"So Who are the Tank fans?" Topic

It was interesting in the Tank Tactics thread that many folk really only wanted the tanks to have a none to realistic cameo role in their infantry games. Me I am a sort of Tank fan, not what I call a super detailed fan the equivalent of a rivet counter in modelling, but interested in getting the basics right. Like, turning the turrets, smoke dischargers, un-buttoned and buttoned up, Turret down hull down and a wide range of speeds. Am I the only one???? ;-). Certainly you probably need to be into 15mm scale or less to be interested (me I am a 1/144 fan for tanks, about 12mm ).

I find that some WWII players are rivet counters and detail oriented. Very picky about the rules they use. Tend to want very detailed rules. Nothing wrong with all that. It is just an observation based on many years in the hobby.

I am a tank guy, infantry just gets in the way. But I am not what you would call a hardcore WWII player. I just dabble in it now and then.

I'm a Tank fan, but as part of a Combined Arms team. If most of the rivets are there I'm good.

I like my 15mm tanks (SCW to Cold War)

I come to wargaming from a fascination with tanks.

Tanks, tanks, tanks.

But after the first many years of wargaming, a dis-satisfaction with tank combat wargame rules, because what I saw on the game table did not explain why the tanks were the way they were. I mean, what fool takes a 6pdr OUT of a Cromwell, and puts a 75mm in it's place, when we all KNOW that the 6pdr had better penetration? Oh and drops the 75mm in at the same time that you limit the engine? I mean, a tank with a 6pdr scooting around at 40mph is a PRETTY d@mned cool wargaming answer to the Panther or Tiger. But a tank with a 75mm gun driving around at 30mph is just somebody else's Sherman, and we all know what a useless tank that was, right?

But evidently it was seen as the right thing to do by the British Army in 1944.

And that's the kind of thing I really wanted to understand.

So my games are focused as much as possible on combined arms action. Which is hard to do, because most rulesets try to use the same levels of abstraction for both the armor and the infantry, and that just doesn't work when you put them together on the table.

Which is what I do.

For me, I need (NEED) to have a company of tanks on the table. Or two. Or three. Please sir, can I have some more?

And I want my T-28s to be different from my T-26s, and I want my T-34m1940 to be different from my T-34m1942. But I'm not sure I need my early production 75mm M4A1 to be very different from my early production 75mm M4.

It's not so much counting the rivets for me, but seeing the dynamics. How did tanks and infantry and guns and arty and close air and flak interact on the battlefield? And how did that change when you had a T-34 vs. when you had an M4A1? That's what I'm looking for.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

It doesn't make for an exciting game, but I've read a number of accounts where the tank shows up to support the infantry, lobs some shells and MG fire at the enemy infantry, then trundle off to the next place they were needed to provide support.

Interesting mark 1. My war gamng is about trying to understand the basics. Why are tanks best in large numbers and not in penny packets. Why did tanks deploy in waves.
The Sherman 75mm thing is what my Tank Tactics thread is about. The Tank Action book adds a bit more. A 75mm Sherman if it out numbers a Panther and in close terrain makes the Panther or Tiger not quite the threat it would be in open terrain, just driving off the odd Panther is not massively unacceptable.
The other big problem is terrain, you need a plausible faxcimaly of real terrain to bring out both the strengths and weaknesses of tanks.
Also is interesting to see that by getting even vaguely plausible vision restrictions to tanks, there bizarre omnipotence on a war games table vanishes as they need the infantry to protect them. In addition the practice of machine gunning tanks becomes credible there performance if buttoned up falls dramatically. I think it was one of the US current manuals that noted that a buttoned up tanks performance drops by 30%.

One issue I am still wrestling with but slowly getting to grips with is that in places like Normandy and even parts of Russia, the places where army's can meet is surprisingly small. You can't do wide flanking movements even with tanks, as cross country they are slow and terrain often limits off road speeds dramatically. That means anti-tank forces can be massed in a relatively small area as it is the only route. If the enemy try a wide outflank it would be so slow as to allow the guns adequate time to deploy. In addition in Russia the Germans could never be too far (more than 10 miles(ish) from a major supply route like a Railhead due to horse transport.

