• I got the feeling here is the right place for this discussion :)
    Even this topic has propably been brougt up many times. And I am also aware that a tank piece in A&A represents a Division, Korps or even an Army and heavy tanks where only in very limited numbers within this military bodies, I am ever intrigued in adding the Tiger and IS2 models from AA41 into AA50 or AA42 … in a balanced way.
    My goal is to have them as a real thread on the board, to make the opponent to keep an eye on them and to have a real new piece that would fit into any A&A game.

    So, what do you think about the following ideas:

    Heavy Tank
    A:4
    D:4
    M:2
    Cost: 10 IPC
    Abilities
    Blitz
    Fear: For each round of combat one hit dealt by the enemy is cancelled. This ability is negated by the presence of enemy planes in the same zone.
    Limited Production: Production is limited to one Heavy Tank per round.

    Of course this would mean that a single defending unit would be removed immidiately from the board, unless this unit is a plane, which cancels the Fear ability.

    Any thoughts on the stats and abilities?


  • @Sturmhard-Eisenkeil said in Tinkering with Heavy Tanks:

    I got the feeling here is the right place for this discussion :)
    Even this topic has propably been brougt up many times. And I am also aware that a tank piece in A&A represents a Division, Korps or even an Army and heavy tanks where only in very limited numbers within this military bodies, I am ever intrigued in adding the Tiger and IS2 models from AA41 into AA50 or AA42 … in a balanced way.
    My goal is to have them as a real thread on the board, to make the opponent to keep an eye on them and to have a real new piece that would fit into any A&A game.

    So, what do you think about the following ideas:

    Heavy Tank
    A:4
    D:4
    M:2
    Cost: 10 IPC
    Abilities
    Blitz
    Fear: For each round of combat one hit dealt by the enemy is cancelled. This ability is negated by the presence of enemy planes in the same zone.
    Limited Production: Production is limited to one Heavy Tank per round.

    Of course this would mean that a single defending unit would be removed immidiately from the board, unless this unit is a plane, which cancels the Fear ability.

    Any thoughts on the stats and abilities?

    They shouldn’t get to blitz and can’t retreat as I see for now.


  • No blitz is fair enough. But isn’t no retreat a bit harsh? Nevertheless an interesting idea. No fooling around with Heavy Tanks. Its win or die ;)


  • Magnum - If I was playing with a Heavy Tanks house rule like this, I would let my opponents build them, but I would not build them myself. The 10 IPC cost is too much for me. I would not buy them unless the cost was dropped to about 7 IPC. I also disagree with the fear rule. “Fear” is not cancelled by any aircraft in the area. “Fear” is cancelled by holding a weapon in your own hands that can be used to kill that tank. Panzerfausts, bazookas, and magnetic mines abounded at the end of the war. Infantry feared Pz. IIs more at the start of the war than they feared King Tigers at the end of the war.


  • @magnum said in Tinkering with Heavy Tanks:

    I also disagree with the fear rule. “Fear” is not cancelled by any aircraft in the area. “Fear” is cancelled by holding a weapon in your own hands that can be used to kill that tank. Panzerfausts, bazookas, and magnetic mines abounded at the end of the war. Infantry feared Pz. IIs more at the start of the war than they feared King Tigers at the end of the war.

    A good point. U.S. Marines supposedly say that “hunting tanks is fun and easy”, especially in forested or built-up areas which infantry can use to their advantage. Another thing to keep in mind is that WWII heavy tanks were the product of an era when tank technologies (such as engine design) weren’t sufficiently advanced to produce a tank with excellent performance in all three areas (firepower, mobility and armour protection), just as battlecruisers were a product of the same problem in ship technology at the time of WWI. Designers had the choice between balanced designs which had reasonable (but not great) performance in all three areas, or unbalanced designs which optimized one or two features at the expense of the remainder. WWII heavy tanks got their firepower and protection at the expense of mobility. It wasn’t just a case of being slow (which they were); the strain put by their huge weight on their drive systems was a source of breakdowns, a problem made worse in the case of the German forces because of a shortage of spare parts. Deployment by railroad could be tricky if the tank was too large, and crossing bridges could be problematic. So it’s correct that heavy tanks shouldn’t blitz. As for the relation between fear and the presence of enemy planes, it could be argued that it’s the tanks to which the fear factor would apply because WWII tanks were vulnerable to air attack, notably by aircraft armed with rockets or heavy cannons. If the 188-ton Maus had ever gone into combat, a good way for the Americans to have handled it would have been with ground-attack aircraft armed with napalm bombs, a weapon which saw operational use in the Pacific towards the end of the war though I don’t know if this was the case in Europe.


  • Well if you want blitz and retreat for them then go with this.

    1. C7 AD4 M1 can blitz and retreat. Build 2 only per turn.
      As CWO confirmed the tigers broke down a lot and they were just left there.

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