Newbie Do - Basic Tank Combat Part 1

 

For my next series of articles for newbies I thought I would concentrate on something that tends to cause issues with all new players and that is simple tank combat. Literally one tank on one tank to try and get some safety concepts into new players heads. 

Tanks are precious resources in ASL. Most scenarios are designed with 'basic competence' in the rules ingrained so if you have a tank (especially a late war tank) then the scenario is often balanced on the owning player knowing how to use that tank properly. If due to lack of experience it isn't used competently or gets destroyed fast then the actual game balance is suddenly drastically against you which can lead to bad gaming experiences. In my own ASL career for probably the first few years my own tank experiences went something like this

Ooo I have a panther. Supposed to be one of the best tanks in the war..Great this will be fun.

Ok lets start up and move to attack.

Enemy approaching I will take a shot!. What's that? The modifiers are -18 so I require a double 1 followed by a 1 to hit? Can I wait till they lower? No as I have announced the shot?.

Ok missed

Now the enemy shoots back. They only need a 9 to hit? Oh they hit and blew up my panther

Continue to lose the scenario.

 Common perhaps but the sudden loss of a high impact game piece means that there is less chance to 'learn' how to use them properly. If you compare this to infantry rules then you might run a stack of three squads and an officer across open ground and lose it all but you still have other infantry to learn other lessons in that scenario and you don’t have to wait months till another game with another tank which will probably be equally inefficient. Plus tanks are so much more than just portable artillery.

 So hopefully this little article series will prevent the all to frequent cases where a new player takes a staggeringly low odds shot without realising quite how low odds it actually is then misses before getting pounded to death by a now smug veteran who mentally likes treating this as a 'learning exercise' but which actually is usually more a disincentive to continue playing.

 Example Caveats

 Now tank combat is very rarely as simple as portrayed below. There is an amazing array of different vehicles in game and each will have widely differing statistics that can drastically impact your way of playing. Let me give a small practical example and say you are playing an early war scenario using the following two lovelies.

The key to note here is that both have crap guns but the German gun is really bad. The 20L has an AP tokill number of 7. If it hits the French tank on the turret front or rear then it needs to roll a 0 or less on 2 dice (the 4 armour increases to 7 due to the square around the armour value) to kill and 1 or less to shock. The hull is not much better meaning the German player would need a 2 or less with 3 to immobilize. The only slight saving grace is that it has a high rate of fire and that due to its low calibre if the range is between 2 and 6 then its to kill increases to 8 and at one hex it increases to 9! which still means double ones are needed to do something against the turret and a more reasonable 5 for the hull. The French tank packs a 37 which has a to kill of 8. The Germans armour is worse so a frontal shot would need 5 and rear/side shot 6 increasing by 1 at 1-2 hexes.

Either way there is a good chance that the German player can hit all he wants but his chances of doing any damage are very low indeed. In theses circumstances the French player may treat the risks and rolls very differently.

To avoid the above problem of  'the armour will only be breached 20% of the time unless you hit this or that' we will use two late war tanks with decent guns to try to almost remove post hit destruction choices as a variable.

 

The 'contestants'

 

For this simple example we will be using an excellent British medium tank from the late war (used in 1945 mainly) the 'Comet'. It has average size, low rate (1) and for armour 8 frontally with 11 on the turret. It's gun is a reasonable type 77L which was a less powerful version of the more famous firefly 17 pounder. This particular gun still has a base AP kill number of 19. On the peripherals side it carries a weak co-axial machine gun (2) and a decent bow machine gun (4). It can also use both smoke dispensers and smoke mortars with depletion numbers of 7 and 8 respectively.

 

It's opponent will be a Panzer IVH so one of the later Panzer IV's. This is slightly outmatched by the British tank. It's frontal armour is also 8 though its turret is weaker with only 6 factors. It's gun is the common German 75L with an AP kill of 17. It can also muster APCR later in the war with a rather crap depletion number of 2 in 1945 (which if gained does increase the kill to 20 - though also nicely shows German weakness in munitions during the end of the war). Like the Comet it has a fast turret traverse with slightly better machine guns (a co-axial at 3 and bow at 5). It also possesses many interesting smoke/peripheral options with smoke shells (with a reasonable depletion of 8), smoke dispensers at a much worse 5. These vehicles also carried Scherzen which was a bit like a throw away section of armour that helped protect against Heat rounds (not applicable here but interesting all the same and easily forgotten if your opponent is using HEAT rounds).

 First thing to do with any scenario tanks is to look at the kill numbers if the Comet 'hits' the German tank on its 'best' (front hull) armour at 2-18 hex range then it kills the tank on a 10 or less, immobilized on a 11 (hull hit only) and has a 'dud round' with a 12. In return the German tank has worse odds with a successful shot. If hitting the turret it needs a 6 to shock, 5 to kill but when hitting the front hull this increases to 9 to immobilize, 8 to kill. 

For our practical example the German tank will be defending and the British trying to move in for the kill. Both tanks are following 'actual' common WW2 tank commander standard operating procedure and both are Crew Exposed which I believe was relatively common practice among most of the combat nations (the Russians possibly excepted though that could just be German propaganda) as some of the following memoirs seem to indicate. 

Tank Commanders who slam their hatches shut at the beginning of an attack and don't open them again until the objective has been reached are useless, or at least second rate. There are of course, six to eight vision blocks mounted in a circle in every cupola that allow observation. But they are only good for a certain sector of the terrain, limited by the size of the individual vision block. If the commander is looking through the left vision block when an anti-tank gun opens fire from the right, then he will need a long time before he identifies it from inside the buttoned up tank.

Unfortunately ,impacting rounds are felt before the sound of the enemy gun's report, because the speed of sound. Therefore, a tank commander's eyes are more important than his ears. As a result of rounds exploding in the vicinity, one doesn't hear the gun's report at all in the tank. Is is quite different whenever the tank commander raises his head occasionally in an open hatch to survey the terrain. If he happens to look halfway to the left while an enemy antitank gun opens fire halfway to the right, his eye will subconsciously catch the shimmer of the yellow muzzle flash. His attention will immediately be directed toward the new direction and the target will usually be identified in time. Everything depends on the prompt identification of a dangerous target. Usually seconds decide.

.....

No one can deny that the many casualties among the officers and other tank commanders were due to exposing their heads. But these men didn't die in vain. If they had moved with closed hatches, then many more men would have found their death or been severely wounded inside the tanks.

Otto Carius, Tigers in the Mud p118 Stackpole.

 

The start point for our initial examples. The British tank was in motion at the end of its last turn and in the German turn the German tank turned up and stopped. It is now the British movement phase again.

 

Example A

A tank moving tries to shoot a stationary target tank at close but not very close range (3-6 hexes)

 The British player remains in motion and moved his tank to the rear of the German tank moving via AA5, BB5, CC5, DD4 then swung his VCA towards EE3 then CC3 then used bounding fire to shoot.

The Comet takes a shot. Since we have removed many  complications the Base to hit is 8 and the dice modifiers are 

+2 for case C  (Bounding firer, T type gun) and
+2 for Case B 

but as the vehicle is non-stopped 

C4 also applies so the lower dice is doubled 

Therefore the only rolls that would hit would be 2 or 3 so this only has an 8.34% chance of success. The defending tank sees no reason to shoot back at this point so will 'wait' for the defensive fire phase where it takes its own shot. 

The base to hit is also 8 with Case J applying as the British tank is still in motion. The tank would have to swing its TCA around (or VCA). The TCA costs less so would add +2 to the roll (VCA counts at No turret so would add +4)  so the defending tank requires a 4 to hit (16.69% chance). Not good odds but almost double the British Comets chances and the German tank would gain an acquire it could use next round.

