March 21, 2024 • 26 mins
In this episode Phil explains everything Jonny wanted to know about the newest game from Warlord Games - Achtung Panzer!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:08):
Welcome to Tabletop Tommies. I'm Jonny and I'm Phil and in today's episode we're
talking through the latest release from Warlord Games, Actung Panzer.
We have been fortunate enough to get a sneak peek at the rulebook.
I haven't really read it but Phil has studied it in great depth and so hopefully
(00:29):
he'll be able to give me insight into what it's all about.
So without further ado I I guess
the first question, Phil, quite a broad one, is what is Acton Panzer?
So Acton Panzer is a 28mm tank game. So it's for two to five vehicles,
and it represents two opposing tank platoons.
It's written by a couple of guys who have been involved in previous Warlord Games publications.
(00:51):
So Mike Bradford and Roger Gerrish, the co-wrote Western Desert for Bolt Action,
Roger wrote Road to Berlin, and he's also been involved in games like Doctor Who and Judge Dredd.
So there's a link there to previous Warlord Games with the two authors.
There's no infantry involved at all in terms of models on the table.
So this is not an expansion of Bolt Action. This is not an update or a reboot for Tank War.
(01:15):
It's an entirely new game with a new mechanic, but you can obviously use your
tanks that you would normally use for Bolt Action in Axe and Panther.
And it's due to be released in April. So it's in the next three weeks by the time this comes out.
Interesting. So it's not Tank Wars. It's not Bolt Action.
Does it have the same variety of nations available at
(01:36):
the moment so currently the core rule book covers four so you've got germany
british and commonwealth soviet union and usa and it's from 1943 onwards so
there's germany and soviet union for 1943 and then from 1944 onwards you introduce
british and commonwealth and usa.
Nice. I think, listening to Cast Dice, I believe Brad said there are plans to add more nations.
(02:01):
I believe there is, yeah. As I said, it's very much mid to late war at the moment,
but there are indeed plans.
They just released the French tank crew set as part of this,
but they haven't got rules for the French tanks currently, which would indicate
they are about to release some French tank rules for Acton Panzer at some point.
Interesting. When you say the tank crew, do you mean the cards for them?
(02:22):
Because i know this game involves cards are we talking the actual minis no
the actual minis so as part of the the release they either remodeled
or re-released or from scratch designed and released tank crews for the four
nations we've mentioned but there's also a french tank crew that i spotted on
the warlord website the other day so yeah it would suggest that there are other
nations on its way yeah are these the tank crew that stick in your tank are these on 20 these are.
(02:46):
Dismounted so the dismounted tank crew so if for those of
you who've looked at the bolt action website they had
the german dismantled tank crews the winter german tank crews
i've seen seen before and so on so it's it's four or five
guys because they do have a role to play probably just
aesthetically to be honest but there is there is a big emphasis on
tank crews in the game and as part of the release that
(03:07):
they recently shared included yeah various tank
crews so the short answer is currently there are four nations
but it would suggest and brad on
cast ice podcast an official warlord podcast did say that there
are others on their way the tank crew
i believe in this game so what i've seen from the
previews is you purchase the tank crew in
(03:29):
the way you would sort of purchase units in bolt action let's say so you
pay points for your tank you pay points for your crew depend on their
veterancy level yeah and so is this
game what i'm imagining now with you say the tank crew is when the tank blows
up you roll to see how many get out and then you you try to get them off the
table to survive to the next battle but then if you're playing that that would
imply to me it's a campaign game so is this game more focused on campaign play
(03:53):
or is it more focused on sort of like single engagements.
Yeah so it's either or so if you the rule book itself the actual
rules approximately 60 pages so it's
not a massive rule book by any means at all and then the
back sort of 20 or so pages after that is about
the missions themselves and and the campaign so you
can absolutely play as a standalone game or you can
(04:15):
play it as part of a campaign in terms of you
know how it works it's very much focused on the
tank commander and their crew and it's the
way the game's designed is that pre-game you can sort
of pimp my ride and increase your your crew's you
know experience levels and you use certain crew
points to buff you know your driver your commander or your
(04:37):
or your gunner and if you play in the campaign mode
then there's a there's a consequence of how you
did in in that initial game you know game one of the
campaign with regards to what crew survived what experience
they get do they get replaced vehicles that
are knocked out but not destroyed do they get recovered covered can you
repair vehicles from game to game all that sort of stuff so yeah
(04:57):
it's it's it's very much about the the individuals in
the vehicle and there's two to five of them because it's representing
a tank platoon yeah and it doesn't use order dice does it and there's some sort
of initiative system i believe that's right yeah so there's no order though
so so it's you know there are very little mechanics that you'd recognize in
bolt action other than the fact that it's 28 millimeter you can measure in inches
(05:19):
you could pre-measure so that's a major difference but But all your terrain and all your tanks.
You can just port across from your bolt action game into Axe and Panzer.
Yeah, in terms of the mechanics of it, it's all based on initiative and strategy.
The initiative phase and who goes who
goes first in the action phase depends on what number initiative marker you
(05:40):
pull out which could be entirely random so if depending on the number of vehicles
you've got and whether or not you pass a a radio check if you need to it may
be that you've got no idea what order your tanks are going to activate in compared to your opponents.
