[AAR] BA Tank War 1500pts PzIV-G vs T34

[Olivier PERRONNY]

Here is an After Action Report of a Bolt Action Tank War scenario played with 1,500 forces on the East Front during the summer 1943.

A reduced company of T34/76

A PzkpfwIV-G Zug

http://perrysheroes.free.fr/spip.php?article571

 

Olivier

[Mike]

Thanks for joining and thanks for posting!

Excuse my ignorance…
What are the things under the T34’s tracks?
Are they just basing strips?

[Olivier PERRONNY]

These T34 are from West Wind, 1/60 scale ones. As I use thick bases, I had the idea of adding a cardboard base with tracks prints in the ground.

Olivier

[Mike]

Cheers, genius blog name btw!

😀

[willz]

Thanks for that interesting and informative photo AAR , excellent stuff I enjoyed it.  Lovely painted models.

[John D Salt]

If the account as written listed every shot — not necessarily a safe assumption — then the game had

For the Germans: 9 hits out of 9 shots giving 7 kills (and an immobilization later converted to a kill).
For the Russians: 6 hits out of 9 shots giving 1 kill.

Now it’s fairly unimpressive that the Russians only managed to fire as many shots with 7 AFVs as the Germans did with 4, but the Germans seem to have certain hits and mear-certain (78%) kills if hit, whereas the Russians seem to have a P(hit) of 66% and a P(kill!hit) of only 17%.

Are these numbers roughly the ones given in the rules, or did the German player roll hugely luckier dice than the Russian?

[Incdentally, on a Lanchesterian basis, a force ratio of 4:7 would be about fair if the weaker side had 9 times the firepower of the stronger, which quite closely matches the numbers estimated above.]

Oh, and 534 really deserved to die for advancing on the enemy arse-first.

All the best,

John.

[War Panda]

Really brilliant stuff. The German’s really gave them hell! Untersturmführer Erdinger took out 2 singlehandedly or was it more in the end? Why do you think the Germans did so well? Tactics, superior hardware, personal?

Loved the photos. You did a great job of making the battle easy to follow while remaining exciting. Are you  enjoying the rules? I’ve just started playing BA and downloaded the Tank War rules but haven’t tried them yet.

Thanks for posting

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

[Olivier PERRONNY]

The stats of the tanks are basically the same : Medium Tank 9+.  The PzIV-G has a Heavy AT Gun (+6 penetration/60″ range) while the T34/76 has a Medium AT Gun (+5 penetration / 48″ range). A Side shot gives a +1 to penetration roll.  In order to increase the number of T34 with the same number of points I gave special skills to the German crews, better commanders, better gunners. The PzIV-G has schürzen but it affects only Infantry AT Weapons so there is no effect.

The PzIV-G entered the table and sat in order to fire at a half range (30″)  so no -1 moving and no -1 long range modifiers while the T34 had to move to reduce the distance. The only PzIV-G (532) destroyed received a side shot while the others had front armour hit.

The German player had better die rolls but he often needed a 4+ while the Soviet player needed a 5+ or a 6+.

Olivier

[Norm S]

John Salt – very funny, well spotted.

Olivier loved the account and set-up, I have been following war panda’s recent video, which is a good intro to the BA rules. I never thought i would fancy the skirmish end of the scale, but it really does have a charm of its own and is capable of generating appealing narrative.

[Olivier PERRONNY]

About the 534, I must confess that my painting of the german camo is so good that I did not notice it until I looked at the photos after the game… And I was rather p*** off.

 

 

Olivier

[John D Salt]

Olivier PERRONNY wrote:

The stats of the tanks are basically the same :

That sounds about what I would expect. However the Germans seem to have translated their edge in gun range into the abiity to get the first shot, which historically seems to be very strongly correlated with winning a tank battle. Do the rules give penalties for first shots, or shots on moving targets?

It would be interesting to see how a repeat game with the same forces played out. Good stuff.

All the best,

John.

[Olivier PERRONNY]

John D Salt wrote:

(…)

Do the rules give penalties for first shots, or shots on moving targets? It would be interesting to see how a repeat game with the same forces played out. Good stuff. All the best, John.

No, they don’t. There is a +1 modifier to hit if you fire at the same target. I am used to do the same if vehicles are at less than 2″ from a previous target (home rule). I do not think that moving a tank platoon side by side like a cavalry unit is realistic.

 

Olivier

[Author]

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