Thursday, April 8, 2010

Achtung Panzer Kharkov 1943: Get Off that Road!

I'm enjoying the relatively slow pace of WWII tank battles in Achtung Panzer Kharkov 1943 (APK43). Compared to the fast and furious pace of modern armor combat (as shown in Steel Beasts ProPE), in APK43 I have a chance to screw it and fix it. Sometimes it's hard not to be overconfident and forget "good manners".

In one instance I was moving a German tank platoon down a road. There was a small patch of woods ahead and as soon as the point tank emerged from the tree line it was welcomed by a well placed Russian AT gun.

AT ambush, 10 meters ahead.

Take a look at the figure below, taken from the "Training Directives for the Light and Medium Tank Companies, March 1939".

The square inside a circle represents a tank and the other symbol an AT gun (you may recognize from APK43). Left side (wrong), the tank at the edge of the trees gets nailed by an AT gun. Right side (correct), the tank steps aside the road and spots the AT gun from the cover of the foliage.


Put those trees to work for you. Russian AT gunners don't have IR imaging. A German tank takes a peek at the open terrain ahead from the concealment offered by the trees.

Cheers,

4 comments:

Dimitris said...

Hey JC,

You are really enjoying this one :)

Haven't yet had the time to really dive into it but first impressions look interesting.

JC said...

How are you, Dimitris?

You bet. This little war game packs a lot of fun.

Cheers,

Singleton Mosby said...

AP:43 is indeed a great game but when putting tactics like this to the practice it becomes even better. The only thing I am wondering is: does it work?

JC said...

Hi SB!

Yes indeed! The tanks get shot at, but the AT guns have a hard time hitting them.

Cheers,