However if you do pass your radio check if you need to take
one you can allocate once you've picks randomly your initiative
(06:00):
marker numbers you can allocate the order that you
want your vehicles to activate in interesting but
it's yeah so it's not you go i go nor is it
entirely random in terms of dice out of the bag it
is random with an element of control depending upon
if you have successfully passed an initiative
check which is your radio check so it's sort of
(06:21):
semi-random but with a way to
sort of like weight it in your favor or yes interesting swinging
back to your terrain one of the questions i was thinking there is
the rangers in bolt action are sort of arbitrary for want of a better word they
don't sort of they don't scale with the models to sort of true scale how does
(06:42):
that compare with acting panzer and follow-on question is the intention that
you You play Acton Panzer on a 4x6,
or are they envisaging that people will play on bigger boards?
So it's suggested to play on a 6x4, and from what you can see in the rulebook
and also what's been discussed online, the tables are pretty heavy in terms
(07:03):
of the amount of terrain that's there.
Obviously, if we start getting into supplements where you're looking at 1942 Western Desert,
you're not going to have you know a terrain dense density in
the same way that you might be normandy you know in the bockage and so
on that's interesting because one of
the things that actually i think isn't well represented in bolt
(07:23):
action in the desert is tanks going sort of hull down
where you scoot behind a dune and you've just got
your turret over the top and so i know the
terrain rules are slightly more dense in this and
so i imagine that i'll actually
be quite a a nice little feature to add that
being hulled down is a perk compared to
(07:44):
in bolt action where it's just you've got cover you don't basically yeah
so things like that absolutely matter so depending on
where you're hit from you know what angle you're hit from will
determine what possible damage you can take it's not
just a straightforward you're hit roll on the damage table and
apply the damage it may be that you get hit and
your tracks get blown or your armor gets penetrated or you get
(08:07):
hit in the turret and it affects your optics and that
sort of stuff so there's a lot more detail going on with regards to the damage
on the vehicles which is to be expected if you've only got two to five vehicles
per side you're not having to move and roll a ton of dice in the way that we
do in bolt action because you've got fewer models and that sort of stuff so the intricacy of.
(08:27):
So what you do get instead then is a level of intricacy with regards to hitting
vehicles, damage that vehicles can take.
They're not necessarily going to blow up on the first hit. They can take a number
of hits, which may or may not cause massive damage.
And then after a certain point, if those hits have accumulated,
you'll get to a point where it's either going to get knocked out or destroyed.
Destroyed that does feel more like a sort
(08:50):
of our historical accounts of tank warfare where sort
of the bakajan normandy where the
shermans are just pounding the tigers with high explosives knowing
that they're not going to knock it out but they might knock the tracks off
and then because they're going to be overrun they then scuttle
the tank and fall back basically yeah so that
is quite a nice little perk rather than sort of
(09:12):
like the random in bolt action where you get that six four
by six four by six and then hey so
for the the older listeners aren't there who may have
played a certain major game company's science fiction game with big robots we
might call titans um it reminds me going back to when i played adaptive titanicus
(09:32):
years and years ago it reminds me a bit of that in terms of um and same with
like epic epic for 40k and so on where where when you hit those big titans or
gargants or whatever it was.
You had to see where you hit on the model, and then the damage that you could
do would vary depending on which part of the model you've hit,
and you absolutely have that principle going on here.
(09:53):
I'm sure it's the same with, I've never played it, but I'm sure it's very similar
to Water Tanker, for example, from the two Fat Lardies, in terms of the level
of detail that you get there in what is a 28mm tank skirmish game.
Yeah. So just swinging back to
ranges, yeah so range is is effectively determined by short and then long,
so there's no short medium long it's either you're within short range
(10:15):
and that will have a certain value to hit and a certain penetration
value and then if you're at long range then there'll
be maybe the same to hit modifier might might
be different depends on the weapon you're firing and then again the penetration
value may change but it from
what i've seen and you know reading online and so on i it looks
like it it works with the size of the tables
(10:37):
that you're expected to to play on for example so a 75 millimeter.
L70 gun here is 0 to 18
is short range and then 18 plus is is
long range oh so yeah actually we've got
that sort of finer detail in the weapons as well
so rather than just light medium heavy yes it sounds
like every sort of cannon has a slightly different
(10:57):
profile yeah or they'll they'll be
grouped together so you'd have effectively this is pretty much that.
You know the caliber of this gun and that gun
is the same as you would find on a similar model
you know from from british to commonwealth for example and
to us to soviets so they.
Might have the same stat line but they're named something different it's not
(11:18):
just light at medium at heavy at so there.
Is a lot more detail with regards to the the layout.
The kit out and and also the traits and.
So on that that each vehicle gets so the
traits is something actually to talk about so in much in the same
way you know it's bolt action where you've got unit special
special rules what you've got here then are vehicle traits and
(11:38):
you might have a certain trait that that might appear across
all four of those nations for example or it
might be that it's specific to a particular type of vehicle
so if it was a vehicle that the u.s used for lend lease
well then the british are going to get it as well as the u.s and the soviets and
so on or it might be specific to just a german vehicle
for example okay so it sounds like
we don't have national characteristics per se but we have we
(12:01):
have traits traits applied to tanks yeah and
and and obviously some traits are going to be specific to certain nations yeah
and there's a decent amount of vehicles for
each of them there's it's it's between 20 and 30 vehicles
per nation so it's not like it's like you've got five vehicles
which are you know a couple of armored cars a light and
medium and heavy you've got a decent spread at the moment bearing in
(12:23):
mind it's 1943 onwards for germany and
soviets and 1944 onwards for the us and um
and the brits yeah and so when
you activate your tanks do they get sort of multiple
actions where let's say i could fire three
times or i could move three times so i could or the thing that i really want
to be able to do that i can't do in bolt action yes i really want to do the
(12:44):
shoot and scoot yes where something like my archer where the it's shooting backwards
i want it parked in a hedgerow i wanted to shoot and then i wanted to scurry off.
