Over the summer Andy and I tried out Dan Mersey's quick play WW2 tank game Armoured Storm using my collection of 6mm North Africa campaign tanks - and found it to be a huge amount of fun, with some very interesting tactical challenges.
The rules are pretty straight forward, most tanks have the same movement distances (unless Matildas which are very slow, or Crusaders which are fast on roads) and you use a D10 for hits and penetration, the challenge is with the Tactics phase when you use your Tactics Tokens (Germans have five, the British four) to chose what orders you want to employ in the turn - the key is whether you focus on what you want to do, or try and prevent the enemy from doing what they want by selecting the orders that would benefit them
There is no points system and for basic games you have a German company of three five tank platoons plus a couple of HQ tanks. The base core unit is the platoon.
Whilst the British have five three tanks platoons plus HQ tanks...
HQ tanks can operate independently - but will use up an order - or attached to a platoon for as long as you like...
The game uses 'measurement distances' so the rules can be used with different scale miniatures. 15mm miniatures use a measurement distance of 15cm, 6mm uses 5cm (I have subsequently made up some 'old school' red/white measuring sticks in 5cm bands which makes life much easier than a tape measure). This means most tanks move 10cm a turn which initially we felt was probably too slow but turned out to be perfect.
Firing is up to ten measurement distances (so 50cm in 6mm) and you need to roll equal to or higher on a D10 (a ten always hitting, a one always missing) to the range band with the usual modifiers for AFV size, rages is hull down, if you have chosen the Good Shooting tactic). If you hit you then see if your shot has penetrated the armour comparing your Penetration factor at the range you are shooting to the armour rating. If it is equal to or high you roll a D10 on the Penetrating Shot table for the effect, if it is lower on the Non-Penetrating Shot table.
You are more likely to knock out an enemy tank with a Penetrating Shot, but a Non-Penetrating Shot can Damage an enemy tank and two of those will knock it out - the Recover tactic allows you to repair damaged tanks which is useful to prevent your opponent finishing them off but it takes one of your valuable order tokens which you could have been using for firing at the enemy - choices!
So for our first game we played a straight forward encounter in the desert with both sides advancing towards each other...
The Crusaders had the better of things to start with, the PzIII's struggling to penetrate the Crusader frontal armour at longer ranges.
The Crusader's were more effective...
Having damaged a couple of Crusaders (meaning they were unable to fire until repaired) the Germans pushed forward to close the firing ranges to a more effective one for them.
One platoon of Crusaders pushed towards the German flank...
Brewing up one of the PzIII's.
However the Germans overloaded the British right, sweeping one platoon behind the line of Crusaders...
...destroying one of the Crusader platoons. The loss of a platoon sees you lose a Tactic Token which impacts your ability to get your remaining tanks to do things. With larger platoons than the British this gives the Germans an advantage which reflects their superior tactical ability in the Desert War.
The British did manage to recover slightly...
And rushed a platoon from their left flank to the centre.
But were not quite able to wipe out an enemy tank platoon to inflict a Tactic Token loss on the Germans.
The reinforcing platoon rushing towards the centre...
Unfortunately left its flank exposed to a third advancing PzIII platoon...
And with the Germans having the advantage of an additional Tactic Token over the British, the end result was inevitable!
With the PzIII's pushing forward it was clear that the 8th Army had suffered another setback in the desert...
The end of the game seeing several burning Crusaders scattered across the battlefield!
All in all Armoured Storm is a great little game. It is not a fully blown combined arms WW2 game, but does not pretend to be (although there are rules in the Western Desert and Eastern Front books to include the likes of airstrikes, infantry, AT guns, minefields etc). It would be unfair however to label it a beer and pretzels game as the Tactics Board gives it a nuance that most simple games don't have.
If you have a collection of tanks in any scale from 15mm to 6mm I'd recommend picking up a copy of Armoured Storm and getting them on the table for a fun evening
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