Antitank gun units

[Mr Grumpy]

Ahh, i go away for a few days and this "Old Chestnut" appears again after maybe two years.

In this discussion it is important that you understand that to change into T mode while adjacent to an enemy units is inviting destruction, in PzC T mode=death.

IMO AT guns are the most frustrating unit in the series, their ability to cause casualties is not worth the points you lose when you are unable to retreat them because they have to go into T mode (unless they are firing 2 hex's over another unit), so they remain a unit to dig trench's or prevent a TRENCH becoming a trench.

The obvious solution is to allow them to move one hex deployed and then away in T mode, but this has never found favour with HPS, it was argued (i think by Glenn, but i may be mistaken in that) that a large AT gun could not be manhandled 1 km and so to allow it to move deployed would be unhistorical.

I believe RickyB solved this in a B44 Mod by changing the AT units into mortar units and Volcano Man changed the 2Pdr AT Portee units into LAA to get round the T mode issue, but then of course the unit symbol changes as well and that can lead to confusion.

I was not at the last TC, but people who were told me there was a good debate about this and JT decided to opt for the AT gun retreating into T mode, problem is it then just gets killed by an airstrike or arty, in my experience only 20% of units escape like this & they are often to damaged to take any further active part, so an improvement but not a solution, if you place your 1 hex range AT gun in the front line you will almost certainly lose it if you have to fall back, better to not put it there in the first place. :chin: