TANKS The Modern Age Battle At The Crashsite

After the last battles were lost by the NATO, their morale got low and some US troops deserted and tried to reach France, but the French army will not tolerate any deserters crossing their borders and prepare to fight against these foes.
While the Americans reached the crashsite of F-WTMD and destroyed a small East German reconissance platoon, the French are heading towards them...

We decided to build our platoons without knowing what the other player would use, what ended in 2 very different platoons, and in 2 NATO partners fighting each other.

On one side are the Americans, played by my mate Olli, choosing to play a rather small platoon equipped with a lot of useful upgrades. Just read his platoonlist (the M-109, Artillery Scout and Target Computer are custom cards):

Cobra Helicopter
- Improved TOW
M1A1 Abrams
- Artillery Scout / Randall Avery / Ressourceful Gunner / Silver Bullet
M-60 (coming next weekend)
- Joseph Ortelli / Robert Folk
M-109
- Target Computer

= 101 Points

On the other side are the French troops, which are a "quantity instead of quality" army, their strenght is the relatively low costs for average tanks that you get strenght in numbers. This time I took only tanks and howitzers, the "Rapid Fire (5)" ability of the AMX-30 tanks would be enough firepower against any enemy helicopter. The "Willie Petes" were useless, since they are only effective against units with a lower initiative.
Just take a look at my list:

AMX 30
- Willie Pete
AMX-30
- Willie Pete / Artillery Observer
AMX-30
- Henri Delacroux / Artillery Observer
AMX-30
- Andre Mareau
AMX-AUF1
- Ressourceful Gunner / Bomblet Bombardment
AMX-AUF1
- Ressourceful Gunner / Bomblet Bombardment

= 101 Points 

As you can see, 3 tanks and 1 helicopter are fighting against 6 tanks, who would win this battle?

After we placed the scenery and our units (except for the planewreck, all scenery pieces count as cover while the wrecked plane is a sightblocker), my mate Olli had the tactical advantage for the first round, and we were ready to start:

In the first round nothing happened, some units were moved but nothing else. The second round showed the strenght of the "Bomblet Bombardment", both AMX-AUF1 used it on the M-60, and with firesupport from an AMX-30, the Patton was shattered into pieces.
In that moment my mate Olli saw his troop already defeated while I was sure that I would win, but the game had not ended yet.

First Blood

In the third round the Cobra destroyed the first AMX-30 with missiles, the Abrams almost destroyed another AMX-30 in a single attack, while the French attacks did not do any harm to their enemy.

The fourth round included heavy firefights, a second AMX-30 was destroyed and the Cobra was turning its "Rapid Fire" on the very fragile howitzers, not destroying them.

Due to the "Ressourceful Gunner" both French AMX-AUF1 used the "Bomblet Bombardment" again on the Abrams hitting it a single time, while one of the two remaining AMX-30 made on its way to the M-109.

Round 5 and another AMX-30 got destroyed, but its "Final Fury" attack destroyed the M-109, now the Cobra and the Abrams were left over on the American side, while the French had a last AMX-30 and both slightly damaged howitzers.

The AMX-30 attacked the Abrams, scoring a critical hit. I tried my luck and attacked the Cobra with one of the howitzers (every tank has at least a D3 attack versus helicopters) and it got hit a single time.

The sixth round brought more casualities for the French, who lost their first howitzer, now it was two on two and I already had a rough foresight how the game would end.

The seventh (and final) round brought the defeat for the French. There was the (micro)minimal chance of getting a draw, according to the "Final Fury" rule, both destroyed tanks had a last attack, but they did not hit.

The American deserteurs have won the battle, but the US HQ already got informed about this and sends a platoon to hunt them down. After a future battle you will see, if 5 Humvees are strong enough to beat the leftover deserting units.


By the way, making the Americans deserters was done only for dramatic reasons and the lore of our campaign, those boys would never retreat.

This battle showed that "hightech" upgrades and air souvereignity play a big role in deciding the victory, more than having strenght in numbers. While the first rounds the French seemed overpowering the Americans, from the moment the helicopter went into battle, their luck changed.

The Fremch AMX-30 are well armed against helicopters, but having luck with the dice plays another important role, the first picture of the post shows my D5 attack versus a D3 defence, Olli had not even to roll his defence dice.
But in a usual fashion, this game made fun because it was unclear until the final rounds, who would win. We learned some more things on platoonbuilding, and, for a first game, the French fought hard. I will have to rework the US and Soviet custom artillery units and upgrades since I found some inconsistencies.

In the next days we are going to play a 4 player all vs all game, with slightly changed rules. I do not think the initiative rules to decide which tank to move would not work with 4 players fighting each other.

Another Planes Playtest for TANKS

Pictures of the third playtest for my upcoming planes expansion for "TANKS". Once again Germany vs the UK, once again my forces were crushed by their enemy, and my opponents plane did some serious damage, just as my plane did.