I'm all about Combined Arms …

It doesn't make for an exciting game, but I've read a number of accounts where the tank shows up to support the infantry, lobs some shells and MG fire at the enemy infantry, then trundle off to the next place they were needed to provide support.

But, but, but … isn't that tank totally a death trap and scandalously useless if it just helps win a battle but doesn't destroy Tigers?

Ahem. Sorry. [/sarcasm mode] Yeah, that's the kind of thing I am hoping to see in my battles.

So I like my battles to be on a large enough scale that I can actually trundle my tank(s) off to the next place. Not just roll a die, consult a table, or pick a card and say "oh, I get a tank now for 3 turns", or some such.

The Sherman 75mm thing is what my Tank Tactics thread is about.

It is much of what my wargaming is all about, too. Only, for all the Sherman-talk we do around here, I've done a lot more T-34ing than Shermaning.

My war gaming is about trying to understand the basics. Why are tanks best in large numbers and not in penny packets. Why did tanks deploy in waves.

You say "basics", I say "dynamics". Potato, potahto.

I guess my advice is don't look just at tank tactics in a tank-v-tank view if you want answers to those issues. Because you have to bend and twist your rules to get the kind of result you want if you are looking only at tank-v-tank action.

The penny packets issue is an interesting topic for testing rules and approaches to wargaming. Because that's one that we (we gamers, that is, not just you and me) can test on the game table.

Here is what I have found in the last 20 or 30 years of my wargaming. I can overwhelm any defense if I can concentrate my forces in space and time better than my opponent. I've seen this happen with H-39s vs. Pz IIIs, with Pz IIIs vs. T-34s, with T-34s vs. Tigers, with T-55s vs. Centurions, and with T-62s vs. M60s. I've probably seen it with even more, but those are the examples that pop to mind at the moment.

And BTW my readings of 20th Century military history show me this as well. And this is why I talk so much about numbers and mobility in our threads about WW2 history.

If you spread your stuff out along a line, I can ALWAYS break through if I am mobile enough -- if my game is properly constructed to reflect the reality of combat.

One issue I am still wrestling with but slowly getting to grips with is that in places like Normandy and even parts of Russia, the places where army's can meet is surprisingly small. You can't do wide flanking movements even with tanks. … That means anti-tank forces can be massed in a relatively small area as it is the only route. If the enemy try a wide outflank it would be so slow as to allow the guns adequate time to deploy.

As I have said, if I am mobile enough I can ALWAYS break through.

Now the question of whether I am mobile enough may be influences as much by circumstances like the terrain as by my own force availability.

But the principle is the same. Only it may be that, due to the terrain, your tanks are not mobile enough. But maybe your infantry is? Hmmm?

I have seen this in matches like the one pictured in my posting above. The Italians were trying to hold a river line against the Russians. There was only one bridge. The Italians set up fully HALF of their AT assets to cover that one bridge, and quite successfully blocked it -- even though they couldn't manage a kill on the lead T-28, they managed a mobility kill, and that stuffed the Russians 'cause they couldn't get across the bridge.

Except … the Russian player was not in the mood to get stuffed. There was a marshy part of the river that infantry could cross. So in this case, once the choke-point was choked off, it was in fact the crunchies who had better mobility. And the Russian crunchies re-deployed to cross the marsh faster than the Italian crunchies could match, in part because the Russians had more crunchies, and in part because the Russians had some armored cars that could not hope to cross the marsh, but could lay down withering levels of supporting fire for the crunchies that could cross the marsh, and the Italian artillery could not get on target fast enough to catch the Russian crunchies as they re-deployed (really just a shift-left process) and advanced.