Back towards my lines basically yeah so so we
a game then of action panzer is consists of a number of
turns and the number of turns depends on this scenario although you
(13:04):
can lengthen or shorten the game by playing event cards
for example but within each turn you have
three phases so you have your initiative phase and then.
Your action phase and then your admin phase in your action
phase there are three action phases within the
action phase and every unit
on the board or every vehicle on on the board gets to activate in
(13:25):
each of the three action phases so you draw your
initiative you draw your initiative tokens in initiative phase you
then play through the first action phase and in that action
phase you can move you can then do
a tactical action so that could be for example shooting
it could be a defensive action so you
might lay down some smoke for example you might do you shoot and scoot
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like you said or it could be a more advanced
maneuver you might start like doughnutting and handbrake turning your
vehicle to get out of the way and scoot behind cover that sort
of stuff so pivot maneuver and the scoot for example are
two of the two of the tactical actions you can
take so there is a bit of flexibility there so it's not just i
move i shoot you move you shoot within the
(14:06):
action phase you can move you can choose to halt and not move at all and that's
an order that's a command that you give which makes your your accuracy of your
shot lot greater obviously so yeah there's there's a lot of potential for combining
commands or orders with movement or staying still with tactical actions afterwards.
(14:27):
So these tactical actions are they like a card you play or
is it something that you always have access to it's something you
always have access to so there are 10 tactical actions so you've got two for.
Moving one for defensive measures and seven for aggressive measures
and then depending on what that vehicle wants to
do in that moment you'll obviously determine what you need to do
there's an element of sort of thinking ahead because the obviously
(14:49):
not just in terms of which arc you're in relative to
the arc of the vehicle you're shooting at but the
turret being in a certain arc there's certain things yeah
you can track a vehicle if your turret's not not facing
the vehicle but you can see it so you've got a line of sight to it you
can track it but you can't shoot it you can have a
bit of a pop shot at it it's like the next
(15:09):
level up or if you're stationary lined at it and
focusing on it you can take an aim shot at it so there is
there is definitely an element of thinking ahead where do i want to be relative
to where i know the enemy are where are my supporting units
or my supporting vehicles in my tank platoon relative to
that tank when it's doing its action and so on so you
do your initiative phase that determines who's going
(15:30):
when yeah and then in each of the action phases the
three action phases the orders are
all given in the same order every action phase yes is that
right so if we've got five initiative tokens because there
are five vehicles on on the board you're going to
activate yeah say i've got three and you've got two i'm
going to activate three out of possibly first second
(15:51):
third fourth fourth or fifth you're going to do two we do that for the.
First phase and then you then you carry on from there into the second third
phase so you draw the initiative phase once per term but you have three opportunities
to undertake actions in the action so basically in my first two action phases
i know who's going to get to go first in the next one basically.
(16:13):
Which is interesting in terms of sort of thinking forward in that regard.
They did talk about, as well, adding sort of random event cards as well as sort
of an extension to the game rather than part of the core mechanics.
Yeah, so the core mechanics itself, like I said, is fairly straightforward.
The actual core core mechanics is probably only about 50-odd pages.
Then you start looking at things like the event cards. So these are drawn randomly before the game.
(16:38):
How many you get depends on the number of tanks in play at the start of the game,
and then you roll a dice and it can yeah plus or minus and
so on and you can play them at different points in in a
turn depending on what the event is and how
that interacts with that point of the turn so it
could be for example you're bringing on reinforcements it could
be that you've got a fog of war event which will obviously
(16:59):
impact upon your ability to gain line of sight over
a certain distance for example time will tell event
that's the the event that allows you to shorten or lengthen the
game so if you're doing really well and you're playing a campaign game
and you really want to hammer home your superiority obviously you
want to lengthen it if you're getting a bit of a pasting and you want
to get out alive you want to shorten it for example things like
(17:20):
bullseye will will improve your accuracy for example
reconnaissance is quite a nice one so you can play that
and it makes you your opponent reveal their event
cards to you so you know possibly what what might be coming
up and then things like improvised armor for bad
days quite a good one so if you could can play the bad day event card and that
affects your opponent's crew test result so to do certain actions in the game
(17:43):
you've got to pass crew tests depending on your veteran scene experience and
other factors will determine how easy it is so yeah so there's there's an element
of a card based game within this.
So if anyone's played A Song of Ice and Fire, for example, which is a tabletop
skirmish game, sort of rank-and-flank skirmish game, but it has non-playing characters, or sorry,
(18:05):
it has non-combat characters, so there's a tactics card and tactics deck.
And one of the features of A Song of Ice and Fire is as well as the kind of
mechanics of fighting that's going on on the tabletop, you've also got various
cards and character qualities that interact with what's going on on the table.
And there's absolutely elements of that mechanic. It's not exclusive to,
(18:27):
you know, the two games we just mentioned, but there's that mechanic going on within this game.
There's quite a lot to think about then. Yeah, yeah. It's to say the actual
core rules are, you know, pretty straightforward.
Where the sort of randomness and where the intricacy comes in,
it's your vehicle stat line plus the event cards where you can influence things as you go through.
(18:49):
The fact that you can customize your crew, so you
get a number of crew points at the start of the game to you know
you might for example want to have a really good commander but a
poor gunner and a poor driver or you
might go do you know what i've got a novice commander but i've
got a really experienced gunner so i'm not going to do very
well in terms of reactions and so on but my actual like you know bullseye dead
(19:13):
eye shooting might be really good so the the customization which is where the
the flavor is going to come from is from things like your crews and your event
cards you have asset cards as well and the asset cards are nation specific so you've
these and you draw a number at the start of the game depending upon the size
of the game and you can you can do certain things so the brits for example might
(19:35):
call in an artillery on an airstrike or they might bring up the piats if they
want to if they want to ambush,
ambush a vehicle the germans might launch a close assault with panzer meccas
or they might have tank hunters with panzerfaust that sort of thing so the the piats and etc are sort of.
