"Tractics" Topic

Hey, a buddy of mine says I should try to find Tractics for use with some modern 1:72nd scale stuff but it's been out ofprint for around 30 years lol. Anyone know if there's a copy on the web or someone who has a copy they want to part with?

Don't waste your time. It was good for its day, but that day is gone. John

Can't have mine Try RPG Now they seem to have a number of TSR thinngs in PDF

Your buddy must be a maniac. Tractics is weird. However he probably has a copy, if you ask nicely.

KAM

how does it play can you guys give me an overview?

I wish I still had my copy:(

Great game. We played it lots in the old days. A set went on Ebay a couple months ago for $90. USD Not sure it is or was worth that! Rob

Using Tractics and "speed of play" in the same sentence is a crime punishable by death! It was from the 70's where complexity was the rule of the day and no one minded playing a ten turns in 8 hours on a Saturday afternoon.

Tractics was my first minis game way back in the day. I like it, but I certainly wouldn't pay $70 USD for it! You should be aware if you're looking at it for moderns that it doesn't cover anything much past the early 1970's (the modern vehicle charts top out with the T62 and M60A1 tanks for the USSR and USA, I think it might have Cheiftan for the Brits, I forget.)

It doesn't play too bad if you throw out the piddling stuff. We ignored the critical hit location on a '20' rule which speeds things up considerably, and used our own simplified morale rules, if I remember correctly. Also we used a streamlined version of the infantry rules since we were using Tractics for micro armor – I think squads stood in for single figures at this scale.

As an armor ruleset the thing that bothered me was how deterministic (if that's a word) the penetration tables were – if your weapon penetrated an opposing vehicles armor by one millimeter, it ALWAYS would penetrate at that range. I have to think real life ballistics are a little more messy than that.

I've still got a copy of it – never used it though. I'm going to sell it on ebay and hope I get enough to buy the upcoming FoW rule book.

Wyatt

It was slow, but it inspired a lot of future games. If I had a copy, I would drag it out now and then for nostalgia, and play a game or two, but there are definitely better alternatives available.

I played it once with a friend of mine back in the 80s. He had a big shoebox full of RoCo WWII tanks, and we played in his front yard which was rather rugged and definitely not a nice lawn. One of the best boards I ever played on :-)

We played for three or four hours (we also sped things up by simplifying), brewed up a bunch of tanks, had a great time. His wife thought we were nuts.

Sometimes games like that are the best.

If you only had one copy to game with, one member became the "rules master" and had to honcho the game charts. It was almost like a flow chart event everytime each player wanted to shoot a vehicle. Did you spot the enemy or just locate? Then, if you spotted, there were the mass of modifiers for shooting and trying to get a hit. I won't even begin to cover the reaction number each vehicle had which could determine who gets to shoot first.
You could do a lot better using a copy of "Firefight" from SPI. It will limit your vehicle choices, but will play a great deal faster, if nostalgia is what you desire.

Played them back in the early '80's. My Russian 45mm ATG took out a Panther through a vision slit. Do you remember Brewup? It was written by the same guys. It had .50cal HMGs shreading German panzers.