And THAT's what I mean about dynamics. Or basics, if you like. How the infantry and the tanks and the guns and the terrain and time and space all swirled together to make a game that felt like I was reading a historical unit AAR.

I'm all about Combined Arms …

Tha's what I'm talkin' bout!

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Mark 1 have you tried my rules Combat Action Command? Feel free to email me "offline" at leesow@aol.com thanks Lee

I do enjoy details in games, but not so much that I need a character sheet for each vehicle (as in Battletech).

Even a card is bordering on too much record-keeping for me, at least when we're talking more than 4 vehicles per player.

All the status effects need to be on the table, and for aesthetics reasons your status effects need to be something easy to make as a diorama marker.

I love tanks but I am not much of a skirmish gamer. So if I have to track buttoned up/unbuttoned for each tank, I'm already out….

I'm a tank fan.

Surprised buttoning up only reduces effectiveness by 30%.

I would have thought at least 50%.

Break through… Off you go. See ya.
Your logistic tail is mine though.
Task force baum came to a sticky end.

WW2 tanks are cool!

I do historical games with combined arms in the one true scale, 1/87. (Plenty of folks do it in 1/76–1/72.)

For pure tankery delights with no pesky infantry, come to the Girls und Panzer side of the tank force! As a much more tactical game, I do GuP in 15mm for more maneuvering room and still being able to admire the detail of the tanks out on the table.

As an old armored cavalry officer, I spent most of the 1970s and early 1980s dealing with combined arms operations. Even when I was an XO of a armor battalion, in almost all excercises we had crossed attached with an infantry partner in the same brigade.
During the DRS tests of the late 1970s, they even experimented with a combined arms battalion but logistics for the large battalion was too complicated. As a result, the concept was discarded early from the DRS program.

I am sure the Cromwell got the 75mm as opposed to the veritable 6pdr mainly for its better performance with HE.
Tanks tended to use a lot more HE than AP anyway.

+1 Herkybird
See the earlier thread of tank tactics. I'm a fan of combined arms.

I was a crewman on the things in the 80's/90s. I guess I'm still a fan.

I am sure the Cromwell got the 75mm as opposed to the veritable 6pdr mainly for its better performance with HE.

Actually it was the same gun. They rebored it to take the 75mm round and new breech. Quicker than adapting the tanks to the US 75mm.

My experience or rule writing over the years leads me to the conclusion you can get infantry vs infantry to work well quite easily and tank vs tank the same, but getting the tank vs infantry dynamic to work is a lot harder. You run into the "But it is not fair your tanks just roll up and blow all my infantry away!" reaction from playtesters. Trying to explain that it is what happened if you don't use terrain, AT assets etc to protect your infantry can be a hard sell to players who just want to plonk some stuff on the table and have at it. Adding in artillery and giving it its proper role without gaming the "your infantry company has just been hit by an AGRA stonk and virtually wiped out" scenario, which may be accurate, but not much fun to game, is also a challenge. I would be interested in what folks think is the sweet spot for gaming combined arms.
Oh and UshCha it is facsimile by the way. :-)

It was interesting in the Tank Tactics thread that many folk really only wanted the tanks to have a none to realistic cameo role in their infantry games.

The corollary is the tank nuts who just see the infantry as a speed bump in their tank games. As an interesting aside I read somewhere that the average US vs German tank engagement was 4-9 tanks a side, which is hardly massed armoured combat.

Mark 1, One of the interesting things we have achieved is that there is a maximum density of Armoured vehicles. Too many in a small space does not work they get in the way of each other. It is one of the reasons that waves of vehicels spaced say 400m between waves works, as in the real world.

Fred C,
We have learned the hard way that you need to keep villages and woods small. The link below is a game map of the terrain we fought over. Square grid is 300mm (about 1 ft). You can see the villages (at 1/144).

Our sweet spot is a company battlegroup in moderns. Typicaly tank heavy to keep the ammount down.