Abstracted where yeah they'll sort of they'll do damage to
the tank and it's come from this bush let's say
(19:58):
but you don't actually put your infantry models down to 100
so one of the the key parts of the terrain is what they call ambush terrain
so you've got your normal sort of terrain in terms of open ground rough ground
impassable and then ambush terrain and then ambush terrain represents any any
period any space on the battlefield where either infantry or anti-tank
(20:21):
assets or even a tank could well be concealed
in order to spring an ambush so it could be
buildings could be ruins rubble rocky ground pre-prepared
strong points whatever it is i'm saying earlier about some of the tactical actions
you can take in your action phase one of them is clearing potential ambush terrain
because if you get too close to ambush terrain there's a chance that your opponent
(20:43):
might play a card and then suddenly you're staring down a pack 40 which has
been you you know, hidden away, concealed in the woods,
you've got too close and you've just been hit by some AT assets.
So the infantry, the anti-tank assets, et cetera, they're abstracted.
They appear in event outcomes through the ambush terrain on the table and how
they interact with the game is through the event cards and asset cards and that sort of stuff.
(21:08):
Yeah, it really is quite an intricate game, really. Which does make me sort
of wonder who the target audience is here, because it has the feel of sort of
a beer and pretzel type game.
Yeah. But it also feels like there's a very high threshold of entry because
there's a lot of stuff going on here.
And so it leaves me kind of wondering, who have they aimed this at?
(21:31):
Because the guys who are sort of really learning the rules and stuff from warlord
are playing sort of like your pike and shot or your bolt action already.
So we already have like quite a complex world war ii game
i suppose are we aiming at sort
of like people who really like tanks really want
more detail so it's not beer and pretzel really it's people
(21:52):
who really want to simulate historical tank engagements
yeah but i think i think it is beer and
pretzel as well because the actual the core mechanics are
you know are pretty straightforward it's a
card driven miniature game that's that's
the best way of saying it and and a lot of the you
know the cards are very straightforward and the the content
(22:12):
on the card tells you what you need to know in two or three sentences it's really
not very detailed because it's i play this at this time this is the effect and
now i apply that effect and i mentioned a song of ice and fire when i've when
i used to play that that was the the core rules in that are like 20 pages long.
Where the variety came from was the car-driven mechanic of it.
(22:34):
So I think it's quite detailed in the sense of the stat lines for all the vehicles.
But effectively what you're saying is, how experienced are my crew?
How experienced do I want to make my driver, my gunner, my commander? And.
How you know where do where do i add the sort of like the
gotcha moments well that's through the the event cards for example
(22:55):
how do i buff my uh my nation well
that's the asset cards a nation specific so for
me i can see this being a game that you would play down the club or
you play with your mate you know one evening or an afternoon or
you might get a group of you together and play it as a campaign quite easily
it's not massively detailed
and in-depth like your chain of command or battle battle group
(23:18):
for example nor is it you know
nor is it rules heavy in the way that bolt action is it's
simple mechanics with the variety and and
quick play that comes from a card driven game yeah and
actually i think the key point there that i hadn't really
fully sort of thought about is there's
a lot of stuff going on but actually as you say if those
(23:40):
a lot of that random stuff's coming from cards and
it's explicitly stated on the card exactly what's about to happen then
actually there's not a lot you have to commit to
memory so actually that does add a
lot of complexity to the game but equally doesn't add a lot
of complexity to sort of your memory of the learns
of the rule set really definitely yeah yeah you know i found yeah preparing
(24:02):
for it so we were you know lucky to be sent a so we were you know very grateful
to be sent a copy of the rules by by warlord i haven't played the game but reading
through the rules reading through the event cards and then working out it really
didn't take me very long to read through it and once i.
Understood that this is a a card driven miniature game
that's that's i'm gonna call it that from now on the actual
(24:24):
core mechanics were pretty straightforward interesting so i guess
the key question is are you going to be playing act on
panzer i think i would definitely play it if if somebody was interested at the
club or if if a friend had it and said you know what let's go and play it i
think i definitely would play it it's a great opportunity to to bring off the
shelf all those vehicles that you very rarely get to use in in bolt action unless
(24:46):
you're playing tank war for for example,
I think it could be a fun, you know, two and a half hours of an evening type
game or, you know, an afternoon at the weekend sort of thing.
I don't think it's not, I can't see it being a tournament game.
I can't see it being, you know, a competitive tournament game at all.
But it isn't written for that purpose.
From my perspective, it's not one that I'm going to seek out a game of,
(25:09):
I think, but if someone's really
keen to play it, I certainly would try it and I think it would be fun.
But for me i really like the infantry involved
action and i like maneuvering your bazooka up
trying to sneak him up to the tank to get that shot um
against all odds and so that's why for me even sort
of regardless of the game's mechanics and stuff i think i'd
(25:32):
miss the infantry too much if this was the game i was playing on
the regular but it certainly won that
if someone someone else learned all the rules and
was willing to show me how to play it i'd be more than happy
to play right well that certainly was an interesting diversion from our regular
bolt action content i imagine next week we'll be right back on the bolt action
(25:53):
but until then please like share and subscribe and let us know if you're looking
forward to acting panzer and what you're looking forward to about it tata for now tata for now.
