Tuesday, 2 September 2014

Tank Attack! Little Cold Wars game report


Here are some photos of a LCW game played recently at a secret location 'somewhere in England'.  The purpose of the game was to thoroughly test the tank and AT gunnery systems.  Sadly the game we had planned had to be postponed due to the inevitable rain and so this game was played indoors on a 6x8 foot table.  We used Centimetres instead of Inches for all measurements.
The toys were provided by the 3 players - AM, PW and myself - and consisted of two Warpact tank battalions up against a squadron of Chieftains with an attached AT (Striker) troop.
 The Commie junkyard prepares to advance....
 ...while the imperialist lackeys await!
 A salvo of smoke preceded the assault.
 Soon our T-55s were taking hits from the enemy.
 A Chieftain gunner's eye view.  They could hardly miss!
 A Swingfire ATGM hits another tank...
 ...and makes rather a nasty mess!
When the Sovs got close superior numbers started to tell.  This Chieftain took two hits and needed 3+ on each dice to save.  Whoops.
 Another Swingfire finds it's target.
Endgame - at this point the Sovs had carried the position and 'killed' a troop and a half of Chieftains at a cost of 15 tanks lost.
at

11 comments:

  1. Don M2 September 2014 at 09:06

    Onward Red Hordes! That's about the right ratio if the Chieftains
    are having a bad day....)

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  2. Tim Gow2 September 2014 at 09:38

    Don M
    Quite so. Not the most visually stimulating of games but it served a purpose. And kept us dry!

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  3. Paul Foster2 September 2014 at 13:02

    A nice wee encounter.

    Just imagine if the plucky Brits had been facing real MBT's!

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  4. Tim Gow2 September 2014 at 14:40

    Paul Foster
    One of the Sov tanks turned out to a be a T-62 - which stirred things up if only briefly!

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  5. Milgeek2 September 2014 at 14:51

    The Soviets tended to have a high opinion about the Chieftain (RAC mechanics less so) and therefore put their best tanks up against it (T62s at the time) which allocating the older T55s to take on the American M60 and the German Leopard 1s. I remember visiting my Uncle in Germany in the 60s and at that time they were calling the Chieftain 'the best tank in the world' - it was only later that it was publicly admitted that it had all the reliability of a East German Trabant thanks to it's Leyland L60 engine! Still, a 120mm rifled gun can make up for a lot of failings - I'm surprised your T55s got anywhere near them! :)

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  6. Tim Gow2 September 2014 at 15:06

    Stephen Beat
    The Chieftain's combination of a very big gun and very thick armour did make life rather tricky for our Commie tankers. But as Stalin said - 'Quantity has a quality of it's own...'

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  7. Pete.2 September 2014 at 16:47

    Looks great Tim, I like the look of the game - we advance across the open plain undercover of daylight.... still chucking everything on the table like that does speed up playtesting.

    Cheers,

    Pete.

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  8. Tim Gow2 September 2014 at 17:22

    Pete
    It was either that or no game at all! In other news, we did manage an outdoor game later in the day....

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  9. Tim Gow2 September 2014 at 18:46

    Stu Rat
    What can I say? The game was in Southern England - they're all softies down there!

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  10. Archduke Piccolo2 September 2014 at 22:59

    Quite a large quantity of Red armoury trundling over the Hessian countryside. Of course, the thing about quantity - large numbers - is that there are too many targets for the enemy to hit in the time available to him. Long before I heard of Stalin's tag, I discovered this as a favourite war games tactic ...

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  11. Tim Gow3 September 2014 at 08:08

    Archduke Piccolo
    Subtle it ain't - but it often works.

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