To clear things lets give a running percentage chance per hex moved

HEX              British Tank hit odds        German Tank hit odds

AA5                8.34%                              41.67%
BB5                8.34%                              27.80% (VCA move weakens odds)
CC5                8.34%                              27.80% (same as BB5)
DD4                8.34%                              16.69%(bigger VCA change)

So you might be wondering why the German tank does not take the AA5 shot? It might be the best thing to do. But the German player is considering that the British tank with its 8.34% chance to hit is not at all likely to hit his Panzer and he would prefer to have a higher chance of destroying the British vehicle. Plus if he shoots then then the British tank gains more options and becomes much more dangerous (as will be seen below). 

The key thing to remember here is that it (usually) is not the first turn tanks engage that results in destruction as you are trying to set up to kill on the next phase and the defender has a big advantage here as he will shoot first next turn. On the (probably) missing shot this turn he gets a minus 1 acquire counter and allowing he is not very lucky and rates (or very desperate and uses intensive fire) then the odds of hitting increase to a 6 (motion enemy J +2, -1 acquire) meaning he now needs a 7 which is a much more reasonable 58.34% chance of success whereas the British tank being still in motion is still requiring the 8.34% of his moving turn.

This does not seem very sensible for the British tank so we will make things slightly more realistic and stop the British tank before it takes its shot.

Example B

The same action but the tank is going to stop, shoot and then start up and carry on moving

 All the above apply except now the case C4 does not occur so a simple 4 or less would hit - 16.67% 

 

If we assume the target tank is in motion then it gets worse due to case J with our valiant attacker in Example A now needing an improbable hit (probably around 0.3% chance) and for Example B only snake eyes would do (so 2.78%)

 

Yuk. But what about the German defender tank.  This has no change from the previous section so a 6 is needed a 41.67% chance

 

 

(and If the defending tank is in motion then it has to add Case C4 so doubles the lower dice meaning only 16.67% chance.)

 

Example B2 This could even be something tiny. Let's adjust the example slightly be assuming a sniper is close and the SAN number is 5. Plus we will add a British Squad with a light machine gun. Now the German player will be very aware that his tank is possibly the only target for that sniper and though those infantry cannot damage the tank they can shoot the CE tank commander therefore the German tank has buttoned up to avoid getting his precious tank recalled. Re-using the example the defender now hits first time on a 5 which is only a 27.78% chance. Even with an acquire it only increases slightly to 41.94%

 

 

 

Example C This time we will run the same action but show how the addition of even slight negative factors impacts the chances of death. This time the attacking tank will stop at point blank range and shoot.

 

Now the base odds for the attacker at point blank range include the -2 for 1 hex point blank (-1 for 2 hexes). So the odds of a kill increase from 4 to a 6 making it a more reasonable 41.67%.

 

The defender knows this and an enemy vehicle capable of point blank fire is an immediate risk so the defender declares a gun duel when it stops and tries to shoot first.

 

Gun duels are listed here and basically come down to whichever of the tanks has the lower modifiers is the one that shoots first.

 

The defender has pretty decent odds now with 8 base +2 J -2 point blank both cancelling each other making this an 8 needed and 83.34% chance of a hit!

 

Yuk. Terrible for the attacker eh.

 

So as a base rule for 90% of tank engagements 1 (Shermans with gyrostabalizers being a possible exception) assume that you never shoot while moving unless it is absolutely unavoidable and that a stopped tank has a massive advantage in any fight. Secondly as an attacker don’t stop at point blank range of an enemy tank unless

 

A - its gun is to weak to have much chance of penetrating your armour if it does hit, which it probably will

B - you absolutely have to take a 10% chance to win and must try to take out the tank this turn

C - you have used other factors to reduce the defenders chances

 

Things are actually worse than above as in a large amount of cases most tanks will be buttoned up to avoid snipers/infantry/machine gun fire and this adds a +1 to the hit chance.

 

 

 

How does the attacking player avoid this conundrum? This is where knowledge of the other modifiers in C5 help and we will cover those in the second article in this series.