Music.
Music.
(00:08):
Welcome to Tabletop Tommies. I'm Jonny and I'm Phil and in today's episode we're
talking through the latest release from Warlord Games, Actung Panzer.
We have been fortunate enough to get a sneak peek at the rulebook.
I haven't really read it but Phil has studied it in great depth and so hopefully
(00:29):
he'll be able to give me insight into what it's all about.
So without further ado I I guess
the first question, Phil, quite a broad one, is what is Acton Panzer?
So Acton Panzer is a 28mm tank game. So it's for two to five vehicles,
and it represents two opposing tank platoons.
It's written by a couple of guys who have been involved in previous Warlord Games publications.
(00:51):
So Mike Bradford and Roger Gerrish, the co-wrote Western Desert for Bolt Action,
Roger wrote Road to Berlin, and he's also been involved in games like Doctor Who and Judge Dredd.
So there's a link there to previous Warlord Games with the two authors.
There's no infantry involved at all in terms of models on the table.
So this is not an expansion of Bolt Action. This is not an update or a reboot for Tank War.
(01:15):
It's an entirely new game with a new mechanic, but you can obviously use your
tanks that you would normally use for Bolt Action in Axe and Panther.
And it's due to be released in April. So it's in the next three weeks by the time this comes out.
Interesting. So it's not Tank Wars. It's not Bolt Action.
Does it have the same variety of nations available at
(01:36):
the moment so currently the core rule book covers four so you've got germany
british and commonwealth soviet union and usa and it's from 1943 onwards so
there's germany and soviet union for 1943 and then from 1944 onwards you introduce
british and commonwealth and usa.
Nice. I think, listening to Cast Dice, I believe Brad said there are plans to add more nations.
(02:01):
I believe there is, yeah. As I said, it's very much mid to late war at the moment,
but there are indeed plans.
They just released the French tank crew set as part of this,
but they haven't got rules for the French tanks currently, which would indicate
they are about to release some French tank rules for Acton Panzer at some point.
Interesting. When you say the tank crew, do you mean the cards for them?
(02:22):
Because i know this game involves cards are we talking the actual minis no
the actual minis so as part of the the release they either remodeled
or re-released or from scratch designed and released tank crews for the four
nations we've mentioned but there's also a french tank crew that i spotted on
the warlord website the other day so yeah it would suggest that there are other
nations on its way yeah are these the tank crew that stick in your tank are these on 20 these are.
(02:46):
Dismounted so the dismounted tank crew so if for those of
you who've looked at the bolt action website they had
the german dismantled tank crews the winter german tank crews
i've seen seen before and so on so it's it's four or five
guys because they do have a role to play probably just
aesthetically to be honest but there is there is a big emphasis on
tank crews in the game and as part of the release that
(03:07):
they recently shared included yeah various tank
crews so the short answer is currently there are four nations
but it would suggest and brad on
cast ice podcast an official warlord podcast did say that there
are others on their way the tank crew
i believe in this game so what i've seen from the
previews is you purchase the tank crew in
(03:29):
the way you would sort of purchase units in bolt action let's say so you
pay points for your tank you pay points for your crew depend on their
veterancy level yeah and so is this
game what i'm imagining now with you say the tank crew is when the tank blows
up you roll to see how many get out and then you you try to get them off the
table to survive to the next battle but then if you're playing that that would
imply to me it's a campaign game so is this game more focused on campaign play
(03:53):
or is it more focused on sort of like single engagements.
Yeah so it's either or so if you the rule book itself the actual
rules approximately 60 pages so it's
not a massive rule book by any means at all and then the
back sort of 20 or so pages after that is about
the missions themselves and and the campaign so you
can absolutely play as a standalone game or you can
(04:15):
play it as part of a campaign in terms of you
know how it works it's very much focused on the
tank commander and their crew and it's the
way the game's designed is that pre-game you can sort
of pimp my ride and increase your your crew's you
know experience levels and you use certain crew
points to buff you know your driver your commander or your
(04:37):
or your gunner and if you play in the campaign mode
then there's a there's a consequence of how you
did in in that initial game you know game one of the
campaign with regards to what crew survived what experience
they get do they get replaced vehicles that
are knocked out but not destroyed do they get recovered covered can you
repair vehicles from game to game all that sort of stuff so yeah
(04:57):
it's it's it's very much about the the individuals in
the vehicle and there's two to five of them because it's representing
a tank platoon yeah and it doesn't use order dice does it and there's some sort
of initiative system i believe that's right yeah so there's no order though
so so it's you know there are very little mechanics that you'd recognize in
bolt action other than the fact that it's 28 millimeter you can measure in inches
(05:19):
you could pre-measure so that's a major difference but But all your terrain and all your tanks.
You can just port across from your bolt action game into Axe and Panzer.
Yeah, in terms of the mechanics of it, it's all based on initiative and strategy.
The initiative phase and who goes who
goes first in the action phase depends on what number initiative marker you
(05:40):
pull out which could be entirely random so if depending on the number of vehicles
you've got and whether or not you pass a a radio check if you need to it may
be that you've got no idea what order your tanks are going to activate in compared to your opponents.
However if you do pass your radio check if you need to take
one you can allocate once you've picks randomly your initiative
(06:00):
marker numbers you can allocate the order that you
want your vehicles to activate in interesting but
it's yeah so it's not you go i go nor is it
entirely random in terms of dice out of the bag it
is random with an element of control depending upon
if you have successfully passed an initiative
check which is your radio check so it's sort of
(06:21):
semi-random but with a way to
sort of like weight it in your favor or yes interesting swinging
back to your terrain one of the questions i was thinking there is
the rangers in bolt action are sort of arbitrary for want of a better word they
don't sort of they don't scale with the models to sort of true scale how does
(06:42):
that compare with acting panzer and follow-on question is the intention that
you You play Acton Panzer on a 4x6,
or are they envisaging that people will play on bigger boards?