Artillery is generally daft in wargames. Ours was based on the Modern US manuals. I cross checked with a friend who was WW2 oriented and for "dumb" He there is little diffrence vs weight of HE. Even now the official role of the artillery on the battlefield is to Suppress and fix in place. Read any WW2 account and even one on the Fauklands and Artillery does not wipe out your company if its well dug in as it should be. And there is never enough ammunition even with modern SP guns.

My rules are not aimed at just plonking stuff on and having at it. If asked I like to check, if they like Bolt Action, Team Yankee et al then my rules are unsuitable. They are about real world simulation and real tactics. 10 years on I am still learning.

link

Larger villages and the infantry side effectively stops the battle while they complete their task.

This was a long series of games with about a regiment in attack, mainly becuse of the need to replace vehicles to allow re arming and to replace losses. Typicaly the attaker was fielding 1 to two mixed companies in modern parlance.

I could not be botherd to look it up. Communication is about getting a point across not being language obsessed. Ceaser only wrote commentaries because books were language obsessed. PS I do spell check the rules several times, both of us ;-).

I could not be botherd to look it up.

It was just a passing comment in case you were interested. No big deal.

Read any WW2 account and even one on the Fauklands and Artillery does not wipe out your company if its well dug in as it should be.

That depends on how heavy the barrage is and how long it goes on for. Panzer Lehr were pretty badly battered by the preliminary barrage prior to the Cobra breakout, but that included naval guns. There is data which indicates the density of fire required to achieve a given effect against dug in troops, which is a useful guide.

Tha's what I'm talkin' bout!

Having built models of most AFVs of all eras in my youth I do like Armor. But I am biased, having served in 1 Air Assault and 3 Mech in my youth. And after commanding a Mech Inf Co.[M113s] '87-'89, being frequently being attached to a Tank Bn[M60A1s & M1 IPs].

We were taught about Combine Arms from Day 1 !

I do historical games with combined arms in the one true scale, 1/87. (Plenty of folks do it in 1/76–1/72.)

I used to in my youth, e.g. Airfix, Roco, etc.

For pure tankery delights with no pesky infantry

Yes, tankers sometimes say that when dealing with enemy Grunts in Closed Terrain, like MOUT, forests/jungles, etc.

I've always been more interested in the tanks than the infantry. If I want to do infantry, I can play ACW or Ancients, or any other period.

Yes, I am a tank fan. The games I run from WW2 up always have tanks. In 15 and 25mm.

Fred you are correct. The amount needed to destroy a unit however is vast. There are a few accounts where a field containing troops was completely eliminated as the whole field was dusted down to 6 ft. As in your case it involved 15" guns. Not typical. It also required that the position was known in great detail to allow such a heavy concentration of ammunition; again this is not in my reading of history, typical. The rolling barrage is proof that exact positions were generally not known.
In Tigers in action it was noted that some Tigers were knocked out by artillery. However they were tasked with remaining on a hill overnight in view of the enemy. Tigers are renowned for low endurance and hence at some point it would have to stop for long periods. Time enough for artillery to range in and eventually sheer weight of fire would do the damage. Again not typical of what you would get in a war game scenario, so we saw no need to cover it.

I am a tank fan. North Africa tank action in 10/12mm. What a Tanker in 1/56.

(And I have a stash of 15mm tank kits just in case…)

I wouldn't say I was a rivet counter but if the resources are there for example the right model tank for the right era and of course for the right unit your depicting then why not use it? The standards of the models now in most scales are excellent compared to what we had around 20+ years ago and things will probably get even better in the future . 3D printing may help in this regard but I still think we are not quite there yet.

As in so many areas of wargaming, this is not a question of 'accuracy' but one of detail vs abstraction. A highly abstract system can still give an 'accurate' result but without the granularity of detail.

