Re: How do you deal with French tanks
 

I recently played a campaign game against france and they actually had two of those super heavy tanks (Char 2C I think?). I immobilised one with artillery, but the other one just kept driving and killed one PII. However, being so damn slow it didn't reach any objective before the round ended ;)

Re: How do you deal with French tanks
 

In a recent campaign as the french, i had some of these in as support, i just drove them around until the game ended as german shells bounced off it's armor :)
There are some nice toys to play around with in the french OOB.

Re: How do you deal with French tanks
 

You may find this post useful my attempt at taking on the French AAR starts with them straight off skipped over Poland. Mobhack gave some very useful advice in it which allowed me to prevail. Found they were surprisingly hard guys to get to route if remember correctly. Chars were not the biggest worry as a rule was those Somanas or whtever there called.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=41834

Re: How do you deal with French tanks
 

I've been having some fun in France lately with a company of light panzers from 2nd PzDiv. The company is composed of 6 Pz Ib's, 9 Pz IIc's, and 7 Pz IIIe's. Infantry suppport is provided by a kradschutzen platoon and a pair of spaehtruppe. Needless to say the Somua's are hairy and even the H-35's aren't exactly easy

Using smoke and terrain to set ambushes, infantry close assault to suppress, and point blank fire from PzII's and PzIII's seven Somua's and five H-35's were destroyed at a cost of two PzII's. Didn't run into any Char's this battle but if necessary would deal with them the same general way, would just take longer.

I'd have loved to have used air and arty to go after the French tanks but with a core force drawn from a panzer division, those assets were needed to deal with enemy infantry.

I thought I'd throw this in because most of the ancedotes I see are for infantry heavy forces (3 : 1, infantry : armor), but in the schwerepunkt of an armor offensive that ratio is reversed. Another word for infantry heavy is 'penny packeting', as Guderian would put it, wasting the armor by dispersing it amongst the infantry rather than using it in concentration.

Brian

Re: How do you deal with French tanks
 

You have to do what the Germans did, using French ATG, the 47mm ATG of the German OOB is french and teh Germans quicly learned how to use it..

Planes, can wipe the French tanks, a German player should always be allowed to have tons of planes and the French very few AA.
You can also use 88mm guns or 105mm field guns.
this is how the German did.
An infantry assault is near useless if you are attacking, as a German you are supposed to attack.


To give you an idea I am playing a pbem battle with 11500 points of French Vs 20000 points of Germans, the German side can have up to 30 planes!!! and i have only 6 AA gun for a max size map.
I am doomed. :D

Re: How do you deal with French tanks
 

As the ROF of tanks now seem to be standardised across all the OBs all french (and all other) tanks with 37mm and 47mm guns now have a ROF of 8. Combined with their heavy armour and now having one-man turrets that operate just as well as two/three-man ones this makes them virtually unstoppable, + they are much cheaper than the german ones aswell. Try advancing a german armoured column against a french one, good luck trying to get close enough for the germans to get kills unless in woods or limited terrain, the germans will get machinecannoned to death at long range by the french 37mm and 47mm guns.:(

Re: How do you deal with French tanks
 

Oh Really........??



Tony........ what is this "now have a ROF of 8" nonsense ?. The change to ROF 8 for those tanks goes back AT LEAST 7 years and was implimented some time between DOS v5 and DOS v7 ( between 2002 and 2004 ).


These comments are a BIT strange given EVERYTHING you are complaining about has been EXACTLY the same way for at least 7 years and you were part of the playtesting team at the time. You're making it sound like this is a recent change and it most certainly is not.

IDK how many players have managed to make it though the French Campaign as the Germans in the last 7 years and managed to advance but I'll bet it's quite a lot. If they were stopped cold by the French "Invicibles" we'd have heard about it before now


Don

Re: How do you deal with French tanks
 

Hi all,

I've been skulking this thread for some time as France 1940 is of great interest to me.
In the past I've been hesitant to play many games in this theater because the earlier panzers are not very enticing nor are the strange allied counterparts. However, this thread has motivated me to do some experimenting.

The French tanks seem to be historically accurate. I am not a historian nor am I an expert so you may dismiss my opinion at will. Basically, as previously discussed, the German tanks (PzMk I, II, III and the IV support version) were not capable of destroying the Char b1 bis or Somua. The Germans succeeded in France through superior combined arms tactics. For the most part they simply bypassed the French armor. France fell in about six weeks with the operation lasting from May 10, 1940 until June 22, 1940.

