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Me and my brother broke out the models for a small game, basically a refresher since we haven't played in over 9 months.

It was a really fun game with his Stug Batterie holding my T-34 Horde off of the objectives in a Free-for-all mission.
He had one Konigstiger that held down the entire left flank! It came down to the last turn and my right flank lost one to many tanks and couldn't reach the objective.

Now on to my question: During the game one of my T-34/85 came up about 4 inches in front of and 4-5 inches to the right of one of his StugG's giving me a very clear view of the flank of his tank. Now we referred to the rulebook about how to decide whether or not it was a flank shot. The way it looks to me in the rulebook your tank literally has to be alongside or parallel to the opposing tank in order for it to be a flank shot. Does the turret have to be past the front of the opposing tanks body? That front chassis? Or does my barrel just have to have a clear view of the side armour past that point?

We played it as the tank has to be practically parallel which hurt me as the attacker way more than it hurt him.

Let me know how you guys play that rule. Thanks!

The front of a tank is a 180 degree arc in the front of the tank.

This literally means you must be behind a line that is parallel to the tank's front to get side armor.

Page 98 in the RB explains it fairly well. Infantry and Gun teams draw LoS from anywhere on the base, so even just a corner outside the front arc will give you a shot at the side armour.

A vehicle, however, draws line of sight from the weapon mount, so a turreted gun draws it from the gun attaches to the turret - as per the rules on page 75, which tells you to draw a vehicle's line of sight from the weapon's mounting point on the miniature - and a hull-mounted gun draws it from where the gun meets the mount.

In your scenario, so long as the mounting point of the T-34's gun was outside the StuG's front arc, you'd have been hitting side armour; if the mounting point was inside the arc - even if, say, half the gun itself was not - then you'd have been hitting front.

I think the basis of the rule is that if you targeted the flank of a tank at 45 degrees etc then the shot would bounce off and not penetrate?

Or that at such extreme degrees the side armor is the same as the front armor.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Or that at such extreme degrees the side armor is the same as the front armor.

The same could be argued for firing from a behind a tank at an extreme angle, but there's no penalty for that. Firing at the side of a hetzer from a 180 degree arc in front of it counts as hitting front armour 7, but firing at the same side, at a similar angle from a 180 degree arc behind the tank still counts as hitting side armour 2.

In my opinion it's more to represent the possibility that shots that go wide of the aiming point, or are slightly off-target still have a chance of striking front armour instead, whereas from behind the vehicle a wide shot that hits the rear instead of the flank is just as good, but that's just me - I don't know how accurate most tank guns were back then.

KISS method is always best. Because if you try to keep adding rules because they make more sense you wind up with an advanced tank simulator and it takes 20 minutes to resolve a hit against 1 tank.

There a tons of situations where real world logic might not apply.

I don't think anybody is suggesting adding rules here.

The (quite sensible) basis for the rule is that the game (unlike real life) is turn-based.

In reality even a slow tank could rotate to keep its front armour facing a fast moving enemy and flank shots only occur by either getting in close, using multiple tanks to pincer or catching the enemy by surprise.

In the game however tanks can effectively during their turn teleport a significant portion of their effective engagement range and then fire immediately after without giving the enemy any chance to react. If a 45 degree angle was used then a medium tank with 12" (30cm) movement could in its turn move from a face-to- face position at long range (just over 16") into a close range flank shot and hit the side armour. Front armour would become almost completely irrelevant. Tanks like Panthers with strong front armour and proportionally weak side armour would be at a substantial disadvantage and fast light tanks like Cromwells and Stuarts and US tanks with special bonuses for firing on the move would similarly gain and enormous advantage..

FoW is a very abstracted game that's designed around producing credible end results but not simulating actual mechanics. Under the turn/movement regime, the 180 degree rule, even though it seems "unrealistic" is actually a better way of achieving a realistic end result in most circumstances then the alternative. You just need to remember that any tanks are not really going to sit doing nothing while an enemy in plain sight spends 10 minutes relocating itself to an idea shooting position.

Reality is not turn based.

MadMarkMagee wrote:
I think the basis of the rule is that if you targeted the flank of a tank at 45 degrees etc then the shot would bounce off and not penetrate?

I agree totally with this statement. We used to play tractors years ago with very realistic angles calculations in it. The more angle the shot has the more "effective" armor the target has. That game used to have charts that you had to reference to figure out armor values at different angles. It was very realistic but 1 turn could take forever! For the sake of the game I think they made this easier.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Stupid autocorrect. That's supposed to be TRACTICS.

Bummer. "Tractors" sounded kind of fun.