Cat Problem

H

hithero

Mongoose
Now that we have several Corgi 1/50th models we are having more armour in our battles and cannot destoy the Panther or Tiger (we only use 1 German tank because of this) They are quite capable of taking on 2 or 3 times there points cost and are unbalancing the game unless we inforce scenario conditions that limits there effectiveness.

This is due to the cats having the Multi-hit trait and Shermans only having 2 hits meaning the Germans have a 70% (4+) kill rate with 1 shot while return fire is only and 40% needing 3 such hits. Trying flanking attacks fails to work as this then just divides the allied forces and the cat can take them on piecemeal as it uses terrain to block flanking fire and then reposition to take on the rest. Taking on one cat we have 2 Shermans, a Firefly and a Churchill. The only time we killed a Panther was when it had to get to our deployment and was jumped by a squad of para's with satchal charges, but this same tactic failed to take down a Tiger due to its better all round defence.

Last night we had 2060pts of allied V 1285 of German with half their stuff comming on table randomy and the allies got totally butchered - help!

Is there a way of defeating these monsters or are the points values just wrong?
 
In way your posting it sounds like a 1944 frontline report of allied troops encountering a Tiger...
:wink:

Can you be a bit more specific?
What scenario did you play?
What forces were used?
How many points?
Got the opponent other anti tank weapons (AT Guns, Bazookas)?
Have you played with Tiger I or King Tiger?
Why is flanking failing?

In all of my games (I played normally Brits or US armoured Infantry) I had fun with 1 Sherman and one 1 Firefly (or Sherman 76) plus one AT Gun or Batzookas for the Infantry vs 1 Panther, no problem at all!
When Tom was fielding a Tiger or KT I took shamelessly advantage of the fact that he put 1/3 or more of his points into 1 basket, I went Infantry killing with my tanks and kept out of LOS. And flanking worked!
 
We have played various scenarios with the brits consistantly having 2 squads of para's and command and the Germans 2 squads of Grenadiers and command. Sometimes we will have a plane each, the Germans get the Panther, PaK 40 and A/car and the Brits with an increasing amount of armour (now 2 Shermans, Firefly and Churchill) which now outnumber the Brits in points.

Although the Para's are good they lack any real anti-tank power as the PIAT is next to useless compared to the Grenadiers Panzerfaust. No matter what the scenario, the outcome is the same once the Panther comes into play systematically destroying each vehicle it sets its sights on.

In one game (Brits had to get 1 tank off table), the Panther with a little support from a Messerschmitt totally destroyed the Brits between them. None of the Grenadiers fired a shot, and the A/car and Pak 40 getting destroyed before damaging any enemy.
 
Are you really using the army list? 4 AFV for the British?

2 Shermans, Firefly and Churchill are not able to take out a Panther?

:?: Strange… :?:
Even if you use no terrain at all and the tanks are standing in front of each other just the Shermans and Churchill alone will hit 3x at 50% when in Co-Ax range. Then ad the Firefly which can Kill the Panther outright in Co-ax range at 20% (the 17 pdr also got Multihit!) or hitting the target number at 70%.

At the same time the Panther can only kill one Sherman/ Firefly if all goes well for him (actually 80% in Co-ax range).

Bait the Panther with one tank, move the others around to the Panthers side or rear. I never ever had any real problems with my forces...
 
Yup, using 4 tanks - probably five next week and see if we can get any to survive :)

The tanks have to get within 24" range first and by then 2 are dead and then they have to re-roll hits because they move, and we are playing scenarios with terrain and other troops so its normally not possible to all gang up and shoot at the Panther to overwhelm it, terrain actually helps the Panther. If you had no terrain or other models then the Panther may perish, but probably not if the Firefly brews before it can get a hit.

If in clear terrain I'd say that for every hit on a Panther would result in a dead British tank, and don't forget you can only just get 2 normal Shermans for 1 Panther with the points system and no way could just 2 normal Shermans survive against one Panther in any conditions.
 
My friends teamed up in a 2,000 point engagement against my US Infantry. One had his FJs and a Panther. My other friend had Waffen SS and 2 panzers.

I had 3 Sherman 76's and although it was a nasty fight, the Panther was crippled and both Panzers were burning at game's end. IIRC I lost a Sherman and had another crippled. Seems like the rules for tanks are fair to me as long as you apply some care. You have to remember that German tanks were, almost without exception, better than their allied counterparts.

Seems like Mongoose has it right, and perhaps you could be getting out maneuvered by a crafty German tank ace or just a run of some bad luck.

I would suggest trying to force the german tanks into moving to hit you. Plan one step ahead and try to fire then move behind a building - force that Panther to move and reroll his hits. Then, when you return fire, you are sitting still and don't reroll... then you move behind the building again with your regular movement rate (not tracking)

Seems to be an effective strategy for me, anyway.

Oh, you could also ambush the Panther with a squad of engineers. They can really do a number on a tank in assault with their improved satchel charges. Of course, that takes some finesse to get them in ambush for the perfect attack.
 
3 Sherman 76's would do it as they all have the guns that can do considerable damge, unfortunately I don't (and am trying to keep to some sort of British army formations), but the points system is still out of whack when you can only get 2 basic Shermans for the cost of one Panther - try that on the table and see how long the Shermans last.