So it's suggested to play on a 6x4, and from what you can see in the rulebook
and also what's been discussed online, the tables are pretty heavy in terms
(07:03):
of the amount of terrain that's there.
Obviously, if we start getting into supplements where you're looking at 1942 Western Desert,
you're not going to have you know a terrain dense density in
the same way that you might be normandy you know in the bockage and so
on that's interesting because one of
the things that actually i think isn't well represented in bolt
(07:23):
action in the desert is tanks going sort of hull down
where you scoot behind a dune and you've just got
your turret over the top and so i know the
terrain rules are slightly more dense in this and
so i imagine that i'll actually
be quite a a nice little feature to add that
being hulled down is a perk compared to
(07:44):
in bolt action where it's just you've got cover you don't basically yeah
so things like that absolutely matter so depending on
where you're hit from you know what angle you're hit from will
determine what possible damage you can take it's not
just a straightforward you're hit roll on the damage table and
apply the damage it may be that you get hit and
your tracks get blown or your armor gets penetrated or you get
(08:07):
hit in the turret and it affects your optics and that
sort of stuff so there's a lot more detail going on with regards to the damage
on the vehicles which is to be expected if you've only got two to five vehicles
per side you're not having to move and roll a ton of dice in the way that we
do in bolt action because you've got fewer models and that sort of stuff so the intricacy of.
(08:27):
So what you do get instead then is a level of intricacy with regards to hitting
vehicles, damage that vehicles can take.
They're not necessarily going to blow up on the first hit. They can take a number
of hits, which may or may not cause massive damage.
And then after a certain point, if those hits have accumulated,
you'll get to a point where it's either going to get knocked out or destroyed.
Destroyed that does feel more like a sort
(08:50):
of our historical accounts of tank warfare where sort
of the bakajan normandy where the
shermans are just pounding the tigers with high explosives knowing
that they're not going to knock it out but they might knock the tracks off
and then because they're going to be overrun they then scuttle
the tank and fall back basically yeah so that
is quite a nice little perk rather than sort of
(09:12):
like the random in bolt action where you get that six four
by six four by six and then hey so
for the the older listeners aren't there who may have
played a certain major game company's science fiction game with big robots we
might call titans um it reminds me going back to when i played adaptive titanicus
(09:32):
years and years ago it reminds me a bit of that in terms of um and same with
like epic epic for 40k and so on where where when you hit those big titans or
gargants or whatever it was.
You had to see where you hit on the model, and then the damage that you could
do would vary depending on which part of the model you've hit,
and you absolutely have that principle going on here.
(09:53):
I'm sure it's the same with, I've never played it, but I'm sure it's very similar
to Water Tanker, for example, from the two Fat Lardies, in terms of the level
of detail that you get there in what is a 28mm tank skirmish game.
Yeah. So just swinging back to
ranges, yeah so range is is effectively determined by short and then long,
so there's no short medium long it's either you're within short range
(10:15):
and that will have a certain value to hit and a certain penetration
value and then if you're at long range then there'll
be maybe the same to hit modifier might might
be different depends on the weapon you're firing and then again the penetration
value may change but it from
what i've seen and you know reading online and so on i it looks
like it it works with the size of the tables
(10:37):
that you're expected to to play on for example so a 75 millimeter.
L70 gun here is 0 to 18
is short range and then 18 plus is is
long range oh so yeah actually we've got
that sort of finer detail in the weapons as well
so rather than just light medium heavy yes it sounds
like every sort of cannon has a slightly different
(10:57):
profile yeah or they'll they'll be
grouped together so you'd have effectively this is pretty much that.
You know the caliber of this gun and that gun
is the same as you would find on a similar model
you know from from british to commonwealth for example and
to us to soviets so they.
Might have the same stat line but they're named something different it's not
(11:18):
just light at medium at heavy at so there.
Is a lot more detail with regards to the the layout.
The kit out and and also the traits and.
So on that that each vehicle gets so the
traits is something actually to talk about so in much in the same
way you know it's bolt action where you've got unit special
special rules what you've got here then are vehicle traits and
(11:38):
you might have a certain trait that that might appear across
all four of those nations for example or it
might be that it's specific to a particular type of vehicle
so if it was a vehicle that the u.s used for lend lease
well then the british are going to get it as well as the u.s and the soviets and
so on or it might be specific to just a german vehicle
for example okay so it sounds like
we don't have national characteristics per se but we have we
(12:01):
have traits traits applied to tanks yeah and
and and obviously some traits are going to be specific to certain nations yeah
and there's a decent amount of vehicles for
each of them there's it's it's between 20 and 30 vehicles
per nation so it's not like it's like you've got five vehicles
which are you know a couple of armored cars a light and
medium and heavy you've got a decent spread at the moment bearing in
(12:23):
mind it's 1943 onwards for germany and
soviets and 1944 onwards for the us and um
and the brits yeah and so when
you activate your tanks do they get sort of multiple
actions where let's say i could fire three
times or i could move three times so i could or the thing that i really want
to be able to do that i can't do in bolt action yes i really want to do the
(12:44):
shoot and scoot yes where something like my archer where the it's shooting backwards
i want it parked in a hedgerow i wanted to shoot and then i wanted to scurry off.
