Armor Facing Rule

[Crossroads]

In a recent scenario discussion, someone mentioned they play with armor facing rules off, to negate the advantage German tanks had against allies. Doesn't turning that option off have just the opposite effect?

Great discussion

I believe you are referring to this thread about A Legend Is Born.

As it happens, I am now playing it as the Allied player, pitting my Shermans against a legion of Panthers and Mk IVs.

My dislike about the AF has to do with the "retreat bug", that totally destroys the option IMO. With Legend, havig a visibility of 2 because of the heavy fog, this is actually much less of a problem, as a retreating tank disappears often into fog.

Arracourt was historically a battle where the 4th AD used their superior tactics and manouveribility (sp?) to kill hordes of enemy armour. This much is obvious based on the books and The Greatest Tank Battles series from TV.

I guess what I am saying is that I used to simply judge AF=on to be "unrealistic" for the sake there's a number of tanks involved, but I have come into conclusion that view is too simplistic as well. There are several occasions where a platoon or similar number of tanks were ambushed from the flanks, for an example. Manouvering around does happeen at platoon level as well.

Especially with the few Hellcats the US player has available he can cause havoc to Nazi panzers, engaging them first with Shermans, and once sure OP is exhausted manovering the Hellcats to flank or rear shots.

At least for that scenario AF on would thus actually make some sense... Although I believe Huib mentioned it is supposed to be played with AF off.

Facing Panthers head on from one to two hex range is a stupid tactic anyway ;)

Having said all this, I do prefer AF=off. Because of the retreat bug.

Edit: I would love to see the ADSN patch in Matrix JTCS. Never seen it with TS version either though.

Edit 2: On another note, unit facing would make a lot of sense on all units as well, doesn't it. Flanking an infantry platoon surely causes them a lot of problems, let alone if you can attack them from their rear :smoke: