What exactly are tanks good for?

@the_good_captain It is only during the pre-emptive artillery strike that tanks don’t cancel hits. Per the following paragraph, the land combat is conducted normally, except for battleship bombardment.

@Arne said in 1914 Introduce Tanks Earlier in Game:

Hi, are there any objections (except for the historical ones) to introduce tanks earlier in the game than round 4?

Other than historical reasons, I don’t know why you couldn’t start buying tanks as early as you please. It would shake up some of the established strategies. Whether that’s good or bad would be up to you.

-Midnight_Reaper

I’m late to the game on this post, but since I have played many many games of AA1914 over the last couple years (and it’s my favorite AA game), I’d like to share on how my group’s thoughts have evolved about tanks.

The first few games, we barely made any, thinking they were not worth sacrificing 2 infantry units for the same cost. We lowered the IPC cost to 5, and within 2 games, tanks were on every battlefield. We figured we probably underestimated them, so we returned to the original cost.

Now, they are always on the game board for some powers, namely Germany, France and the UK. Other countries may field them based on whether or not they are clearly in the attack mode. Our games will never last less than 10 turns, usually more like 14 or 15 before we call a winner.

It’s important to remember that AA1914 is about weapons having synergies with each other, which means you need to figure out their niche for each and everyone of them, and they DO exist.

What we found out about tanks is that, once they start protecting a high percentage of your per-turn production (say 25% or higher), they give you tremendous staying power on the offensive. For the main powers, this means that 3 tanks or more will have an impact. For small powers like Italy, a single tank may make a difference if they are on the offensive.

When you play the usual rules, it takes time to bring reinforcements to the front (we use trucks as land transport equivalents so it is a bit faster) and therefore you want your offensive power to not erode as quickly, especially since the defender will have faster reinforcements. Many AA games were lost because the attacker made it to the enemy capital only to completely run out of steam, which meant a large scale retreat was needed.

While it’s true that tanks alone will lose a fight, their role is to skew the results of a offensive battle in your favor. Since their effect is guaranteed compared to rolling dice, you know you will cut your losses. This turns a relatively equal fight into an advantage, or an unlucky roll into a salvageable situation. Their effect will show over 2 or 3 turns, eating into your enemy’s kills and allowing your units to actually be there to defend when he would choose to counterattack.

Tanks alone are not worth it. But a few of them on a battlefield progressively eat away at your enemy’s army by forcing him to accept subpar kill ratios. Yes, more infantry MIGHT be good… if they were alive to defend for the counterattack. Tanks insure you will have a better attrition rate than your enemy, but the trick is you have to have a meaningful number of them compared to your IPC rate for them to make a difference. So, you either build enough of them to be worth it, or none at all.

The one caveat I would have is if you and your enemies have a tendency to stack ungodly large armies on a single region and wait for that epic clash of arms. In my experience, you should avoid this situation at all costs and force engagements when armies have more than 25 infantry divisions, otherwise it becomes a stacking game, and those are typically slow with a predictable outcome (the losing side just hopes something will happen to turn the tides, while the winning side simply keeps increasing its leverage while waiting for the inevitable). Go on the offensive, move that front, make it as fluid as you can !

All in all, if you feel you are going to be on the attack for a while, build tanks and watch your enemy lose more and more units for less and less of yours. Your staying power will be greatly enhanced and they will turn the tide of war in your favor.

@The-Big-E Historical Board Gaming on Shapeways has the best option for a Red Baron fighter plane. Fits well with OOB planes and after painting up red and decaling looks great.

When playing as the US, I usually have 2-3 transports waiting in New York Harbor for over-seas duty. I mix in 1 tank with the rest of the shipment because I find my US army gets involved in smaller battles of about 10 units (Africa, Mid-East, Eastern France etc). As I can only ship a limited number of units per turn, the tanks absorb hits every round and survives to be bolstered by the freshly arriving 2+ infantry.
For everyone else I think tanks are money poorly spent.

Anecdotal Evidence

Starlight Sniper

@Auztria:

I think that for a more fluid game we need cavalry units as well as adjusting the price of tanks. Tanks are devastating in large groups, but it’s hard for most nations to produce large groups of tanks at 6 ipc’s. Plus the early game is pretty monotonous with only masses of infantry and artillery attacking and counter-attacking. Cavalry could help spice it up a bit, maybe with 1/3 atk/def and a movement of 2 with blitz. If they cost 4 but could be boosted by artillery, they’d be a fairly viable unit but would probably fade a lot when tanks arrive.

To say that cavalry played a major role in the war or even that it had an equal level of survivability as infantry is a misstep at best, and revisionist at worst. Cavalry units were consistently BUTCHERED against machine gun-defended infantry lines, and quickly became obsolete. I actually think that the omission of cavalry from this game is one of the better choices of the designer. The early game is “monotonous” (as you’ve put it) with infantry and artillery, because the early WAR was “monotonous”; 1914-1916 was a period hallmarked by mass artillery-supported infantry attacks.

Now, I will grant that on the Eastern Front (as well as in other parts of the world, Mid-East, etc.) cavalry played a slightly greater part than on the Western Front, but I still don’t think it is worth adding an entire other unit to the game to represent this limited role.

If you ARE going to represent cavalry in the game (which I don’t recommend), you must then differentiate between entrenched infantry and mobile infantry, and make the cavalry 0 attack against entrenched. This is the only way it would make sense.

Tanks are useless in penny packets, devastating in large spearheads; just as the French found out in 1940.

One option is to build a phalanx of French tanks and then reinforce the breakthrough with British infantry before the enemy can counter-attack. Or use American infantry to shield a British tank army, as the UK can usually spend more on tanks than France.

Austria-Germany can do the same on the western front; Germany-Austria in the East.

But the main use of tanks is to convert an industrial advantage into victory by effecting a breakthrough into enemy tt, ending the stalemate. When the Allies start building a large tank army its usually the writing on the wall for the CPs.

Personally, I’d like to see tanks made available to buy a round earlier.

Has anyone read Crowns in the Gutter by Ted Racier?

He designed Paths of Glory.

Book is published by Strategy and Tactics Press.

http://shop.strategyandtacticspress.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=B002