Back towards my lines basically yeah so so we
a game then of action panzer is consists of a number of
turns and the number of turns depends on this scenario although you
(13:04):
can lengthen or shorten the game by playing event cards
for example but within each turn you have
three phases so you have your initiative phase and then.
Your action phase and then your admin phase in your action
phase there are three action phases within the
action phase and every unit
on the board or every vehicle on on the board gets to activate in
(13:25):
each of the three action phases so you draw your
initiative you draw your initiative tokens in initiative phase you
then play through the first action phase and in that action
phase you can move you can then do
a tactical action so that could be for example shooting
it could be a defensive action so you
might lay down some smoke for example you might do you shoot and scoot
(13:45):
like you said or it could be a more advanced
maneuver you might start like doughnutting and handbrake turning your
vehicle to get out of the way and scoot behind cover that sort
of stuff so pivot maneuver and the scoot for example are
two of the two of the tactical actions you can
take so there is a bit of flexibility there so it's not just i
move i shoot you move you shoot within the
(14:06):
action phase you can move you can choose to halt and not move at all and that's
an order that's a command that you give which makes your your accuracy of your
shot lot greater obviously so yeah there's there's a lot of potential for combining
commands or orders with movement or staying still with tactical actions afterwards.
(14:27):
So these tactical actions are they like a card you play or
is it something that you always have access to it's something you
always have access to so there are 10 tactical actions so you've got two for.
Moving one for defensive measures and seven for aggressive measures
and then depending on what that vehicle wants to
do in that moment you'll obviously determine what you need to do
there's an element of sort of thinking ahead because the obviously
(14:49):
not just in terms of which arc you're in relative to
the arc of the vehicle you're shooting at but the
turret being in a certain arc there's certain things yeah
you can track a vehicle if your turret's not not facing
the vehicle but you can see it so you've got a line of sight to it you
can track it but you can't shoot it you can have a
bit of a pop shot at it it's like the next
(15:09):
level up or if you're stationary lined at it and
focusing on it you can take an aim shot at it so there is
there is definitely an element of thinking ahead where do i want to be relative
to where i know the enemy are where are my supporting units
or my supporting vehicles in my tank platoon relative to
that tank when it's doing its action and so on so you
do your initiative phase that determines who's going
(15:30):
when yeah and then in each of the action phases the
three action phases the orders are
all given in the same order every action phase yes is that
right so if we've got five initiative tokens because there
are five vehicles on on the board you're going to
activate yeah say i've got three and you've got two i'm
going to activate three out of possibly first second
(15:51):
third fourth fourth or fifth you're going to do two we do that for the.
First phase and then you then you carry on from there into the second third
phase so you draw the initiative phase once per term but you have three opportunities
to undertake actions in the action so basically in my first two action phases
i know who's going to get to go first in the next one basically.
(16:13):
Which is interesting in terms of sort of thinking forward in that regard.
They did talk about, as well, adding sort of random event cards as well as sort
of an extension to the game rather than part of the core mechanics.
Yeah, so the core mechanics itself, like I said, is fairly straightforward.
The actual core core mechanics is probably only about 50-odd pages.
Then you start looking at things like the event cards. So these are drawn randomly before the game.
(16:38):
How many you get depends on the number of tanks in play at the start of the game,
and then you roll a dice and it can yeah plus or minus and
so on and you can play them at different points in in a
turn depending on what the event is and how
that interacts with that point of the turn so it
could be for example you're bringing on reinforcements it could
be that you've got a fog of war event which will obviously
(16:59):
impact upon your ability to gain line of sight over
a certain distance for example time will tell event
that's the the event that allows you to shorten or lengthen the
game so if you're doing really well and you're playing a campaign game
and you really want to hammer home your superiority obviously you
want to lengthen it if you're getting a bit of a pasting and you want
to get out alive you want to shorten it for example things like
(17:20):
bullseye will will improve your accuracy for example
reconnaissance is quite a nice one so you can play that
and it makes you your opponent reveal their event
cards to you so you know possibly what what might be coming
up and then things like improvised armor for bad
days quite a good one so if you could can play the bad day event card and that
affects your opponent's crew test result so to do certain actions in the game
(17:43):
you've got to pass crew tests depending on your veteran scene experience and
other factors will determine how easy it is so yeah so there's there's an element
of a card based game within this.
So if anyone's played A Song of Ice and Fire, for example, which is a tabletop
skirmish game, sort of rank-and-flank skirmish game, but it has non-playing characters, or sorry,
(18:05):
it has non-combat characters, so there's a tactics card and tactics deck.
And one of the features of A Song of Ice and Fire is as well as the kind of
mechanics of fighting that's going on on the tabletop, you've also got various
cards and character qualities that interact with what's going on on the table.
And there's absolutely elements of that mechanic. It's not exclusive to,
(18:27):
you know, the two games we just mentioned, but there's that mechanic going on within this game.
There's quite a lot to think about then. Yeah, yeah. It's to say the actual
core rules are, you know, pretty straightforward.
Where the sort of randomness and where the intricacy comes in,
it's your vehicle stat line plus the event cards where you can influence things as you go through.
(18:49):
The fact that you can customize your crew, so you
get a number of crew points at the start of the game to you know
you might for example want to have a really good commander but a
poor gunner and a poor driver or you
might go do you know what i've got a novice commander but i've
got a really experienced gunner so i'm not going to do very
well in terms of reactions and so on but my actual like you know bullseye dead
(19:13):
eye shooting might be really good so the the customization which is where the
the flavor is going to come from is from things like your crews and your event
cards you have asset cards as well and the asset cards are nation specific so you've
these and you draw a number at the start of the game depending upon the size
of the game and you can you can do certain things so the brits for example might
(19:35):
call in an artillery on an airstrike or they might bring up the piats if they
want to if they want to ambush,
ambush a vehicle the germans might launch a close assault with panzer meccas
or they might have tank hunters with panzerfaust that sort of thing so the the piats and etc are sort of.
