Tanks at Summer Half Term !

Well the obligatory school holiday wargaming session with Mark took place today and we concentrated on playing 'Tanks' by Battlefront for the first time. Both of us have the starter set and although we have many 1/76 scale tanks between us we did op for 1/100 scale (15mm) to learn the rules with a 50 pointish skirmish game as recommended.

As usual I plumped for the allies and selected a Firefly and two Sherman V's , Mark had a Panther and two Stug Assault Guns. My troop was valued at 51 points against the German 63 points although building a crew and extra equipment adjusted the points value of both troops.

The game was played on half a table tennis table with a few token bits of scenary, next time at Marks we will have proper landscaped wargaming boards or printed mats to make it more appealing to the eye. Set up is shared to place scenary, and the attacking player (yours truly) deployed first then turns follow movement, shooting and command phases dependant on tank initiative and attack values. Lowest initiative moved first giving the highest initiative tank (Panther) the best picture of what the opposition was up to. The highest attack value tank fired first. The Panther held all the cards!!!

The Dice rolling was something to behold, this was supposed to be a half hour duration game hahahaha.....getting used to the rules and special cards took a little time and then our attack and defence dice cancelled each other out and kept hits at one all ( 1 damage each on a Stug and the Firefly) well into the game. This made us question if we had read the rules right about cover, movement and ammunition bonus dice....surely someone would brew up soon!!

Well suddenly within the village there was carnage, the Germans suddenly understood the 'Bitzkrieg movement rule in the command phase and were amongst the allies in the ruined buildings. The British should have kept moving, a lesson learnt! Suddenly two Shermans were 'kaput' knocked out by Panther and Stug for the loss of one German assault gun, the Firefly mortaly wounded and a crewman down was cornered in a ruined house and was knocked out in a last stand ....the Panther didn't sustain a scratch!

The above picture tells the British tankers story of their first outing in the game, back to the mess for tea and reading the training manual ....next time it will be your tanks ammunition exploding Jerry!