Stuart Harrison

I take it you’re talking about ambushing a tank on an Advance order? The tank is not open topped until after it has fired the pintle mounted weapon. That means after the shooting part of an Advance order. You can only ambush movement (unless attempting to fire normally at the end of the turn), so your opportunity to activate your ambush has…[Read more]

Penetration, the weapon stat, applies vs all targets as you stated – P61, second sentence of the definition. What doesn’t apply except when heavy weapons hit armoured targets is the pen modifiers (side, rear, top, long range) from p106-7, Vehicles, Shooting At Vehicles, Damage vs Armoured Targets.

@ Steiner, that ‘double penalty’ is specific to HE. There is no equivalent for flame weapons – flamethrowers are already devastating enough.

The first damage result, stunned, is on ‘1 or less’ to account for superficial damage reducing the score below 1. The minimum (and most likely) result is stunned.

@steiner2803

3+ base to hit number
Point blank modifier (+1 to your die score) makes that a 2+ needed on the dice (so far). This one will always apply with a 6″ range weapon.

At 3″ or under, it doesn’t suffer the long range to hit penalty, so if no other modifiers apply it remains 2+ to hit.

At over 3″, it suffers the long range penalty (-1…[Read more]

There is nothing preventing long range and point blank overlapping and both applying for short ranged weapons. They are different factors assessed separately – think of long range as limitations of the weapon and point blank being the benefit of instinctive aiming for the firer.

@Mark G, I’m not a fan of major buffs to HE, especially when HE was already so good vs AP in first edition that they decided to up the HE values of the big AT guns to balance the points better. I’m doubly against it when those suggested buffs don’t come with a suggested cost increase.

HE vs smoke mechanics – smoke has a persistent effect on the…[Read more]

NCOs are specifically prevented from becoming loader for a squad based team weapon.

MRB, p73, Weapons, Weapon Special Rules, Team Weapon, Squad Based Team Weapons, third sentence – ‘Choose which model becomes the loader – you can pick any model in the squad except the NCO…’

As written, there should be one weapon with no loader to comply with…[Read more]

“One a different note, how do you feel about LMGs, MMGs and HMGs all having the same range in the games?”

Machine gun ranges are a problem, partly due to attempting to fix LMGs being underpowered without changing the points from first edition, and partly because of compression on a 4’x6′ table with heavy artillery on the same table as small…[Read more]

They cost 5 points more than a normal veteran, one point of that is tough fighter (most likely on the basis of the dog), get a rifle or SMG as modelled (another 3 points if you go the SMGs), and they get the doubled detection radius against hidden units. If you go adding more to them they become badly under costed. The fluff talks about them being…[Read more]

Non disintegrating link for the MG 34/42:

Yes, it could be linked together to form longer belts, but it’s not a simple task in the field.

“IMHO, Brens, BARs, Lewis guns, Degtyaryovs, FM 24/29s, ZB27s, etc, etc, since they’re not belt-fed, are just automatic rifles….” We’re going to have to disagree on your conclusion. The BAR is the only aut…[Read more]

@ Lawrence,

“I will continue to quibble about the sustained firepower of multiple linked belts vs. continual mag changes though….especially when firing suppression or final protective fires.”

I would have to ask if you’re still on the divide between the Bren as a WW2 LMG, or the divide between the Bren and a post war GPMG/WW2 MMG? Which of i…[Read more]

Video on the Bren (and a few other MGs in use by the Brits early war) – the last 20 seconds or so show it in use on the tripod.

… and with the 100 round…[Read more]

1. Agree on shotguns.

2. Agree on FG42.

3. Totally disagree on the Bren gun. If you’ve ever been part of a team with one, you’d see the difference between it and a BAR immediately. The top fed system allows the second man to have the replacement magazine in place before the gunner has even finished the movement of tossing the empty mag under…[Read more]

Campaign D Day: US Sector
P158, Optional Rules (intro text states must be agreed by both players prior to beginning the game or promulgated by a tournament’s Tournament Organiser), Senior NCOs.

From the FAQ:
“New Units
These books occasionally introduce new units without the
accompanying text explaining in which selectors they can
be used.
As a general guidance in these cases, unless the rules in the unit’s
entry say otherwise, new units in these books are limited to use
for scenarios and selectors from that book only. Unless of c…[Read more]

“I’m a bit surprised by this answer as it assumes there is a difference between Artillery observers and spotters for on table guns and mortars”

There is a huge difference between observers and spotters. Despite similar ‘In Real Life’ practice, they are totally different in game concepts.

Spotters are a 10 point upgrade to indirect fire units w…[Read more]

You are correct, indirect is ‘regardless of any modifier’ from the start and doesn’t re-introduce them later in the process.

For them to be correct, there would then need to be a clause re-introducing modifiers to the ranging in process – there is no such clause.

The total lack of modifiers other than the ranging in process is pretty much the…[Read more]

Yes. It’s no different than the British calling the Vickers .303 machine gun a ‘heavy’ machine gun, while in game it’s an MMG – titles and descriptions mean nothing in game (usually reflecting what they called it in their own forces at the time rather than a comparison against a class of weapons/vehicles around the world), it’s the stats from the…[Read more]

In game terms it’s a light tank.