Also its not just me with the Shermans; we have 5 VETERAN players playing either side who have been wargaming for 30+ years each, played various scenarios and terrain and even outpointed the Germans, we know how we should be able to take out a Panther but it doesn't happen with the forces at our disposal. I'm not saying the British can't win as that depends on scenario conditions and players keeping to the objective, but when the Panther turns up, the Brits soon disintegrate.

The only time a Panther has been blown up was when it was forced into a built up area full of para's to take the objective and luckily it did blow up due to satchel charges on turn 6 - this failed against a Tiger in a later game though due to its better all-round defence characteristics.
 
You can be scientific about it I guess. Fix the German force at a specified force and keep increasing the british points untill they are victorious.


One thing to bear in mind is that if its an attack/defend scenario, the attacker NEEDS to have superior numbers. Equal points will almost invariably mean the defenders win, unless they are far inferior in quality. (i.e. a company of soviet guards should be able to blow through a company of hungarians).

I dont know if the rules or your scenarios take this into account ?
 
Sounds like real ww2 reports to me, from what i read about tanks etc...

ALSO..

I thought a picture of acat was going to turn up...!!!!
 
the impression I get from the history books is that the reason why the allies won is logistics and supply; the allies could put lots of shermans on the ground and the germans were runnin out of everything. the only real way to reflect that in the game is to make the sherman about 50pts and allow allied armies to take five per platoon. (even then I doubt they'd take out a panther or a tiger) and allow the german player 1 tank for every 2000 pts (real fair!)

also has anyone tried using the sherman jumbo? it looks like a survivable tank. having elected to take americans (I'm on fire when it comes to picking an army) I'm thinking it's my best bet to combat enemy tanks (a friend advised me it was aircraft but when I tried it the pesky artillery rule screwed me over - I couldn't even get a roll of my d10 cause it went off table) :x :x the invasion of russia went very badly indeed.

I've seen a couple of games between russians and germans and the russian army is nasty(that's why I bought two italiary sets and a kv1 t34/76 and a t34/85) the russian sp guns have multihit and can make short work of any german tank (yes smeone killed a sturmtiger)

and be grateful you picked british; at least you get a 17pndr with multihit I don't have a gun with multihit.I think in supposed to send wave after wave on my g.i.s to die in the hope of placing sachel charges or wearing him down with clever use of bazookas (it's got to be real clever though the bazooka only has a range of 18 inches. in the same game I took 3 bazooka teams and only got to fire one of them which I lost to a russian sp gun)

mabye you need 3 fireflys and the typhoon.
 
Sounds like you guys need some M36 Jacksons or Sluggers! Maybe an M26 Pershing or some towed 3" guns? Hopefully the OGL will be sorted out soon so I can take care of all you Treadheads. :twisted:
 
Alternatively mess with the scenarios. Tigers should be pretty damn rare. If its a campaign, give them a single tiger for one battle.. then its either out of fuel, the engine's cooked or its knocked out by an enterprising "jabo".

44 France, the kraut infantry are far more likely to have Stug's
 
While fairly true, "likely" does not necessarily equal fun. I read in an editorial by the guys at FoW that said something to the effect of "Why do we have infantry, tanks, artillery and air support all on the table when that would be unlikely given the scale? Because we like to have guys storm positions, tanks dueling, artillery blasting and planes strafing!" Actually, that's a total paraphrase, but I love the sentiment. :)
 
Rabidchild said:
Sounds like you guys need some M36 Jacksons or Sluggers! Maybe an M26 Pershing or some towed 3" guns? Hopefully the OGL will be sorted out soon so I can take care of all you Treadheads. :twisted:
Click to expand...
What we really need is a fairly accurate points system that reflects the effectiveness of the models on the table-top. What we are doing now is to work out two armies excluding tanks and then give the Brits 3 or 4 tanks to one Panther/Tiger (although the Panther and Tigers comparative points values are totally out of whack too) but after lending my rules to a friend who's starting to collect USA, has found BIG discrepencies between 'common' weapons depending on who's using them - check out the cost of mortar teams!
 
looking through the list I could put my faith in wolverines (if I could find a 1/72 kit or else Ill sub my perishing) or m18 hellcats (again Ive been told the kits don't exist in 1/72 scale) but I'd come up against the same basic problem I can have 3 m18's he can have 3 tigers/js2's/fireflys. the americans and british won in the west by being able to put more men and machines on the gound than the germans and the platoon structure cant reflect that.(incidently I think that's right american armoued divisions and battallions had a 1:1 ratio of tanks to squads(osprey) whereas other armies wouldn't have had that kind of support, the german panzer division had 3 panzer batallions to 4 panzergrenadier battalions or somehing of that order)

unfortunatly the widely held view is that the german army was the best of the era and that the americans were the worst (reasonable equiptment and lots of it making up for the fact that on average the americn soldiers wern't as effective as thier british and german counterparts) on the western front. the game seems to reflect this bias a little too much in my opinion.
 
How is it possible to field 3 Tiger - each 620 pts - in a standard 1500 points game?

The army lists are designed to create balanced armies using the Platoon structures and engagements / scenarios in the WaW book.
:?: Are you sure that you are using these army lists? :?:

If not - fine: But do not blame the points system if the resulting battles are unbalanced... :wink:
 
After all the talk how big and bad the Tiger is, I decided to re-paint my Ripmax RC Tiger...
Tiger_3.jpg



Boy - IT is a big :shock: and bad tank! :wink: :wink: :wink:

More here: http://www.agisn.de/html/late_war_germans.html
 
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