"Tank shock in a campaign game" Topic

I just experienced a game where the player responses modelled 'tank shock' (troops running away from tanks before even being engaged by them). No game rules produced the effect, it was purely down to the game being part of a campaign.

My friend and I are running a WW2 campaign game using the Chain of Command tactical and campaign rules. The campaign is based on the 1st Canadian Airborne attack on the Varaville bridge on June 6th 1944. He is running the Paras (pic of his figs here: link ) and I'm running the German defenders.

The paras won the first game in the campaign and we were playing the second scenario, which was the attack into Varaville. He rolled well for force support and I was the 'inferior' troops, so I was able to get a PzIV to support my platoon.

The game proceeded with both sides moving infantry up and engaging, but I held my tank until I figured he was well committed, and it then entered by a road at the board edge.

And it completely changed the dynamic of the game. Up until that point the paras were making steady progress reducing my units and closing a noose – as soon as the tank showed up my friend started reacting to that threat rather than the infantry. He eventually abandoned his foothold in the town to avoid being anywhere the tank might engage him. He had a PIAT team, but was very conservative about advancing against the tank and in the end he opted to concede the victory to the Germans and break contact.

The tank never fired a shot.

It was the most marked example of 'tank shock' I've seen in 20 years of gaming, and it was purely because my friend knew he would have to fight the next game with the resources left over from the current one.

Lots of fun to play, too.

Can't be complacent though – my platoon took a beating before the tank arrived and I know the Red Devils will be back…

They had no PIATs?

I think that is a pretty realistic dynamic.

I still recall being near construction bulldozers near my home when I was a kid, and even those made the earth tremble pretty forbodingly. So, I can imagine an enemy armored vehicle, armed with machine guns and cannons would be even more frightening.

Certainly, warranting a morale check, at the very least.

Mseratin – The paras had the usual PIAT team attached to the platoon and deployed on the table (and a jeep with a PIAT team as a support unit that could be called onto the table, but they kept botching their roll to enter the table and never showed up). The problem was the player was having a heck of a difficult time getting them into a position where they could engage the tank without receiving a lot of fire from the German infantry. He never did manage to get into a viable firing location before he opted to pull his whole platoon back.

Mako11 – I've worked around a variety of heavy equipment and I entirely agree! I can only imagine how much willpower it took (and still takes, even with much improved modern infantry portable AT weapons) for any infantry soldier to stay calm enough to stay in position in the face of oncoming AFVs.

What I found so interesting is that in this game no morale checks were even needed – the tank showed up and it changed how my friend played, from offense and making things happen to defensive/reactive. I get the impression that is pretty realistic as well!

OTH, in a Battle of the Bulge game using the NUTS! system, I saw the best game example of infantry doing a close assault on a tank. The German player got excited and pushed a Panther into the town of Stavelot ahead of the infantry. The US player had infantry in the town, some on the second story of an inn, others in an alley way flanking the tank. The US infantry opened fire on the TC, forcing him to button up while an assault team with satchel charges rushed the tank from the rear, made all their "Who wants to be a hero" checks, chucked the charge under the Panther. BOOM! Dead Panther. We all looked at each other and thought -- Ahhh… so THAT's why tanks don't go into urban areas alone…

SBMinisguy – I expect if the Paras in Sunday's game had already cleared the German infantry from one side of the street and the PzIV rushed up like that Panther the outcome would have been much more like what you describe (by way of a PIAT shot to the top armour…). Definitely a good cautionary story for tank commanders!

Well trained determined Infantry with AT weapons have the advantage in closed and mixed terrain … Way back in my youth. In IOBC, we were put in a reinforced foxhole alone. Had an M60 MBT run us over, and once the M60 passed we would pop-up with an expended LAW and took a [simulated] shot at the rear armor. Hopefully we'd never have to do that, but at least we were trained to do so … As an Infantry officer we trained a lot on the tactics and techniques for killing tanks …

Yea, if you can remain unseen, in heavy brush, bocage, or a town, a morale check should be a lot easier to pass. Especially too, if you have something to fight back with.

Guys with just rifles should probably just retreat, unless they go heroic, and think attacking a tank with an A/T grenade, or other improvised weapon may work. Unless they can hide in foxholes, ditches, bushes, a town, or behind bocage though, they're screwed. Hardcover is probably recommended, just in case the metal beast decides to spew bullets, or HE shells.

