I’ve continued to think about close assaulting tanks in the game I’ve been designing. I wasn’t really happy with the previously-discussed complexity associated with various types of close assault weapons and special procedures. During my last run, it finally hit me that I don’t need a special procedure at all.
Since this is a man-to-man game, where each figure can perform individual actions, all I need is some mechanism for moving fire, and I need to give each weapon a penetration number, just like other anti-tank weapons. For instance, an anti-tank grenade has a penetration of 5.
So a soldier runs up to the tank with half a move. He then tosses the anti-tank grenade at the enemy tank, applying the moving fire column shift. If he hits the tank, he flips a card for hit location, rolls a die to determine if he gets a penetrating hit, and apply results, just like any other anti-tank attack.
The defending tank can attempt a reaction roll to fire at the charging soldier if the soldier is unlucky or foolish enough to attack the tank where it has a machine-gun or other anti-personnel weapon. The same is true for any infantry or other vehicles who can see the close assault taking place.
The beauty of this is that no special procedures are needed, and all the basic systems apply without modification. This is significantly cleaner than either of my previous thoughts. Like all elegant schemes, I look back on it now and think, “Of course!”
I am going to run a game with the rules this Friday at HAWKs night, and I hope to engineer a scenario in which I can test these ideas.
