Fire and Move

10 February 2020

I have been reading a lot about tank warfare in Normandy lately and this gave me a great idea for a new set of rules. So I used the Building Rules for Gaming Battles approach and have designed a game for Tank gaming.

I personally wanted a bit more than just commanding one tank at a time and have tried to mirror how they fought at a slightly higher level. There are some great one-on-one tank games that are in in vogue now, though these are not for me as they are too small and focused on the individual players. 

I listened to an extract of “Tank” and I am also reading “A fine night for tanks”, both written by Ken Tout. He gives a really good account of tank battles at the small unit level,so I want these new rules to focus on the company and platoon level as this will give a team experience and deliver an intense but fun game to play. It will also allow us to add some flavour, detail and vehicle data. 

Small unit tactics are based on Fire and Movement and can be performed by any unit made up of at least two parts. The first part of the unit suppresses the enemy by firing from behind cover, while the second advances. After a short time, the advancing unit will halt behind cover and open fire, allowing the first unit to advance.

The two parts of the unit will repeat the cycle until the objective is met. Advancing units can also be supported by other Units, Artillery or, Airpower 

 

British Ad Hoc Company 

In the game we are talking about an amount of Tank Platoons or if you are British Troops of between 2 and 6 tanks (generally though it will be 3 to 4 tanks). Several Troops or Platoons (Germans call them Zugs) will make up a Company or again if you are British a Squadron. Here is a British Troop of one Sherman Firefly and three Sherman Tanks. 

With these examples I am at the base coat and washing stage, camo and final painting comes before basing prep and finishing. I am also going to be sticking to either British Armoured Tank Troops or German Tank Platoons

Continuing on with our examples of how we organise the tanks, we also have a Troop containing one Sherman Firefly and three Cromwell Tanks.

As well a Troop of 4 Sherman Tanks seen below. If we were creating an Ad Hoc armoured formation we could call these a Squadron of three Troops of Tanks

German Ad Hoc Company
For our German Examples we have also worked on an Ad Hoc company containing three Platoons or “Zugs”.

For our Company or PanzerKompanie we looking to putting out three Zugs in our first Zug it fields One Tiger Tank I and Three PzKpfw MKIV Tanks.

We can also field another Zug containing Four PzKpfw MKIV Tanks. 

Our third Zug is made up of Four Tiger I Tanks.

Now onto finishing the paint jobs and begin to seriously playtest the rules with the others, mainly to see if I have captured the flavour of armoured combat in Northwest Europe in 1944