In the open, infantry are screwed, unless they have a foxhole, or trenches to dive into, and even then, if a tank wants to run them down, and fill that in with their treads, they'll be in a very bad situation with nowhere to run.

Legion4 – It sounds like militaries since WW2 have made real efforts during training to familiarize infantry with tanks and teach how they can be defeated (or at least avoided). Does anyone know if that sort of highly intensive training was in place anywhere before WW2? I've never heard of infantry in that period being trained by simulating being attacked by a tank unit. Maybe chalk that up as a 'lesson learned' from WW2!

The difference a campaign game makes…

Pattus Magnus
Try going to Youtube and typed "german training films infantry anti tank". There is a film there that was shown to their troops. 1943 I think.

"The difference a campaign game makes…"

How very true!

B

Maybe the Germans trained that way but the Brits, American and Russians did not; this caused major problems no only on the defensive but in the attack too.

When you can't act like there is no tomorrow the game changes, I love campaign games.

occupant climbs up out of revetted trench, runs after it and tries to stab an army green balloon tied on the back.

Yet another reminder that we Yanks should never off the Canadians – otherwise we'll end up with balloons tied to our tails!

Oh, the horror!

It sounds like militaries since WW2 have made real efforts during training to familiarize infantry with tanks and teach how they can be defeated

Yes, very much so. Grunts train to operate with friendly armor, as part of the combined arms concept. And how to destroy enemy armor. Having served in both Light and Mech Infantry units, as I said, we spent a lot of time training to do both …

Tim,

Irrelevant military balloon story: I was on attachment to the Ops Wing at RAF Brueggen when an Army officer came in, asking if our Met guys could spare some helium for party balloons for his Mess Summer Ball. I took him down to the Met Office and they gave us the keys to the balloon shed where the gas tank was. He filled the balloons and passed them out to me… So there I was, holding a huge bunch of balloons like an RAF commissioned version of the clown from 'It' when Air Officer Commanding RAF Germany arrived to visit Ops… To be fair to him, he returned my salute, despite being doubled up with laughter…

Anyway, yes… It's amazing how differently people act when it's a campaign game. I remember an epic string of victories by a tiny Swedish army in my 1740s 'Grand European Campaign', leading to the capture of St Petersburg. The Russian player, despite having a considerable numerical superiority, would always opt to dig in and then sit, immobile behind his redoubts as the Swedes concentrated on one Russian flank brigade. The Russian player would then lose his personal morale and withdraw from the field to preserve the rest of his precious army.

Of course it was all the fault of 'the rules', the umpire, the campaign system… He sold his Russian army after that.

"Maybe the Germans trained that way but the Brits, American and Russians did not; this caused major problems no only on the defensive but in the attack too."

'Men Against Tanks' was just a film, a morale boosting propaganda film, just like 'Engineers to the Front'.

Normal German infantry units didn't train by having hordes of captured T34s charge them and then attempt to blow them all up with Teller mines, grenade bundles and highly dubious 'blinding' gas grenades.

They did have some instruction in anti-tank tactics, and familiarisation with tanks if the equipment was available and they had enough time. Just as the British, US and Russians did.

How helpful the lectures and pamphlets were when faced with a battalion of tracked, armoured, bullet spitting monsters was somewhat variable.

I haven't played many campaign games, but I have found that many opponents won't even follow basic objective instructions, like take the village and hold. This seems to mean take the village until fighting starts somewhere else and go to the sound of the guns. The board then turns into a giant spiders web with everybody trying to reach the fighting and ignoring their own objective / orders.
The same people also fight to the last man and bullet, never falling back even when outnumbered or outmanouvered.
Leads unfortunately to very tedious games.

Patttus Magnus,

Although the rule set I play does have "tank fright" dynamics, I know exactly what you mean. Players react to their presence out of proportion to their threat. And even more interestingly, tanks rarely carry the day, invariably peeling off and getting into tank to tank fights that accomplish nothing. Especially in close terrain, where infantry have a real advantage, tanks are of little use. I just finished playtesting a scenario where the ground was soft enough to restrict armour to the roads and it completely took them out of the equation as they were unable to winkle out infantry or hold ground without infantry support.
Regarding infantry training with tanks, I think that developed over the course of the war with increased combined arms tactics. Certainly with the advent of infantry held AT weapons, the infantry was given the tools to combat tanks more effectively. In BF WWII this is modelled by the removal of "tank fright" in close combat after 1942, although enemy tanks continue to influence morale.

I've seen US WWII training films of the tank overrunning over the foxhole training, so at least some US troops. For sure the TD crew did that training along with other dismounted training.

Johnny Boy – do you mean that in the campaign games you've played most of the participants ignore the scenario objectives and tend to fight to the last man? If so, that's odd behaviour, IMO – I usually associate that with one-off games (with players that don't really get what scenarios are for and just want to "win"…).

Thanks everyone for the posts about infantry anti-tank training. It seems like there was a serious learning curve that pretty well every military went through during WW2 – no surprise really, just about every service branch saw major changes between 1939 and 1945 as technology and military techniques changed.

If a player/s in a campaign game just treat it like aone of game, then a- I wouldn't play with them b- the campaign is not provoking the right kind of play c- Players who play appropriately will progress, those that don't won't because they won't have functioning troops to do so.

I've seen tanks become hypnotic – Bring one on in Chain of Command and the enemy fixates on it – How do I kill it? where is it? What's it going to do. Infantry get ignored!

I've seen US WWII training films of the tank overrunning over the foxhole training, so at least some US troops. For sure the TD crew did that training …

My father was in the tank destroyers in WW2.

When I was about 12 or 14 he recounted the story to me of how they were instructed to dig their foxholes deep enough to stand up in, and then to dig a small "enclave" at the bottom of the hole to duck into. They were trained to let the tanks run them over, and then to pop up behind them to shoot them in the rear with bazookas.

(For those who don't know, US Army Tank Destroyer troops were trained in all forms of fighting tanks … and were equipped with bazookas, AT mines and satchel charges in addition to their self-propelled or towed guns.)

He didn't think much of his prospects for success in that scenario. His comments to me were that German tanks seldom traveled in units of one, and usually had German infantry following them, so there was always going to be someone else to shoot him if he tried to pop up behind a German tank. And German tanks seldom drove exactly where you wanted them to (like over your foxhole).

He was also taught not to shoot at the frontal armor with the bazooka, and also not to shoot at side armor covered by schurzen. He said to me when confronted with a German tank approaching head-on down a road, they were taught to shoot their bazookas low, and said the round would rise to strike the tank in the belly. I never quite understood this comment … it's what he said, but it never made sense to me.

He also said they had open-topped tanks that went 55 miles per hour, and I didn't believe that, either, until I first read about the M18 Hellcat a dozen years later. So who knows, maybe there was something to the "bazooka rounds rise" story that I just haven't figured out yet.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

the round would rise to strike the tank in the belly

Is he referring to bouncing the round off the ground so that it deflected up and hit the belly of the tank? Perhaps if one fired the round at the ground at a shallow angle, it would deflect upwards and into the belly of the tank rather than explode?

In the Napoleonic wars, artillerists would sometimes try to graze the ground in front of their target and hit it on the bounce rather than shoot straight into the formation. I can't remember what the supposed advantage was, but I suppose I'll spend some time later looking it up.

Hey, they mention grazing rounds off the ground in "Fury", so it must be true!

Patttus Magnus,

Most campaign games (which as I stated are few) that I have participated in were ruined by what I call the Spiderman strategy…i.e. run to the sound of the guns!

I found out that if you waited until contact had been made at any point on the board and the Spiderman rule took effect you could usually just flank your opponents and reach your objective(s) with little or no problems.

Yes it is a mind set that is indeed very odd (even in a one off game) but it shows time and again in games I have played.

This problem has largely put me off wargaming in general and I now play few games these days.

John

Just a further comment, the tank shock effect you describe, although annoying to play against, would be a welcome change to some of the last man & last bullet games I have been involved in.

John

Johnny Boy – I can see how that would be off-putting and lead a person away from wargames! Like I said before, I find the 'spider' effect strange, but I think I've been very lucky to connect with a group of local gamers who are intersted in the history around the conflicts and are more into scenario gaming than 'to the last bullet' games (unless that is the scenario for one side, of course). This campaign was an easy sell to my friend and we've pitched in about equally on the research, terrain and painted figs.

