That is one of the reasons why we ditched completely Bolt Action for WWII actions: half the pieces on the table (and the most effective ones) should not be there in the first place. It can be a nice game, if you hae the right opponent, but it is not a wargame and does not give  you the right feeling for WWII.
We also found that the order dice mechanic, while entertaining, is basically flawed: an elite force will surely be outnumbered, and therefore have less order dice than an inexperienced one. This means that the more inexperienced force will have the tactical initiative, while it should be the other way round.
I don’t think there is a way, nor the desire on Warlord part, to address these issues: their target audience is basically tournament oriented and they are happy with a 40k style game using WWII models, which is what Bolt Action is.

I think it also depends a bit on how you define a skirmish game. You can do a skirmish battle between powerful vehicles (just look at X-Wing. 4 – 6 ships in total is a skirmish in my book, or Tanks) or a skirmish with small units and light vehicles (Star Wars Legion 500 point skirmish mode, nobody in their right mind would field a pointsink like a tank) and skirmish on a “hero” level. Like frostgrave: one or two powerful characters and some canon fodder folk.

So if you play skirmish on platoon size like FoW a monster of a unit is bad for the overall playability. But then it can be very restrictive for the one fielding it. You need to pay the point costs, you only have so much unit on the table with that monster and the enemy can run circles around you. Depending of what the scenario you play, big tanks will not help much. (Example: in Legion you need soldiers on foot (aka troopers) to secure objectives, you can’t do that with a tank or walker.) If FoW has similar restrictions that tank is less and less useless.

In my experience plunking a big point sink monster on the table is never a guaranteed win. At best it’s distraction. It comes down to balancing. Yes, that thing can kill your troop with one hit but it has no turret so it needs to turn and in the whole theatre of WW II there where only X units produced so you can only field a maximum of Y. (Advantage historical games here because we know the rough numbers of actual fighting vehicles and can adjust the game with the help of rules. “at no time more then X vehicles of type Y on the same battlefield”.

What needed to change was the “lust for the new shiny”. And that will never do. Simply because we gamers want the new shiny and companies need it to stay floating.

So it’s not the model itself that is “bad” but the rules don’t keep up with depicting reality? That then means: the rules need to be reworked.

1. Yes. Skirmish games seem to get bloated as the companies want to seel you more, bigger, more expensive stuff.

2. If you can play on larger tables, 8 or 12 by 4, then you can possibly offset some of the worst impacts of vehicles.

I think to be fair to warlord the Jagdtiger is actually an Italeri Kit probably with Warlords input, so its not just Warlord pushing a piece of plastic, I think they made it before in resin, in which case having a plastic version is going to be much more cost efficient once the moulds are produced. Equally I don’t think bolt action has ever been you must only use Warlord minis even in tournaments? Plenty of alternatives such as Rubicon etc. so I don’t really think this is a case of companies wanting to sell more and bigger stuff as much as have a complete range where possible in plastic.

As for “Skirmish” games I think the term is used a bit generically these days, and basically seems to be anything not rank and file. @sundancer makes some good points above.

Narratively I don’t have a problem with a Jagdtiger in a game of Bolt Action, units get split up, lost, break down, get overrun, or mixed up in the general chaos of warfare. Given the speed of allied advances late war and the reliability of complex German engineering in the same period it could quite simply have broken down, become split up from its unit and then get overrun as part of an allied advance before it could withdraw. Equally while theoretically these types of vehicles would prefer to have large engagement ranges, there’s plenty of examples especially in some of the brutal street to street fighting in German cities late war where this wasn’t the case.

I think the biggest point made here is that most rules systems don’t properly expose the vulnerability of vehicles to infantry in close quarters which is absolutely true, however you could say that this is some cases might be beneficial, though I lean on the side of the rules should be better.  You can make the rules more complex but you risk reducing you market by putting off a chunk of casual gamers, chain of command i think is a good example, compared to bolt action its rules are a typical lardy, a bit woolly in places and complex in others, though far more historically focused, that’s fantastic for a certain group of players but less so for those with less experience or exposure to wargaming.

I don’t think bolt action does a great job with vehicles, though I think the points above about activations and points costs go a way to balancing the game out, while not historically accurate I think the activation systems works well in this regard, sink all your points into expensive elite units you risk being tactically limited as such a more balanced approach is needed, which falls into that tournament style of gameplay. Equally spending all your points of a bit metal box of death in its self reduces you tactically regardless of activation systems, you simply have to counter it and contain it, e.g. using anti tank guns to control where the vehicle can operate by posing a threat in certain areas of the board. I think to a large extent this applies to most games that are point based.

I’d agree that fun in most games is down to your opponent having the same interpretation of the rules as you, that can also mean not sticking to points, and creating narratives rather than slugging matches, does it really matter that ever game has to be balanced?

Back on the initial question, I think there is a place for vehicles in 28mm skirmish games.

1.      It depends of the size of the skirmish game and the size of the board, but this is most down to making something that’s effective with rulesets.

2.      It depends on how much you wan to be historically accurate, vs having a narrative vs balancing a points system

3.      Fun, if it makes a game fun then why not (this is subjective), most people think vehicles are cool.

4.      At the very least they make interesting terrain

All these games are abstractions, so any discussion of reality should be thrown out the windows.  Very rarely are battles fought against evenly matched opponents, with units who start at full strength on both sides.  That is why you have command level staff, to find the point where your opponent is weak and strike it with as much force as possible without exposing your weaker areas to your opponent.  I would argue also a game based on reality wouldn’t be much fun, since there are just way to many variables to remove the abstraction.

So back to the original question.  Yes I believe the tanks should be there.  Why?  I am a big proponent of give me options to play the game I want to play, not be pigeonholed into a game the designers think I should play.  I will be happy to have a spirited debate on what subjectively is fun or not in a particular game.  In addition if the OP and I were to arrange a game, it would be more than fair to discuss and decide what type of game we wanted to play and put in limits between us.  The goal is an always to have fun, and since it is a shared experience, not just me but all parties have fun.

Tournament Organizers do it all the time.  They change the rules of the game to make the tournament “fun” for the participants.  Being limiting unit types, changing point values, changing the build rules, etc.  For some people the fun in gaming the system…how do I build the best bag of units within these rules.

While I take exception to the OPs argument should tanks be a part of bolt action, or similar games.  Note: not the part that the OP said that the set would not be fun to play, that is a subjective thing and completely valid.  At a certain point things do need to move from an in game unit to a set piece.  An Imperial II Stardestroyer in a game of X-Wing for example is a point where the thing becomes a set piece just because of scale differences.  An AT-AT in Legion would be very close to that edge, again in my subjective opinion.  I still think it would be fun to have rules for both though, since it opens game opportunities.  A coop version of X-Wing against a Stardestroyer might be fun.

–Chris