Chain of Command again

Gus and I visited Stumpy Towers again last Thursday, this time with the intention of trying out the armour rules for Chain of Command.  After getting Nathan to make the tea we adjourned upstairs to blow up some tanks.

To keep it simple we decided to just play with some tanks, so Nathan took his 5 newly acquired Panzer IVs while Gus had 3 Shermans with 1 Firefly and I had 3 Cromwells with 1 Firefly.  The Allied tanks had slightly better armour than the Panzers, but the German guns were generally superior.

As it happened the Cromwells did sod all, with only 1 coming on.  Nathan pushed his forces up the road with one coming on his left flank in support, while Gus advanced quickly to the village. 

Gus' platoon commander engaged Nathans flanking Panzer, with a hit damaging the Panzers sights.  Nathans return fire destroyed the 75mm gun on the Sherman however, so Gus hid behind the hill.  His next move brought the Firefly up into position to fire though.

The armour of the Panzer was no match for the 17pdr and the flank was secured.  The dice system for tanks at the moment is that you roll a number of dice for your gun, needing at least 50% to be 4+ to hit.  The defender then rolls his defence dice based on his armour, with additions if 1/3rd or 2/3rds cover.  We found this a bit off though, as it didn't matter how obscured the target was, everything hit on 4+.  More on this later

With his flank secure Gus pushed on into the village, where he managed to take out Nathan's platoon commander with a shot across the river.  Nathan pulled back at this point as he only had 2 Panzers on the table and he was facing 3 Shermans and a Cromwell, with more to come on.


After the game we had a discussion about the tank system, which we generally were not overly impressed with.  Gus put it best when he pointed out that an obscured target shouldn't be harder to hurt, just harder to hit.  The idea of simplifying the dice rolled is a good one, but it takes away the cover in our opinion.  More discussion will take place, but not on here.

As an experiment we tried a quick game using the older version of the tank fire rules, where you rolled a dice to hit and, if you hit, you then rolled to damage using the gun vs armour dice as before.  We found this to be much better and Nathans Panther held up the Allied Shermans until the Firefly managed to get a flank shot in.  The Shermans were helped by Nathans amazing ability to roll 1's to hit.  Four in a row I think it was.

Anyway, there it is, last weeks games have now been done.  Tonight we are playing Zobs roleplay/skirmish pirate game.  Hopefully I will get a days wargaming in too, but that depends on how the week goes.  Catch you all later.