@General:
I would like to disagree with all of you.
I have no problem with the three 6’s immediately destroying a tank. There are easy ways to protect a tank from getting into a vulnerable position to begin with.
The game has also been well researched. I don’t think the designers are way off on this. And… if you roll 18 dice, you have just a 16% chance of rolling three 6’s. So, you do the math when you are dealing with fewer dice.
And I’m sure most of you are capable of preventing a flamethrowing unit from getting that close to a tank anway.
Okay, in friendly games people are not going to abuse this piece. However it’s a whole other story in tournament mode.
(1) The first red flag is that all of the GenCon winning tournament armies had this unit. For 100pt constructed, the top 3-4 armies had this unit. The most broken units have a tendency to show up in these situations.
(2) It’s not about protecting a tank from being flamed, it’s about winning the objective and then it’s about points. The Croc circles around the objective until you have to come after it on turn 7. You have to bring in your most expensive tank the Croc has 7/6 armor. Then I pin your tank with my Croc, Shermans, and M5 Stuart. The Croc autokill your beast, I maybe loose a Sherman or M5. I win on points.
(3) Don’t assume this game has been well researched. They are putting the game out so fast and they are so far ahead that the feedback from the community will not be incorporated right away. Also, my impression is that avalon hill doesn’t have as much experiece in the collectible miniatures as the boardgames. Finally, it appears that they do not beta test the new sets so they only have internal experience and feedback with the peices.
(4) I’m not sure how you got your numbers. We did the math and you are WAY OFF! With 13 dice it is a 37% chance of auto-killing any vehicle.
Your last statement, in the quote, just shows me that you are considering the basic mechanics of the standard scenario. To win you need to be on the objective, 2 movement is plenty movement to hide from you until round 7.