Abstracted where yeah they'll sort of they'll do damage to
the tank and it's come from this bush let's say
(19:58):
but you don't actually put your infantry models down to 100
so one of the the key parts of the terrain is what they call ambush terrain
so you've got your normal sort of terrain in terms of open ground rough ground
impassable and then ambush terrain and then ambush terrain represents any any
period any space on the battlefield where either infantry or anti-tank
(20:21):
assets or even a tank could well be concealed
in order to spring an ambush so it could be
buildings could be ruins rubble rocky ground pre-prepared
strong points whatever it is i'm saying earlier about some of the tactical actions
you can take in your action phase one of them is clearing potential ambush terrain
because if you get too close to ambush terrain there's a chance that your opponent
(20:43):
might play a card and then suddenly you're staring down a pack 40 which has
been you you know, hidden away, concealed in the woods,
you've got too close and you've just been hit by some AT assets.
So the infantry, the anti-tank assets, et cetera, they're abstracted.
They appear in event outcomes through the ambush terrain on the table and how
they interact with the game is through the event cards and asset cards and that sort of stuff.
(21:08):
Yeah, it really is quite an intricate game, really. Which does make me sort
of wonder who the target audience is here, because it has the feel of sort of
a beer and pretzel type game.
Yeah. But it also feels like there's a very high threshold of entry because
there's a lot of stuff going on here.
And so it leaves me kind of wondering, who have they aimed this at?
(21:31):
Because the guys who are sort of really learning the rules and stuff from warlord
are playing sort of like your pike and shot or your bolt action already.
So we already have like quite a complex world war ii game
i suppose are we aiming at sort
of like people who really like tanks really want
more detail so it's not beer and pretzel really it's people
(21:52):
who really want to simulate historical tank engagements
yeah but i think i think it is beer and
pretzel as well because the actual the core mechanics are
you know are pretty straightforward it's a
card driven miniature game that's that's
the best way of saying it and and a lot of the you
know the cards are very straightforward and the the content
(22:12):
on the card tells you what you need to know in two or three sentences it's really
not very detailed because it's i play this at this time this is the effect and
now i apply that effect and i mentioned a song of ice and fire when i've when
i used to play that that was the the core rules in that are like 20 pages long.
Where the variety came from was the car-driven mechanic of it.
(22:34):
So I think it's quite detailed in the sense of the stat lines for all the vehicles.
But effectively what you're saying is, how experienced are my crew?
How experienced do I want to make my driver, my gunner, my commander? And.
How you know where do where do i add the sort of like the
gotcha moments well that's through the the event cards for example
(22:55):
how do i buff my uh my nation well
that's the asset cards a nation specific so for
me i can see this being a game that you would play down the club or
you play with your mate you know one evening or an afternoon or
you might get a group of you together and play it as a campaign quite easily
it's not massively detailed
and in-depth like your chain of command or battle battle group
(23:18):
for example nor is it you know
nor is it rules heavy in the way that bolt action is it's
simple mechanics with the variety and and
quick play that comes from a card driven game yeah and
actually i think the key point there that i hadn't really
fully sort of thought about is there's
a lot of stuff going on but actually as you say if those
(23:40):
a lot of that random stuff's coming from cards and
it's explicitly stated on the card exactly what's about to happen then
actually there's not a lot you have to commit to
memory so actually that does add a
lot of complexity to the game but equally doesn't add a lot
of complexity to sort of your memory of the learns
of the rule set really definitely yeah yeah you know i found yeah preparing
(24:02):
for it so we were you know lucky to be sent a so we were you know very grateful
to be sent a copy of the rules by by warlord i haven't played the game but reading
through the rules reading through the event cards and then working out it really
didn't take me very long to read through it and once i.
Understood that this is a a card driven miniature game
that's that's i'm gonna call it that from now on the actual
(24:24):
core mechanics were pretty straightforward interesting so i guess
the key question is are you going to be playing act on
panzer i think i would definitely play it if if somebody was interested at the
club or if if a friend had it and said you know what let's go and play it i
think i definitely would play it it's a great opportunity to to bring off the
shelf all those vehicles that you very rarely get to use in in bolt action unless
(24:46):
you're playing tank war for for example,
I think it could be a fun, you know, two and a half hours of an evening type
game or, you know, an afternoon at the weekend sort of thing.
I don't think it's not, I can't see it being a tournament game.
I can't see it being, you know, a competitive tournament game at all.
But it isn't written for that purpose.
From my perspective, it's not one that I'm going to seek out a game of,
(25:09):
I think, but if someone's really
keen to play it, I certainly would try it and I think it would be fun.
But for me i really like the infantry involved
action and i like maneuvering your bazooka up
trying to sneak him up to the tank to get that shot um
against all odds and so that's why for me even sort
of regardless of the game's mechanics and stuff i think i'd
(25:32):
miss the infantry too much if this was the game i was playing on
the regular but it certainly won that
if someone someone else learned all the rules and
was willing to show me how to play it i'd be more than happy
to play right well that certainly was an interesting diversion from our regular
bolt action content i imagine next week we'll be right back on the bolt action
(25:53):
but until then please like share and subscribe and let us know if you're looking
forward to acting panzer and what you're looking forward to about it tata for now tata for now.
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