"The World War Two Tank Skirmish Game Reviewed" Topic

From Gale Force Nine …

Review here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Hmmmm. X-Wing with treads. By the way, those "American ID" chits have British unit symbols on them.

Great fun is that tanks that have taken all their damage and would be destroyed can still shoot back as they are only removed during the following phase.

Well, it is a game. LOL.

"From Hell's heart I stab at thee. For Hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."

Look forward to this game.

But I agree that tank's shooting back after being destroyed is dumb and removes most of the High Quality advantage.

This is not, fortunely, the rule in X-Wing.

First player variant: ignore this rule.

TomT

Knowing nothing about the game, I presume destroyed tanks can "fire back" because shooting is understood to be simultaneous. I can certainly imagine a panicked crew taking a few last shots before they lose their bottle and bail out. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I think there might be special damage cards that preempt this, you know, like big explosions? Not sure.

Actually if a tank suffered a fatal penetrating shot real world crews have only ONE thought: GET THE H…L out of this tank before we ROAST.

Very very rarely do they think: No I will die at my post to get off one last shot! (this assumes that the tank is not already on fire, all the other crew have the same thought, the gun still works, they can identify the target etc. etc.)

TomT

Read thru a bit of "tutorial" of this game and my impression was something like this..
"the tank takes a penetration hit" then it went on to say,
"they (the target) then return fire" "HUH?!"

Ok, Sherman took a penetration hit from a Panther, and "shrugs it off'. I dont think so.

*Thomas Thomas hit the mark with his comment.
If a shell comes IN the tank, the crew gets OUT of the tank!

In EVERY game that I ever created, I made it a point that combat was always Simultanious.
In that event, yes even "a destroyed tank/battleship/spaceship could shoot back", IF they had not already fired during the current turn.

I had my first game last week… loved it….

The system is very mod-able. We've been playing the pre-release version (w/o cards) for over a month now (which I'm inclined to continue doing without, even when the release version does become available – with its cards). Some modifications I've tried, such as: stationary vehicles get "first initiative" when firing (allows for ambush postures), and reduced movement measurements when moving in difficult terrain, or in reverse have added granularity to an already interesting movement/firing mechanic (made a new increment ruler for this).

The interesting thing I had to get my head around, was the concept that this is armored combat at point black range. For the period and of the tanks featured, the supply of APCR/HVAP for many of the Allied types was available, making many of the opposition armor types vulnerable to penetrations frontally (most often against the lower hull location). The multiple hits vs. saved rolls comparison has to be rationalized as glancing blows or hits against invulnerable armor (when they're saved against – it also can be a "fudge" for not having actual rate of fire factoring). I'm working on a quick penetration "threshold" mod to the tank cards that would require a sufficient value to effect KOs at, otherwise immobilization hits would be the only possible result (anyone can opt to create their own working system to take the pen. vs. armor effectiveness to a sufficiently acceptable level). Again, the base mechanics are very mod-able.

One thing that has struck me though (something I've not encountered in the 40+ years of armor gaming), is the ability, if one wants to think of the TANKS game as having a specified ground scale, is of using an exact 1 for 1 ratio of model scale to board scale. I'm playing TANKS with my 1/144th scale vehicles, and using the same scaling for the boards as equal to the model scale. Here's a few pics below from a recent game we played (the board is essentially 150 yards/meters square – I have a longer board textured up for a scenario I'll present at a con in 2 weeks). At this model-to-distance scaling, "actual" LOS issues brought about by what could be considered "realistic" terrain density plays its role in a more meaningful way I think, than it ever can on game boards with larger differences between model scale and the model terrain scale/density. The game is called a tank skirmish game, but what I have experienced from this concept with the boards I've created is actually more in-depth "skirmish-level" terrain, and experiencing the effects this can have on small fights (so far I've done up to company-level encounters). Anyway, long post, maybe not too clear, but the system is something I'm going to push until I break it (even though it's not released yet – it's already getting local game-shop viewer interest – and that's a positive thing for my purposes).

Modded movement stick: