Chain of Command Tank Fest...

Yesterday we (Jason & Gus and me...) play tested the latest CoC rules for the Tank section, we decided to just use tanks in this playtest for a quicker turn around and not to be distracted by the infantry element of the game system which is pretty sound at the moment.

Gus and Jason pondering over troop selections...

We set up the terrain as a river valley area Northern France, with two bridges over a river, a small bombed out village with major road network and plenty of entry points on board edges...

picky of the battle board...

Initial forces were as below:-
Me, German: a full panzer section of 5 Panzer IV's with a junior leader in each tank, and a leader in tank 111, using my newly purchased PSC tanks painted by Jason, who takes commissions by the way...
Jason & Gus, Allies: 3 x Sherman & 1 x Firefly, and 3 x Cromwell's & 1 x Firefly...

"Nice new PzIV's, they wont last long, newly acquired tanks and figures never do..."

 

We found the initial first few turns were taken with getting the majority of our forces onto the board, using the random roll for where the individual tanks would appear on the board edge 1 per entry point, if we got the correct Command rolls?

 

"Sherman enters the board rushing for the village cover and trying to match the PzIV entering near the bridge."

 

"Platoon command enters the board and takes shot across the board to Sherman at entry point, and brews it straight away, living up to the Ronson name."

"Ronson" 

 

"Firefly makes a run up the road to try and flank the panzer..."

 

"Sherman platoon commander exchanges shots with the panzer IV, but he misses and my shot hits and penetrates, causing the main gun to be put out of action..."

"The Firefly shot hits and brews the tank sky high with 4 penetration hits... Boom!!!!"

"The remaining 3 panzers make for the bridge but the command dice just were not with me on this run..."

 

"Advance of the Allies"

 

         "Platoon commander burning from Sherman shot from the bridge."

 

Then the gunfire started Gus opening up first on one of my panzer IV's with a Sherman, we used the latest version of the tank rules for this game... not overly impressed with the to hit/penetration being on the same roll, but hey we stuck with it to test it out... the result of the game was that the Allies got all the Sherman platoon on and one of the Cromwell's, all but one of the PzIV's were on but by the end there were 1 Sherman burning, 1 damaged being the platoon commanders with main gun out of action and two PzIV's burning, one of which was the platoon commander, at this my morale folded and we withdrew discretion being better than valour.

 

The second game saw us use a 3 x Sherman & 1 x Firefly, versus a lone Panther, we actually used the version 3 tank rules using a single to hit dice, and if hit then using the penetration and armour dice to determine penetrating hits if any, this seemed to play and feel better than using the dice role for to hit / penetration on the same dice roll, just did not feel right for some reason, I think the guys concurred with my feelings and agreed a better game was had using this system, the command dice and orders set up is great but its just the firing mechanism just doesn't sit right, feedback will be sent to rich and fellow play-testers...

 

"Panther advances to the bridge to attain better fire arc, and LOS on the advancing Sherman's..."

 

"Advancing Sherman with Firefly back up..."

"Panther at the bridge and view of the village and Shermans in the distance..."

 

This yet again resulted in a Allied victory, with the Panther being taken out by a flank shot from the Firefly, by all that's fair in wargaming that Firefly should have been burning, but I couldn't hit a barn door with an elephant that day!!! and I had sent the tank on a foolish errand to mix it with the Sherman's in the village, instead of going on over-watch and waiting for the shot again, but hey its only a game, and no one was actually harmed...