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Hi guys!

So I played my first game against a tank with recce (M18 Hellcat), and I now understand why there are so many complaints about the recce rule. However, this is not a complaint thread on the rule itself as we already have plenty of those (, and for good reason I think, but that's not the topic of this thread).

I play a generic British force and used a Sherman and a PIAT team in my previous game, but the PIAT team couldn't get close enough to get the M18 in range without sitting in the open, which means I got to use them once to force the M18 to recce and down before they were decimated, freeing my Sherman up to do something else. (That something else was still firing at the M18 to get rid of it, but I rolled horribly and wound up giving it some pins.) Following that round my Sherman became a babysitter for the M18, firing at it to get it to recce and down before it could take any other action. I was excited about playing with tanks for the first time, but was really disappointed and bored when I realized that my tank's only function for that particular game would be to babysit his tank.

Love it or hate it, the recce rule is a rule, and therefore it needs to be followed. (Unless you houserule it somehow, which I am hesitant to do.) So the question is - how can you effectively (or at the very least not completely ineffectively) deal with vehicles with the recce rule?


(Before someone points it out, I'm aware that Americans and Brits wouldn't fight each other during the war. Those are the armies we have, and we chose to play with our own armies rather than proxy them as Germans or another axis army.)

There's a couple ways of dealing with a recce unit. Mortars and artillery firing indirect are a good way to try as recce can't be used against indirect fire and with vehicles like the M18 that are open topped you'll do a world of hurt if the shot lands. On kind of the same note you could get an air observer who targets the recce vehicle but there's a chance it will backfire on you. You said that you played the brits which means you get the artillery observer for free and he can target the area with the recce vehicle and hope to suppress it and thus lower its effectiveness for a little while. The last thing i can think of is for you to ditch the PIAT and find points for like a 6pdr so that you can have your tank and AT gun work together with the AT gun firing first to try and force the recce move then using your tank to fire after the recce has made its move.

 General Ian wrote:
*snip*

All good suggestions, an AT gun is probably a good investment. I did have my FAO in play, but my opponent rolled a six on a mortar on the first turn, and that was the end of him.
Thanks for the suggestions!