Many players like to see turret vs hull hits, penetration stats, buttoned/unbuttoned. However this relies on your playing piece (your model tank) representing only one tank. It is also information that only a troop commander (in charge of about three tanks) would be interested in. If you are playing at the company/ battalion level the commander would neither know nor care about these fine details. We happily play other games with one model X equals so-many real X's but we seem strangely reluctant to do it with armour. Even in WW2 games where the infantry are scaled out of existence (like Rapid Fire) the armour is still at a different (lower) representative scale.

As gun ranges increase there is also the problem of how much space your model occupies vs how far it can shoot. If your model ends up being 100m long in your ground scale you are going to have issues creating a convincing 'look' on the table while maintaining real unit frontages.This is where FoW famously falls over unless you play it in 1/300. Also the Battlegroup series use a 1:1 figure scale but an (unstated) 1mm =1m groundscale giving highly distorted unit frontages.

I play with Battlefront WW2 for WW2 and Cold War. In this a model represents a troop of 2-3 tanks, thus we are not interested in whether they are shooting their main gun on HE or their MG, we are just interested on their aggregate effect on a target. The result is not 'inaccurate' merely it works at a higher level of aggregation and abstraction. It also allows the model to represent a group of vehicles occupying the footprint of the model, allowing a better (for me anyway) visual impression.

At the end of the day its about the compromises you are prepared to make, but hey, its your game so make as many or as few as you choose. I game in 1/72, which is a pretty bloody hopeless scale to game armoured warfare in unless you own a church hall, but I love making the models, so I suck up the compromises. You pays your money…

Mark 1, One of the interesting things we have achieved is that there is a maximum density of Armoured vehicles. Too many in a small space does not work they get in the way of each other. It is one of the reasons that waves of vehicels spaced say 400m between waves works, as in the real world.

My own readings (and review of photographs) gives me to believe that tanks could easily operate in closer quarters than that. 25-50m between vehicles is more than enough to ensure they do not "get in the way of each other".

However, it makes a mighty tasty target for arty concentrations, and also makes for a more painful discovery process with hidden minefields. So as your enemy's ability to call down fires improves, your combat spacing expands.

If you don't have combined arms, I would expect the rules to place all kinds of arbitrary limitations if you don't want tanks bumper-to-bumper on your battleboard.

Read any WW2 account and even one on the Fauklands and Artillery does not wipe out your company if its well dug in as it should be.

That depends on how heavy the barrage is and how long it goes on for.

Fred you are correct. The amount needed to destroy a unit however is vast. There are a few accounts where a field containing troops was completely eliminated as the whole field was dusted down to 6 ft. As in your case it involved 15" guns. Not typical.

Typical or not typical may depend on the campaigns you are gaming.

The Germans figured out by 1943 that operating anywhere near a coastline meant the USN and RN could "erase" any unit that tried to move during the daylight. (In truth they would not be erased, but only "paused". There would be survivors, but it would take time to re-organize / regenerate combat effectiveness.) This process was pretty quick for forces moving in the open. Dug-in positions were much harder to impact.

The Germans figured out in 1944 that their front line troops on the Eastern Front, even when reasonably well entrenched, were also subject to being "erased" by short 2-3 hour Soviet arty prep fires. Battalions and Regiments of infantry simply disappeared from their maps. In these cases the units didn't regenerate some combat force over time, as their positions were often quickly over-run before that could be accomplished.

As stated this took a lot of ammunition from a large number of guns. Also, it required good info on the target force's location. This was both the weakeness of dug-in forces (they don't move around much) and the key to their counter-measure, which was to create frontline fortifications and then pull back to secondary positions, allowing the front line fortifications (and the few unfortunates detailed to form a picket in the fortifications) to soak up so much of the attention of Soviet arty fires.

There are also many accounts of German distaste for US and British artillery fires, in terms of the concentrations that could be assembled very quickly. Here I find it a bit harder to draw a clear picture -- German vets often said that the US Army had the artillery they feared the most, but I have not seen many clear accounts of operational impacts of US Army arty.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

As I mentioned, you need to be able to show your status effects on the table. And ideally show them via diorama-style markers, not some paper counter!

