I thought I would do a review of Iron Cross, but focussed on what it is like to actually play.
I would like to set the scene by saying I believe these are the best WW2 rules I have ever played, bear that in mind when reading some of my critical comments below.
I will do a very recap of what you may have read in other reviews.
You have an activation token for each unit you have (a unit is a tank or a squad of infantry on a single base) plus 2 spares. These are used to activate your units, each activation allows you to carry out two actions, these generally being moving and or firing. You can make a rapid move which is about 50% more than an ordinary move and uses up both actions. There is no option to fire twice in the same activation.
Sounds pretty basic stuff right?
Moving is very straightforward, terrain etc. is handled very simply and does not slow the game down.
Shooting is carried out with a D10 needing 5+ on the D10 to hit with modifiers though there are very few modifiers.
Shooting at vehicles is very simple, you roll 1D10 needing 5+ to hit (with modifiers) if you succeed you then roll another D10 and add it to the gun penetration value to see if you beat the targets armour. Basically similar to bolt action or flames of war but with a D10.
If you penetrate the armour you roll a D6 for damage, 4+ destroys it with lower numbers doing lesser damage, similar to Bolt Action.
If you don't penetrate the armour (but do hit the vehicle) you do 1 morale marker (pin) for hitting and another for failing to penetrate, similar to bolt action
Still pretty basic stuff right?
Bizarrely shooting at infantry is much more complicated though it does not initially look it. You roll 1 or 2 D10 each needing 5+ to hit (with modifiers) and for each hit you then roll a further D6 to see if you get bonus hits (morale markers). Where it gets complicated is whether you count both D10's or D6's as hits or they merely give you 2 opportunities to score 1 hit. Sorry that sounds complicated but it is! You can quickly learn for example infantry firing at infantry, the complexity is when the firer is an infantry gun or howitzer or MG team or sniper or flamethrower or a small tank gun or a big tank gun or a mortar because they all have different rules for which dice count.
You may be pleased to hear this is not as bad as it sounds when playing and I have done a lovely 1 sheet pdf with all the permutations on it that can be downloaded from the great escape games forum
I wanted to be honest and explain the above rather complicated firing at infantry scenario, it seems to work though I just get the feeling less exceptions to the basic rule could have been created to make life simpler.
A major modifier for shooting is if the firer is moving, this is a -2 modifier but does not apply to infantry moving and firing, this is very significant as it makes infantry very mobile and flexible, interestingly they also do not suffer the -2 firing modifier if firing panzerfausts/bazookas etc. this means they make very dangerous roving anti-tank units (if equipped with bazookas etc.). I don't want to overstate this, charging infantry across an open field to shoot up tanks with their Piat's is pretty risky, trust me I have tried it!
One last thing I wanted to explain about shooting (at anything), most weapons have limitless range. Flamethrowers and Panzerfausts/bazookas are restricted to 8"
All other weapons get +1 to hit if within 12" and anti-tank weapons get +1 to their penetration if within 6"
This works well and is nice and simple
Now the bit I really want to focus on, Command and Control and the activation system. Whilst everything above works pretty well, and avoids many of the cheesy problems you get in Bolt Action such as uber snipers, atomic flamethrowers and LMG's that appear to be worth their weight in gold, it is not really revolutionary.
Each turn you start with your full hand of command tokens, let's say 20. Both players roll a D6 to see who gets the initiative. The person with the initiative then chooses to activate a unit. Let's say they activate a Sherman which then moves and then shoots at an enemy Stug, it misses. You place one of your 20 command tokens next to the Sherman.
The same player then declares they are going to use their 2nd command token to reactivate the Sherman and fire at the stug again. This time the German player decides enough is enough and they will react with a Panzer IV and attempt to kill the Sherman (Note even though the Sherman is firing at a stug, a separate unit (panzer IV) may react.) Note the reacting player is restricted to one reacting attempt each active players use of a command token.
If you are Activating a unit more than once you need to roll on a D6 to see if it happens. You place the command token against the activating unit whether you succeed or fail. To activate you need to get one higher on a D6 than the number of command tokens (plus morale markers) currently placed against the unit. As such the owner of the Sherman needs to roll 2+ on a D6. A 4 is rolled and the Sherman is activated. HOWEVER before any action is taken the reacting player rolls, they roll the same as the activating player but instead of needing 1 higher on a D6 than the number of command morale markers they need to get 3 higher than the number of command and morale markers. i.e. it is more difficult and more risky to react than to act.
I said at the top that each activation a unit gets 2 actions usually moving and shooting. If a unit activates AND a reacting unit activates the sequence is Reacting unit takes its 1st action, then the activating unit takes both its actions then the reacting unit takes its 2nd action (if any).
So the reacting Panzer plays rolls a 6 on their dice, this is high enough to pass the reacting roll (3+ in this case) and they get their 1st action. This allows them to fire at the Sherman before the Sherman fires again at the Stug. Give this some thought, it's very important….
The Panzer rolls and hits the Sherman, but fails to penetrate the armour, this gives the Sherman 2 morale markers, 1 for being hit and 1 for the round not penetrating. Action now returns to the Sherman to complete its two actions. If the Sherman had been destroyed then it's action would be over. Assuming the Sherman is firing at the Stug from beyond 12" it would normally have 5+ to hit, this is increased to 7+ because the Sherman now has 2 morale markers on it (on a D10 remember)
The Sherman rolls well and hits the stug, rolls well on the penetration roll and exceeds the armour value of the stug, (Sherman is 8 and I think Stug is 15, so Sherman needs to roll 8+ on a D10 to penetrate front armour of stug). Then rolls a 5 on a D6 for damage, the stug is destroyed.
Normally the owner of the Sherman would now activate another unit, OR decide they have done enough at this time and voluntarily hand the initiative to the opponent, this will usually happen backwards and forwards several times during a turn. If the active player used all 20 command tokens before the opponent had used any then when it went over to the opponent they could do anything they liked without any fear of retaliation, that would likely be a massacre!
However in the example above the reacting player rolled a 6, this means that not only does their reaction succeed but at the end of that action/reaction the initiative moves to the reacting player
Continue the example above, the German player now has a panzer 4 with one activation token on it (from the above reaction). They choose to activate the Panzer IV again needing 2+ on a D6. They roll and get a 1! The Panzer IV now has 2 command tokens against it. The German has another go, this time he needs a 3+ on a D6 to activate. Success! Then rolls high to hit the Sherman, high to penetrate followed by a 4 on the penetration and the Sherman is destroyed.
Read through that a couple of times, it is very clever and interactive but not complicated. Trust me it works superbly
We have looked at one way of destroying an armoured vehicle above, penetrating the armour and killing it in a violent detonation.
There is a 2nd way of killing an armoured vehicle, this method is the ONLY way of killing a non-vehicular unit, e.g. an infantry unit or a mortar etc. I have mentioned above that hits inflict Morale Markers (think of them as pins in bolt action), if the total number of morale markers you have on a unit at any time is HIGHER than the morale value of the unit it is dead.
The morale value of a Sherman is 5, if you can hit it enough to put 6 morale markers on it then it is destroyed. Best to think of this as the crew bailing out or the vehicle succumbing to multiple minor damages affecting the crew morale sufficiently that they flee. As against penetrating the armour which represents that tank suffering a hard kill.
Now infantry squads also have a morale value of 5 meaning you need 6 morale markers to kill an infantry squad (there is no other way of killing infantry), that is quite a lot as most hits end up inflicting 1 maybe 2 morale markers, in rare cases 3 is possible.
Machine gun teams are very effective, but as a support team they only usually have 3 morale not 5 of the larger infantry squad, this makes them more brittle. Inflict 4 morale markers on an MG42 team and it is dead, same applies to anti-tank guns, mortars etc.
The last subject to cover, which has probably occurred to many of you by now…. How do I get rid of those morale markers before I am killed, answer is a Company Morale Check (a CMT) it is a little like a rally action in Bolt Action.
Whenever a player is activating a command token, or reacting, they can use the command token to carry out a CMT. These are NOT applied to a specific unit, you merely declare the CMT and put the command token to one side to show that it has been used this turn. You then roll to see how many morale markers can be removed. The result varies between zero and all the morale markers on ONE unit. Once rolled you then allocate this number of morale marker removals to one of your units.
Morale markers make it more difficult to activate your unit, makes it more difficult for your unit to hit its target and of course eventually leads to the death of your unit. All good reasons to keep the number of morale markers on your units as low as you can, remember though the same command tokens you are using to remove morale markers are also used to activate your units. You could activate all of your units with your command tokens and end the turn with many units probably loaded down with morale markers. You could use almost all your command tokens removing morale markers but that means you will do very little moving or shooting. By now you are seeing the dilemma, there are never enough command tokens and you have to decide as commander how to use what you have.
The whole system hangs together superbly and works as a whole, I really cannot recommend this game highly enough. We play with our old flames of war 15mm figures which are ideal. Smallish games are played on a 6 X 4 board whilst large battles with 15mm figures are played on a 6 X 8 board.
We have not used 28mm figures yet though it should work very well, the only problem I see is that it would really work best with at least a 6 X 8 table for 28mm which is larger than some people have available.
Any criticisms? Well to be honest I think there are too many variations on the number of dice you roll and what counts as a morale marker when shooting at infantry. I am quite good at remembering these kind of details and have now done a prompt sheet so don't personally mind, but some might be annoyed by it. That's it, everything else is pretty near perfect (well good enough for me anyway!)
The book itself come with 1944/45 army lists for US, Brits, Germans and Russians, the lists are fairly lite but enough to get you going. There are also download lists available for US paras, Brit Paras, Volksturm and SS as well as Russian assault troops.
The 1st expansion book being worked on will cover the north Africa campaign, this is due out in a few months.
If you wanted to use other periods now it should not be difficult to bodge up your favourite vehicles.
Andy Watkins
likes the look of the Soviet KV-1 tank, and plunges into a project to paint three of them - plus a spare KV-2 turret!