Even when I had the air superiority after the destruction of the German flak, it did not help, I shot down the Stuka right after it destroyed the second tank of mine.

You will have to choose from 7 planes and  6 AA vehicles in the first version of this expansion, plus various new crewmembers, equipment, and doctrine cards, but feel free to use whatever you want to use for the new ruleset, for this case I will include some generic unit cards to use.

This time we used new movement templates. Those things work fine, just as supposed, but I may resize the round piece. Sometimes you will have to improvise to reach your target but the new rules for the movement phase are completely finished, at least in a bunch of handwritten notes.

The use of new custom doctrines for special air manouvers can make their movement unpredictable, maybe barrel roll and looping may be over the top, but these two were pretty useful. 

You may notice a black die on some of the pictures, which determines the height the plane, in the final version these will be replaced by custom paper counters. You can fly in 2 different heights, if you are on high altitude you will get an additional defense die.

The attack phase addon rules also work as supposed, there is one thing left unclear, it is where the plane has to be to drop a bomb and how to decide which tank will get hit, but I think we found a reasonable solution.

A final playtest will have to follow, but almost everything is finished and only needs to get tested a final time, maybe on a bigger scale, but after that I am going to compile the rules and make them downloadable. I started with this task, but I can not say when it is done.

Maybe new units will be added in further revisions of the ruleset, when it is finally done. I do not want to give out a release date, but at least I want it finished several weeks before halloween depending on the time I can spend for this.
Luckily I am able to write this blog without the need for a translator, and sometimes my grammar could be crappy, but for me writing the plane expansion is something different than my casual blogging, I want it filled with less creepy English than the usual stuff I write.
And then there is all this copyright stuff, I will use loyality free stuff, but I do not have to forget to credit their creators, and all this stuff.

While the picture above is already bad, it is getting worse. I close this post with some pretty bad pictures from that game, there may even be some dublicates.

First Planes Playtest for TANKS

Finally I had the chance to make a first playtest of my custom (work in progress) planes expansion for TANKS by Galeforce 9. After I wrote the last post, I had a friend for visit and invited him to a small game of TANKS.

Luckily he has some experiences with the modern variant of TANKS, having been part of the battle at the Easter front.

I built 2 small platoons and set up an improvised playfield in my hobbyroom, made from a blanket and some pieces of styrofoam. Not the prettiest battlefield, but it is ok for this quick test. We decided against any crew or equipment cards to keep it simple.

My friend played the attacking forces. The German platoon included one Panther (A) and two Panzer IV, all made by the Plastic Soldier Company.

As new custom units he had a Ju 87 in 1:144 scale and a 3D printed SdKfz 7/1 for air defense. I think I did not show the halftrack in any post, the only thing I added after printing were some figures from the bitsbox.

The defending British platoon was played by me and included a Sherman Firefly from an old "Flames Of War" starterbox, and the Comet and Achilles tanks from the game expansions.

My new additional units were a Hawker Tempest in 1:144 scale and an 3D printed M17 halftrack for air defense.

A look at the battlefield before the game started. It looks pretty simply but I may build some snow covered scenery pieces (and wash the blanket) because I like this winter look.

By the way, today I won an ebay auction, when the thing arrives, a new battlefield for "TANKS The Modern Age" will be build soon, maybe usable for ww2 TANKS too.

Having only sightblocking elements and no cover pieces, the game would have a touch of an arena fight. The first two rounds were pretty unspectacular but it seemed that at least the movement rules for the planes would work as supposed.

Would work as supposed in future games. Experiences from this first game showed that a special movement template and its own movement arrow is needed for games using these new rules. Wish I would have built them before, following some older drawings in my notebook.

The selfmade bases were impractical, I already replaced them with bases matching to the standard "Flames Of War" flyerbases.

That the halftracked AA vehicles would work was pretty clear from the start of the game, Actually the only new thing to them was that they got an ability known from ww3 TANKS.

Giving them "Rapid Fire" was an easy solution for their arnament, a thing I had issues with from the beginning.

I think, at this point I should state out that most of the rules were written before "TANKS The Modern Age" hit the market, and even when I took some elements from the TANKS followup, most of the planes rules were written at least one year ago.

While the battle on the ground went as usual, we started to attack with our planes. Not only the equipped weapons were used, we also made some theoretical dice throws to test several variants of bombs and other stuff.

And this also worked almost as supposed.

The planes landed some hits and the AA halftracks gave their best to shoot them down. Since there are no effects for planes in the critical hits cards, we found a simple solution for this. A conversion list will be included in the actual rules addon.

And I think that we have found some good equipment pieces for planes, even some pilots and doctrines will be available. I do not want to spoiler this stuff but after my mate Olli and I discussed the pointcosts for the new stuff, it seems that a big part of this project is already done.

The game took about 2 hours, ending with a victory for the German troops. I decided that when all enemies ground units are lost, the game is over, no matter if there are enemy planes left or not.