This causes me some grief, since I usually use exposed tank commanders to show command tanks.
* But you can magnetize tank commander's cupolas, to show buttoned/unbuttoned.
* Early PSC tanks come with extra tracks, enough that you can make probably 4 'tracked' markers per kit.
* BF used to include wounded tank crew in the blisters, which makes an easy 'crew stunned' marker.
* Main Gun damaged is the hard one to show, the best I've come up with is some black yarn 'smoke' around the gun barrel, with red/yellow/black yarn indicating a brewed up tank.

Lion in the stars, intersting, When we played at (1/72) we originally went for small printed markers (you copy from the rules). however we then went to like you to diorama markers. We cheated and used aluminium mesh support material used for cars. if you cut it right you get a "railway line" that looks a bit like tracks, and wheels for imobilied etc. When we moved to 1/144 we ended up with a lot more vehicles and realised time was beinh wasted sorting markers out. The solution was to have, like for the main unit marker, a dry wipe inconspicious marker to mark the status. Much faster and to us, an acceptable compromise where the game comes first.

Unbuttoned etc, we are poor in this area, we usually do it by definition, a friend has tank crew upper torso's for his 1/72 vehicles. I may be able to do better for 1/144 now I have my own figures, they may liik more plausible on top of a 1/144 vehicle. However keeping it on at 1/144 may be an issue. Oh yes we did go somewhere at one poing with 1/72, a small ball bearing glued into a small nut and painted and placed on the commanders hatch. Somehow it never caught on, it worked, looked better but nobody could be bothered with it in the heat of battle.

Suppressed and reaction markers, critical to our game were soon Litco markers (effective but expensive), or card crusiform explosions/cotton buds tops died different colours mounted on a drawing pin (a cheap and not too bad compromise) or for me, now my own 3D printed crusiform marker.

I just have a basic rule to stop tank parks in any system: every tank has a 1" ZOC that no vehicle can enter. Meaning, vehicles can never be more than 1" closer to each other. Helps break things up and makes moving through terrain more difficult.

Since I play a game called "Treadheads" I guess I'm a tanker type but with an infantry background which has taken a back seat to the tanks. I like the detail of a 1:1 game like Khaki08 mentioned.

I have a 1/144 and micro armor collection. For 1/144 scale tank models, I white glued a 1/32 inch thick rare earth magnet the diameter of the hatch over the hatch and painted it to match the vehicle, it is barely noticeable. I painted small ball bearings black. To show an unbuttoned TC I just placed the ball bearing on the magnet and took it off if he buttoned up.

On my micro armor tanks, I put some sticky wax between the bottom of the turret and top of the hull. The turrets turn easily and do not come off.

Wolfhag

Define "sticky wax," please.

donlowry,
It's sticky and waxy.

It's used to hold down nick-nacks but does not dry out.

link

Wolfhag

@Ushcha: well, with you and Aotrs printing your own vehicles, shouldn't be too hard to print a cupola with an exposed commander and a closed cupola. Then you add a space for a small RE magnet in the bottom and another RE magnet in the turret roof. Then you just need to make sure that your magnets all have the same polarity (more tedious than anything else).

As for organizing the markers, well, Plano(tm) makes tackle boxes, and you just always put the markers back in their slot in the tackle box. It's pretty cheap, in the US. I use several of those for different games.

On tank parks. In the real world you should get no closer than 40 to 50m to another tank even a knocked out one. If you do or have too, the primary issue is that the hit probability on you is is pretty much 100%: a correction that small is not going to be in error enough to miss.

We omitted this criteria in our original rules as there were other reasons that you tended to not get that close but we admitted defeat and added it in the bulletin. You can still deliberately or accidentally get closer but the cost will be as the real world. Of course this is in addition to getting more tanks in an artillery barrage as has already been suggested.