As for the tank shock in the game I described – I'm glad my opponent fixated on the tank and pulled back when he did, I was on the ropes! Even so, it is hard to call it a german victory, my force will be badly short-handed in the upcoming scenario…

There's a letter written by a US outfit did a series of experiments with the bazooka and panzershreck.
It's basically a complaint letter saying their bazooka is better than our bazooka.
One of their comments is particularly relevant.
They found the bazooka round just didn't go off if it hit a surface at an acute angle.
You needed near 90 degrees to have a good chance of it going off.
The panzershreck was "better" in this regard (and therefore more use against infantry in the open).

All sorts of weird stuff happens in war and I believe there was an instance where a bazooka round bounced up off a road into the belly of a german tank and destroyed it.
I would think that was more a lucky shot than a reliable tactic.

Training advice wasn't always great in ww2.
My Dad's unit trained with sticky bombs at one stage.
They weren't impressed by the suggestion of taking the covering off them at all.
Let alone approaching a german tank with an armed incredibly sticky glass ball full of unstable nitro glycerine.

For a really interesting study in psychology, have a game where one side has an armoured vehicle, any kind, and the other does not.

Even if that vehicle is an armoured car with a half-load of MG rounds, it'll loom in the other players mind as satan on tracks (or wheels).

Sometime soon I'm going to set a PzIV or Panther off the edge of the table, where my undeployed squads are. I won't actually take the tank as a support choice, just put the model in sight and let my friend worry. I'm betting that will have just about as much psychological impact as having the tank show up on the table during the game! I wouldn't want to do that with everyone I play against – I can think of a couple who wouldn't take it well – but my regular WW2 opponent would get a chuckle out of it.

"I'm not saying I did buy a platoon of Tigers as support just that I didn't NOT buy them either" :)

Pattus Magnus,

I have also played the big cats on the edge of the table gambit as I found it made players more concerned with where it would appear than running to the guns.
Another gambit is (where blinds are used) to move a blind at the rate set for tigers when it is just a couple of guys in a little truck…that drove people mad especially if you asked for confirmation of the movement rate for a tiger before moving.
Psychological warfare at its best.
I have found whole tank units (using this technique) frozen in place ready to deal with a threat that doesn't exist, leaving my real tanks to rampage around with almost impunity.

John

Tango 2 3 Ditto – That kind of illustrates the principle that for a force without any anti-tank weapons there's no such thing as an obsolete enemy tank!

Johnny Boy – that's a good point about blinds generating the same kind of psychology. Now that I think about it, I was on the receiving end of that type of gambit during a game in the spring – my opponent advanced a coule blinds toward the flank where I had my self-propelled artillery battery (and nothing else, not even an infantry screen, as resources were thin for my force). I decide discretion was the better part of valor and bugged out the artillery unit, only to discover later that both blinds were dummies… My battery never did find another "secure" spot to set up and fire from, either!

Someone suggested a use for all those extra tiger models you don't need: deploy them as 'blinds' for every other German type, until the model is positively identified by spotting roll or whatever, then replacing it with the model of the correct type. Tiger panic!

In the Napoleonic wars, artillerists would sometimes try to graze the ground in front of their target and hit it on the bounce rather than shoot straight into the formation. I can't remember what the supposed advantage was, but I suppose I'll spend some time later looking it up

That's a standard artillery tactic that goes back way further than Napoleon. Using round shot (solid iron cannon balls – they don't explode), you aim to bounce them just in front of the target. This does two things: imparts a spin on the ball so it will travel further and intimidates the enemy because it comes up around chest height – you can see it but do nothing about it except hope it hits the next guy in line. Very bad for infantry morale!

TD crews were specialists, trained to destroy tanks, that's what they were there for, they weren't just cannoneers and drivers. They trained to fight 'dismounted' just like the cavalry of previous wars. But very few infantrymen in the 'straight leg' units ever saw a tank, let alone trained to operate with them or defend against them, aside from a few lectures or training films. This according to memoirs of the people who were there.

In one of the history channel shows on air power a P-47 pilot stated they fire their 50 in front of the enemy panthers so the rounds would bounce up into the belly of the tank and knock it out.