@limbuger : Yup things can happen that way. It takes your local gaming group to come to a gentleman’s agreement on building your lists for a game for this to work. This “nerfing” came about in our group for BA when we found that tanks were dominating what is essentially an infantry skirmish game. So for a while we banned tanks and only used armoured cars, and we found the games were simply more fun (and the battles were decided on the tabletop rather than how you built your army list.)
For this early period in N Africa the most common armour were basically the “tankettes”, like armoured cars these are basically immune to small arms fire (well at range anyway), but an AT rifle can take them out. For the infantry facing them the main threat comes from the tanks MGs (so why do you need big guns to fight infantry). From the stuff the bootcampers got at the weekend the DAK got a great force to build up either “historically” or the more usual “tourney list” aspect. The Brits got the Matilda (but it’s still armed with a 2 PDR, so it’s not got HE and needs to rely on it’s MGs to take infantry out).
I’ve played a fair bit of games from the N Africa campaign and enjoy the aspects that set it aside from the more usual fare (especially in the early years). But it takes a bit of restraint in building army lists to have fun (for example go for the later period and someone buys an 88 or even worse a Tiger I and the game is pretty much decided before the miniatures are put on the table (remember we’re talking about wide open vistas here with little or no cover to try and sneak up on things). It’s one of the reasons why our group stuck to the early period.
So by buying PZer IIs and Vickers, you still have a “tank”, but your anti tank capabilities can also be covered with the AT rifle. And as these were issued to each squad, these were fairly common. But by fielding the bigger heavy tanks in an infantry skirmish, the tank stops being a supporting element and becomes the dominant factor (or however kill the opponents tanks first wins the game after a few turns delay mopping up the infantry that can’t damage it).
But try a few games just using A/Cs at first only, and see if you feel it gives a better game. The competitive army list you can leave for an actual tourney. We just found that our games at the club became a lot more fun, AND became more historically accurate (in regards to the equipment used) without having to use things that were battalion or regimental assets supporting a mere infantry platoon 🙂
buggeroff 5 years, 12 months ago.
