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.

11 comments:

Don M said...

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

Tim Gow said...

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

Paul Foster said...

A nice wee encounter.

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

Tim Gow said...

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

Milgeek said...

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! :)

Tim Gow said...

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...'

Pete. said...

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.

Tim Gow said...

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

Tim Gow said...

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

Archduke Piccolo said...

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 ...

Tim Gow said...

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