Lion in the starts, while you are correct about that, there is no way in hell its going to happen. Keeping that many alternative turrets for tanks, APC's IFV's and the like would be a step WAY TO FAR, may be a hundred vehicles. A ball bearing on a turret as suggested by Wolfhag secured by a magnet is a practical solution that I need to look at.

Tanks are dumb, far too noisy, rip up the turf/road/pavement/, too big and attract enemy fire, they break down all the time, can hardly even negotiate any sort of slope and are altogether far too silly.

Only a real tanker could barely tolerate them.

Yeah … so … what's your point ?

Ushcha, it would be a lot easier to have built your models that way from the beginning.

I think if I was going to make set of models linked to a game, I would set the models up with swappable cupolas or other commander's hatches, shed tracks, and wounded dismounted crew (or some other 'crew stunned' indicator that I haven't figured out yet).

It wouldn't be too bad for a dozen tanks and APCs per side, but it would get onerous for battalions per side.

Lion in the starts, we have different opinions on what is acceptable ;-). No way I am going to prat about like that in the middle of a game. Far too many more interesting things to do. For me it would be too much art at the expense of the game. But hey I only color my troops painting would take way too much time, when I could be playing or writing scenarios.

William Ulsterman,

Interestingly although the casualty rate of tankers is not small, one author noted that you could find tankers that had fought all through the war. This was much more almost none survived to fight all through as the casualty rate was so much higher. So be a tanker and you may survive!

Yeah, Grunts generally have the highest casualty rates … For a number of obvious reasons.

Wolfhag:

Thanks! Never heard of that stuff before.

Therefore, UshCha, as well as all of the other defects I have already listed, tanks are also the wimps option as well.

Legion 4 – the point is that tanks are over rated and I like games with no tanks at all. Or games where you have proper terrain rules. Too many tank car parks and tankable go anywhere sort of tables. Appalling.

William Ulster man, I canot believe it but I am agreeing with you! Our rules set out to do tanks better!
We DO make buttoned up tanks vulnerable to infantry, as they can see sod all when buttoned up and that came from a real tanker!

Terrain, many hedges have ditches, If you get the number of hedges and ditches nearer ral word levels, off road movement is restricted or at least reduced and infantry have places to use tactically. Strange but wargamers want realistic models with the details right but a realistic terrain is tossed out!
We encourage players to look at real maps of places you would fight, Almost never in Europe do you see a table as empty as a wargames table.

Don't even get me started on tank parks it's easy to stop. I blame model manufactures who throw plausibility to the wind so as to sell more toys and then have the cheek to say it's realistic.

And that is from a tank fan!

the point is that tanks are over rated and I like games with no tanks at all. Or games where you have proper terrain rules. Too many tank car parks and tankable go anywhere sort of tables. Appalling.

Excuse my poor attempt at humor or is that humour, in one of my pervious posts.

But yes, that is why many modern war game battles, fronts, conflicts, etc., that don't have a plethora of AFVs involved are not as popular, in general. At least so it seems. E.g. the WWII PTO, the Korean War, etc.

However, personally being a former Mech Inf Cdr and frequently attached to tank units, I'll freely admit I'm a bit biased …

as well as all of the other defects I have already listed, tanks are also the wimps option as well.

I certainly wouldn't say that. Plus I wouldn't say that to any Tanker !!!!

But yes, that is why many modern war game battles, fronts, conflicts, etc., that don't have a plethora of AFVs involved are not as popular, in general. At least so it seems. E.g. the WWII PTO, the Korean War, etc.

True that. My all-time fave WW2 games involve a US Armored Combat Command on the table. PTO only grabs my interest for skirmish gaming which is not really about tanks anyway; I do see some Seabees for Bolt Action in my future. Vietnam is only interesting for me when there are riverine boats and helicopters, at least then it has some exciting mecha!

I almost went into tanks instead of the infantry. When we went on our Med Cruise in Fall 1974 our M-48A3's would have gone up against T64's and T-72's. I think the idea was for Harriers and 8" naval gunfire to take care of that problem.

Wolfhag