Having planes available adds some new tactics and advantages to the game, even when this was a very first test it made fun.

And I learned a lot of things that will have to be included in the rules to make this whole as easy to understand as possible.

 

At the moment I think I am going to create units (for this expansion) only for plane models which I have in my collection, what means, the first edition of the planes expansion for TANKS will include 5 to 6 planes and other units, that at least each nation will get one new type of AA unit and plane available. There will be different planetypes available, but I will keep this for a future post.

Maybe some readers will allow me to use pictures of their plane models for new cards.

But since the expansion is just a fun project, it takes some time. Some more playtests will have to happen, the final costs for all the new cards will have fo be found, and than I can start to write the actual expansion.

Maybe some more units may find their way in future revisions, once all the digital work is done, it will be no big issue to create new cards for them.

TANKS The Modern Age The Easter Front

Yesterday we played our first 2 vs 2 game of "TANKS The Modern Age". With almost 800 points it is the biggest game we played for now.

Setting up the game was some work, I had to move some of my furnitures to get enough room for the playfield, the cards and the players. Since we do not have enough cards for all tanks, I had to go to the copyshop to get some backup cards. Luckily there are some cards from "TANKS", which can be used in "TANKS The Modern Age" too.

The battlefields size was 2,20 x 1 meter, to save some time I preset the scenery. The village was built with H0 houses (in pretty bad condition) and some selfmade ruins. The hills in the South count as unpassable terrain, and the windmills block attacks from ground to air/air to ground and helicopters. Most of the stuff you may have seen in some older posts.

The Soviet Unions army, on the left side you see the Southern attack group. It is made of 4 T-64, 2 BMP-2 and 2 Hind helicopters for 162 points and has equipment and crews for additional 60 points.

On the right you see the Northern attack group of the Soviets, for 118 points it containes 1 T-72, 3 T-55AM, 2 BMP-1, 1 2S1 howitzer and a Hind chopper. Additional crews and equipment worth 52 points was used.

On the all T-55AM and BMP-1 I used some Team Yankee GDR decals.

Both groups united had 392 points against the troops of the NATO.

The NATO troops were made up from the US Army in the North, equipped with 2 M1 Abrams, 1 M60, 1 M901, 1 M163, 1 M109 howitzer and a Cobra attack helicopter for 114 points, who got additional crews and equipment worth 56 points.

The South was protected by a Bundeswehr platoon, consisting 3 Leopard 2, 2 Marder and 2 PAH for 164 points and got crews and equipment for additional 60 points.

Both NATO groups together had tanks and equipment for 394 points.

394 versus 392 points, that sounded like a fair fight, and sure, this game would take some time. We did a simple chart where we could see the order of tanks to play. And this clearly showed that the Soviets may be stronger in numbers, but the NATO has a higher initiative for almost all tanks

The dice decided that the tactical advantage for the first round was on the Soviet side. After all troops were placed, it was time to start the war. But before we did that we had to make some makeshift cards for Ollis Leopard 2 because he forgot them at home.

Just some impressions from the game. The first two rounds went on quite slow. For the first three rounds the tactical advantage was on the Soviet side. They concentrated their air force in the South, trying to push the NATO forces to the North, while the brave T-55AM tanks of the GDR tried to take the village in the North. Eqipped with missiles these reletively weak tanks would offer a threat to any helicopter.

First blood was taken by my comrade who shot down a PAH in the third round.

With the first casuality it was getting hot, the Soviet Hinds attacked the Nato choppers and AA tanks. The NATO got the tactical advantage for the 4th and all following rounds. Bundeswehr Leopard tanks tried to push back the enemy while the US troops held position at the border of the village, knowing that fighting within the streets of Auerbach would be fatal for both sides.

One of the players had to leave the game after the 4th round, so my mate Olli had to take over his US platoon. And he played them well, securing his positions and waiting to strike back. Meanwhile the 3 Hinds dominated the air.

As you may see, it was getting late, the sun went down, and I had to use the flash of my camera. The whole game took over 6 hours, luckily we had foreseen that it would take much time to finish.
In the North the village fell and all NATO troops withdrew or were destroyed.

Since the Soviets in the South were pushing hard, the rest of the NATO forces had to move to defense positions. The Soviet Hind gunships were a big threat and both Marder got destroyed, giving the Soviets air advantage.

While the Soviet T-64 in the South took heavy fire from the technical advanced NATO tanks, the supporting Hind helicopters distributed heavy fire to get rid of the last NATO choppers. Most AA units were destroyed resulting in Soviet air superiority.

The 7th round was the final round, what means that one round took about an hour. But we did not rush and played a pretty relexed game without any stress.

The game made a lot of fun, even when one of us had to leave before we finished. Due to the experiences from our first 2 vs 2 game, a lot of improvements were made, for example this time we did not have to use an ironing board for the cards, and this was helpful too.

More pictures will follow when I copied them from the other players who also made some pictures.