First Test of the Great War Tank-Hunter rules

 

grenades worked pretty well, small arms were weak but numerous

      Trunkmonkey and R.U.P. were kind enough to donate their Saturday night to testing and critiquing my beta version of the Great War Tank hunter rules. We played two games, both ending in victory for the Germans and identified several areas of the rules that needed development/clarification. Unfortunately I was so busy sorting through my scribbled notes (i.e. the beta version of the rules) that I forgot to take any pictures. Thanks to R.U.P. for keeping a cooler head and snapping a few frames.

 

the tank about to over-run a squad that had been hiding, to the tanker's dismay 

this squad had a very stalwart flamethrower operator who effectively doused the tank

 

meanwhile the flanking squad is pouring in all the fire they can muster;

the Maxim 08/15 is formidable due to it's volume of fire

if you have the nerve to get close enough bundle grenades can cause real damage too

       The rules are semi-cooperative play by the Germans with the umpire using a simple if/then logic table to control the behavior of the tank. This logic table needs further development as the tank's action were sometimes mystifying, even to me! The players have no idea what impact they are having on the iron monster, they can only guess from the observed outward events; smoke, steam, weapons not firing. The umpire tracks the damage the tank suffers on a hidden screen and only allows the players to know what they can directly observe.

       The scale is 1"=5ft, or roughly 1:1 for the minis. This makes a 6x4ft table 320x240ft in game scale, or about the size of a soccer field. At these ranges (given the size of a Mk IV tank) there is no test to hit the vehicle; any remotely competent rifleman can hit something the size of a very large shed at 100 meters! Each weapon has an Impact Value and a rate of fire. The Impact Value is expressed in game terms by varying types of dice, the rate of fire by the number of those dice. The tank rolls a Defense dice to resist these attacks. If the attacker scores higher then Stress is assigned to the tank crew-members, in the event that the attacker substantially outscores the defense then a Critical Event occurs and another die roll is taken on the Critical Events Table and the effects are applied immediately. Return fire from the tank creates Stress on the target squad, as does moving toward the tank and moving in the open (moving in the open also carries the risk of being struck by random off-table fire). Sufficiently successful fire from the tank can kill squad members, as can being driven over.

       Actions taken by the infantry squads create an Awareness Signature. Effectively the more that you do the more attention that you attract to your squad. Creeping about in the bottom of a trench has a tiny Signature; the entire squad popping up and blazing away creates a huge Signature. These are ranked and the tank takes action against the highest perceived threat. The Awareness Signature remains with the squad until their next action.

       Using an idea blatantly stolen from Two Fat Lardies the movement system consists of a chit for each squad of infantry, and one for the tank  for each squad of opponents and two Tea-Breaks which are used to interrupt play and reset the chits pile. Squad members can act independently of each other, some may fire, others may move.

       All of this still requires a lot of polishing and refinement but I think that this has the potential for an amusing little game of the Germans competing against each other to take the least casualties while still stopping the tank from exiting the table.