A great documentary about the early tanks can be found on youtube at:

http://youtu.be/4aNKw3dbwoM

That being said I would like to mention a curiosity that I discovered in the Crescendo of Doom rulebook. Those familiar with Steel Panthers are likely knowledgeable about this board game.
In a special section governing the usage of French tanks:

"Although easily the most heavily armored tank of its time, the Char B had an Achilles heel in the form of an engine grill on the left side which was easily penetrated by AP."
The game allows for critical hits diced against all shots traced through the LOS of this engine grill hexside.

The game also penalized the French tanks because of the aforementioned single man turret and the fact that these were radio-less vehicles.

I realize that this is not the Avalon Hill forum but this was just too interesting not to mention.

I had an absolute blast playing a mini-campaign against the French using Andy's suggestions. For those of you like me who've scoffed at the "primitive" early war tanks remember the ancient saying:

"A poor craftsman blames his tools.";)

Re: How do you deal with French tanks
 

Note: The Char B and Somua DID have radios. I read a table backwards.

Re: How do you deal with French tanks
 

the myth re the engine grille 'vulnerability' was based on a single action (see the wiki article on the Char B http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Char_B1).

If it really was a vulnerability then there would have been multiple reports of the tactic being used. As for example the Allied bouncing of a round off a Panther mantlet, down into the top of the driver compartment. That (rather desperate) tactic was used, and did work, and several documented examples do exist of its success - but we don't have too many reports of those who tried it and failed....

(The game's critical hit code covers the micro-details of such special situations well enough. There is therefore no need for a "Char B engine cover" rule or a "panther glacis ricochet vulnerability" one).

In reality, Char B formations were defeated by the Germans operationally rather than tactically - the panzer units bypassed head to head tactical (SP level) combat and got into the rear of formations where they obliterated the soft vehicles, especially the refuelling vehicles. If they tried to fight head to head vs the B1, they could get severely mauled (as detailed in that wiki article, with the example of a Char b killing 16 odds panzers in a short space of time).

If the game was operational level (division/corps counters) then the German panzers of 1940 running free round the French logistics zone could be seen as an early version (analogue) of the later Allied fighter-bombers, killing the effect of armour by cutting it's jugular (fuel). Panzer 2s do the truck-bashing role just as well as say, panthers would have. Actually, P2s are probably better at that job.

But the game is tactical, and any adverse fuel and ammo logistics situation is not modelled in any way. Fuel is unlimited, ditto ammo. So you have to fight against the enemy that is present, and every unit is full of bullets and beans.

IF something like that were modelled (and how?) then the German player would be laughing in France 40, or in the opening of Barbarossa (where the disorganised Soviet war machine basically had done it to itself - tanks stored in one city, their ammo in another, pre-war mechanical maintenance at pathetic levels, let's purge all the officers, etc).

But just imagine the situation for that same German player in 1944. Say he had spent a gazillion points on shiny Panther companies, then turns up for the game only to be told "As Allied Player I spent the same points on pre-game fighter-bomber interdiction, so of your 17 shiny panthers in each company, 6 will not appear on table due to interdiction, the remainder have only half the ammo, and fuel for just 10 turns movement, and my 3000 points spent on pre-game SEAD have deleted half your AAA assets too" ...

The early war German armour (including Barbarossa) was light armour, and it acted rather like land-based fighter bombers to get loose in the enemy rear. The good (for that era) command and control of these tanks (radios etc) allowed this sort of thing against a static adversary who was still in a WW1 linear fighting mentality. After all - the 'blitzkreig' was based on Fuller's 'Plan 1919', which was designed as a method to rupture WW1 trench lines.

But the 'blitz' needed this static-passive adversary to allow it to dance around such a sluggish opponent. By the later war, even the Russians had enough radio/C&C etc to nip off such thrusts. Then the Germans went for heavy tanks to slug it out head-to-head, not the little "tracked fighter bombers" that specialised more in getting into the transport & logistical area and shooting the heck out of supply troops and rear HQs.

NB - the Sherman was also a design that was doctrinally aimed at the "tracked fighter bomber" role. It was highly reliable on long moves on its own tracks - by design. It was not designed to be a toe-to-toe slugger. The USA saw the Tank Destroyer arm as the boys who would deal with enemy armour in thier doctrine, while the shermans and mech infantry did a 'blitz' into the enemy end zone after the infantry and arty had blasted a hole. But by the time they arrived, bar rare occasions (race across France after the breakout for example, and perhaps some actions in Tunisia) - the front was not amenable to 'blitz' since the opponent was no longer passive-static (WW1 trench mentality) as in 40/41. Note also that the SU tended to use its Sherman formations in this deep exploitation role (the vehicles inherent reliability was a major factor in such use).


Cheers
Andy