost of a second Stug while managing to destroy 2 T34s.

We called that one a draw.

I'll keep you up to date as our plans for Hammerhead develop. The current idea is to have 11 T34s and a couple of ISU-152s fighting for the Russians while the Germans will field a mixture of Panzers, Stugs, Panthers and Tigers.

Could be interesting.

Using the " no retreat" mission in the book might have served you better, as exiting the board is far easier than preventing it, giving the attacker am advantage. Making the mission centered around securing a small number of points from either and any combination of the two objective tokens in the defender's deployment zone alleviates this. The game ends when either the attacker has scored three points and has at least one surviving tank, or the defender has destroyed all attacking tanks.

Well done comrades!
Extra potatoes and cabbage for you tonight.

Edited by user Thursday, April 13, 2017 8:55:45 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified