"What a tanker - house rules for French tanks" Topic

I am suggesting this simple system to take into account the fact that French built tanks all used a single man turret in 1940. needless to say that this was a major disavantadge, and will help balance the armour and penetration advantage they rightfully enjoy.

Single man turreted tank :
This tank can use a single 5 die in a turn to reload its gun. Furthermore, if the tank is unbuttonned, it can neither aim, fire nor reload. Acquisistion bonus still applies however.

Since i'm using Herkybird's point system, this house rule can somewhat skew your games. Looking for advice to rebalance the forces.

I have considered one and two man turrets as they both have disadvantages against a 3 man turret.
I considered giving French tanks 1 less command die?, but I am less sure about this now.
Possibly allowing them to fire only once an activation would be better?
I would give such tanks a -1pt to the cost in this case.

Or you could just use my rules which factor in all of those considerations.

Cheers!

Where are your rules Lee?

They also didn't have a proper top hatch. They had a door at the back of the turret that the TC opened and sat on … I'm not sure what. I guess he sat on the hatch.

For every man over one in the turret, allow the TC to change a die by one pip.

The turret rear hatch was padded as a seat and was only used for comfort on road marches.

The French tanks all had fully-rotating cupolas that ranked from adequate to very good. The French had lost many, many tank crewmen to bullet splash in WWI. Their observation devices were designed to offer the greatest possible protection while also providing something like natural vision. The S35 and Char B turrets featured a cupola with three different observation devices on different sides of the cupola. This included a set of built-in periscopic binoculars!

So far for simplicity I simply rule that tanks without a dedicated commander, i.e. one who doesn't load, aim or fire the main armament, can't convert a command die (a ‘six') to another action. I haven't gone into the subtleties of one-man vs two- man turrets yet.
For actions with radio-equipped tanks vs those without, I allow a radio equipped tank to let another take its turn, and vice versa, if they are in LOS.
Finally, and again for simplicity, I rule all tanks turn by pivoting at some point during their turn rather than following a curve. There was an excellent video posted on this site of Russian WW2 tanks in a commemorative parade turning a corner that convinced me on this one, albeit I already used that movement conceit in my home-grown rules.

Well, 1 less command die would also affect survivability, since in essence, command diezs serve also as hit points. I think your suggestion of allowing a single action of firing for a single man turreted tank is very similar to my house rule. The only difference is that with mine, you can still fire twice if you are loaded at the statrt of a turn.

@emckinney
True, but I am much less convinced on the performmance of these rotating cupolas. Testimonies of veterans do not seem to endorse it. Anyways, the Germans were fast to repace these cupolas with a top hatch, so that the TC could watch over the surroundings from over the top of the turret. If you go to visit the tank museum at Saumur, you'll see that all 1940 tanks displayed there still have that German made hatch (and that someone used it on the B1 to display a 1940 FRench TC, which is IMO a major mistake, iven the subject and the location of the museum… Oh well…)

Got to love the way people talk about simplyfying more complex rules for a simple game. Kind of defeats the point.

My idea to keep it simple…

If a gunner is also the loader, the tank may not fire and load (or load and fire) in the same turn.

If a Commander is also the gunner and loader, the tank may only do one of the following in the same turn: spot, load or fire.

Easy.

"Anyways, the Germans were fast to repace these cupolas with a top hatch, so that the TC could watch over the surroundings from over the top of the turret."

This was the motivation for replacing them: the ability to open a top hatch and look around while advancing to contact, in overwatch, and so forth. Take a look at photos of German tanks in contact or demonstrating tactics, especially advances. They're all buttoned up! (Consistency and compatibility also drove the change.)

I've studied the German cupolas a little and not all of them are so great. There are some field of view limitations that are annoying. Where you're looking at something in the small field of view overlap between adjacent blocks,* you have to keep moving back and forth between them, losing the picture each time. At least with the French rotating cuplos, you could just pan back and forth. As a final note, proper procedure with the German cupolas was to close each vision block when you moved to another one, do that you weren't leaving a gap in the armor. This was repetitive and I'm sure it was … overlooked in the heat of battle.

*The new cupolas had five blocks spaced 72 degrees apart on the Pz III and IV. The 38t had four blocks and was much worse.

If you are looking to do a 1:1 game then many WW1 rules for Renault tanks would translate well to 1940 French.

1. Tanks without radios can only go forward, stop or retreat from action unless directed otherwise by a runner.

2. Tanks moving can deflect up to 15 degrees to avoid terrain obstacles. Tanks going forward may deflect up to 30 degrees left or right if there is a target to engage. Gunners can engage a target up to 30 degrees left or right of the axis of advance.

3. If a tank receives incoming fire, the tank commander can turn his turret in the direction of the incoming fire. If the commander spots the source of the fire he can direct that the tank turn, proceed in its current direction, stop or retreat on the following turn.

4. If a tank is not receiving incoming fire or receives it from multiple directions, the commander either keeps the turret pointing forwards, turns left or turns right depending on a chance roll.

5. A tank commander riding outside his turret is not bound by restrictions on spotting targets or on adjusting the direction of advance or the turret direction. The tank commander cannot fire when riding outside his turret. A tank driver riding with his hatch open can adjust the route of advance based on terrain.

6. If the tank commander is killed the tank must retreat. If the tank driver is killed the tank can fire but not move.

@emckinney
Ah, thanks a lot for your knowledgeableinsight. I had not understood you the first time, I guess. That was an interesting piece of information, and learnt something with your answer. Sure this will not fit in such a simple beer & pretzel set of rules as WaT, but that was a nugget I was not expecting to find when I opened the topic

Sorry Jim just saw your post. Actually 2 sets. Combat Action Command that uses base mounted fire teams like FoW and Skirmish Actions which uses single figures like Bolt Action. Did a lot of research to factor in just those sorts of differences. One caution Combat Action is very detailed and requires getting supplements for all WWII afvs. Skirmish Action has over 400 afvs in basic rules. Stores in UK carry them, email On Military Matters in USA they will tell you which stores. Beer & Pretzels gamers tend NOT to like my rules but those looking to use real WWII tactics do. I've actually had various groups like the US Army Delta Force and New York City SWAT TEAM Counter Terror Unit study them for their training. Enjoy! Cheers!

If a gunner is also the loader, the tank may not fire and load (or load and fire) in the same turn.
If a Commander is also the gunner and loader, the tank may only do one of the following in the same turn: spot, load or fire.

How long is a turn?

@Mobius -- A turn is his activation.

I thought that the easiest way would just to treat Tanks as normal, bad or very bad. With a normal tank having its 6 dice and a bad one just 5 and very bad only 4 dice. (with points adjusted accordingly)

That way you really don't need to remember special rules and it allows you to cover cases where the crew were overworked or new tanks were put into action too soon or with no crew training (Panthers at Kursk or T34s KV1s in 1941).
Also small tanks with 20mm like say Panzer 2 and early 4 man crewed tanks with smaller guns did not seem to at a significant disadvantage so it would seem wrong to put in a rule that 3 man turrets always are better than 2.

So have these decisions made at the scenario setup rather than extra rules. After all the French knew that a 1 man turret was poor but it was also cheaper so they had more tanks, which sounds like a typical gamers decision. It also allows for handicapping better tanks where the sides would otherwise be unbalanced, 41 Russia for example or a raw Tiger 2 vs Shermans.

As the we are trying to represent what is happening in a "Moment" I think leaving it up to your dice roll best represents what your chaps can do.

At least the French cavalry realized the limits of one man turrets and insisted on a wide enoguh turrent ring so that a standing loader could assist in the Somua 35 (the turret looks the same as the CharB but is actually slightly larger).

The rotating cupolas was ahead of its time, it just needed a top hatch to allow commanders to go unbuttoned if needed. Being unbuttoned has some serious draw backs and really the rotating vision cupolas is a better idea.

I wouldn't worry over much about overmuch about real world concerns in What a Tanker. The randomness will overwhelm all such attempts. You might get 3 Fire & 3 Load results so that the single French gunner/loader/Commander now has grown 6 arms.

TomT

I have always viewed that getting the 3 fire and load would be that your target is just slow to react rather than a superhuman gunner. Either not noticing your misses or any hits being somewhat distracting.
Its this sort of randomness which feels more realistic to me than many other systems.

I originally thought -1 command die was a good representation of the German description of French tanks being sluggish.
I think any system using reduced command die numbers would only work if it was used as a maximum number of command dice thrown. This would give the tank 6 'hit points' but act as though damaged. Of course, real damage would remove command dice, and not really affect the number of Command dice you could throw till the tank went below the 'max number of CDs throwable'
This is why a simple 'Slow firing' attribute, where a tank could only shoot once per activation is now my preferred option, and it seems to me to be the simplest solution.

<quote>At least the French cavalry realized the limits of one man turrets and insisted on a wide enoguh turrent ring so that a standing loader could assist in the Somua 35 (the turret looks the same as the CharB but is actually slightly larger).</quote>

The turret was exactly the small size, but the turret ring is larger.

The "one-and-a-half man" turret is something of a myth. First, it's impossible for a loader to get up into the turret all. The best that a second crewman could do would be to pass rounds to the commander, although that would certainly be a help when the nearest ammunition racks were exhausted. (As far as I've been able to determine from photos and schematics, the commander could reach a lot of ammunition without getting out of his turret seat.)

Second, the assistant loader would have to be the radio operator, which would leave the tank radioless at the time it most needed the radio!

Third, getting the radio operator into the tank was a bit of a clown car operation. I may be getting the seats reversed, bit the driver's seat folded backwards nearly flat. The radio operator would crawl forward, then scoot onto the driver's seat's bottom, the scoot sideways into his seat. The driver would scoot into his seat, then pull the seat back up and lick it into place. I have yet to find definitive evidence or accounts, but I can't find any way for the radio operator to get into back to the turret once the driver was in his seat.

Fourth, there's no reason that the "assistant loader" technique couldn't be used in the Char B. Yes, the turret ring was smaller, but the commander had to be able to lean down to grab ready ammunition. By definition, it had to be possible to pass rounds into the turret with the commander in his seat! Moreover, the Char B had an additional crewman on hand who could have helped with this duty, at least part of the time.aa

There was talk that a number of special rules dealing with differences in some vehicles would be in the imminent Summer Special from 2FL

Thanks Lee.

Although I don't drink beer and have never seen a pretzel this side of the pond I do like simple game rules.

Me and my chums are persevering with WAT as written for the time being.

As am I, Jim, as am I!

Why spoil a fun game!