For quite a long time now, there has been a somewhat muted build-up of support for the idea of adding official facing rules for heavy vehicles to TOI. It is no secret that I strongly support this movement in order to eliminated some underlying consistency issues, improve heavy vehicle differentiation and to upgrade the WW2 flavour of TOI...without adding undue complexity to the game. Some have complained that ANY facing rules, regardless their simplicity, would automatically increase game length and complexity. I'm interested in starting this topic to explore and discuss various approaches to upgrading TOI with facing rules. The discussion can include both modeling techniques and philosophical concerns. Contributions should not feel constrained to be slavishly supportive of the TOI basic game simply from brute loyalty...we all love this game. The idea is to help TOI reach the next plateau of potential without creating an unplayable monster.

So...what about facing?

Yes I also agree that adding some simple facing rules to TOI, as an option, can be done without being complicated nor feel like they don't belong. I will paste my recent suggestion for facing rules here for something to start with

Super simple facing rules.

A unit is surrounded by 6 hexes. The front 3 hexes are frontal, and the back 3 hexes are flank. At all times a vehicle must face a hex side. No corners. In the arc of the front 3 hexes a vehicle may fire without penalty. To fire outside of this arc a vehicle must either turn or rotate its turret. If the vehicle rotates its turret to fire it suffers a -1 die penalty to its concentrated fire attack roll. If the vehicle must turn to fire it suffers a -2 die penalty to its concentrated fire attack roll. When performing a fire and move action (remember turretless vehicles may not fire and move, see below) the vehicle will not suffer any additional penalties because it is assumed the various effects of aiming are already simulated in halving the firepower. When supporting a lead unit in a combined fire attack the above penalties of -1 or -2 are taken into effect if the supporting vehicle has to fire outside of its frontal arc. Subtract the penalties first, then halve to determine attack strength. Note: a turreted vehicle may choose to turn in all cases, instead of rotating its turret ,with the intent to change its facing for future attacks.

Attacks originating from outside the frontal 3 hex arc are considered hits to the flank of a vehicle. When hit in its flank the vehicle suffers a -2 armor penalty.

Additionally, may I also suggest this optional rule regarding turretless tank destroyers because I think it works rather well with the facing rules above.

Add the "Prepared Ambush trait" as a new feature reserved just for turretless TD's. In order to use this trait the vehicle must be concealed, and after the unit fires, it is revealed as per normal rules. Special scenario rules can allow concealed placement of these units during setup. This trait gives these concealed vehicles a one time modifier to the attack dice, say 1 or 2 extra die. In addition to the bonus dice, this trait also allows the concealed vehicle to use this bonus at any time. That is, as an op-fire or normal attack. No need to place an op-fire token on this vehicle as the intent is to allow freedom to choose when to fire. Facing of the concealed vehicle is chosen when revealed to fire upon enemy. This can be said more simply as such:

Prepared Ambush: As an action, a concealed TD may take a one time shot, as either an op-fire or concentrated attack, at +2 die to its vehicle attack strength. Facing is chosen when revealed.

This, of coarse, goes hand in hand with the semi-official new rule that turretless tank destroyers can't do a fire and move action. Since that was kind of taken away, prepared ambush is a good replacement that makes sense to me.

The 3 ideas here, turretless TD's can't do a fire and move action, super simple facing rules, and Prepared Ambush go so well together I personally would not separate them. Which is why I have included my ideas on them and not just facing rules here.

Lebatron,

I remember your original postings under the M10 thread. These are some interesting ideas so I have a couple of questions:

1. With regard to your facing idea whereby the hex is split in half between frontal armor and rear armor and ignoring ambush rules for now. In this version of facing, the vehicle orients on a hex side. If a turreted vehicle's full firepower is restricted to the front three hex-side arc, what FP constraints would you place upon an turretless TD? Would you still allow it full firepower thru the front three hex sides? How about the rear hexes? Or would you restrict its arc of fire to "dead ahead" only?

2. I like your ambush idea for all TDs especially the American ones, however, if they get the advantage of concealment, do you still think the 1-2 extra FP dice should also be included? I could see the extra dice as a way to model in a flank or rear shot from ambush under the basic no-facing rules , but if we include facing rules that becomes moot since it would be up to the player to maneuver into an advantageous position or choose the flank-shot ambush spot.

Question 1 was answered by this statement. "In the arc of the front 3 hexes a vehicle may fire without penalty. To fire outside of this arc a vehicle must either turn or rotate its turret." So in the case of a turreted tank the penalty to fire outside this 120 degree forward arc is -1. In the case of a turretless tank the penalty is -2. And no the turretless tank is not retricted to forward only. Anything within the 120 degree arc(front 3 hexes) can be shot at without penalty. Perhaps I poorly worded my initial wording. Please feel free to rewrite it to say what I meant in a more clear manner. BTW this 120 degree forward fire arc is identical to Conflict of Heroes.

Question 2. Yes, I think the addition of a one time shot at 1 or 2 extra dice is needed to offset the loss of the fire and move action. In addition, only home brew scenarios that include a Stug III or Jagdpanzer can give the option to conceal these tanks at start up, since no official scenarios hide any tanks. So getting to play with the Prepared Ambush trait will be kind of rare.

It was not my intent to include the American M10 tank in the turretless TD class. It has a turret and should basically be considered a regular tank. In fact General Patton said the M10 would be used like a tank and rarely used in the doctrine it was designed for. And he turned out to be right. So far only two turretless TD's are in TOI. The Stug III and Jagdpanzer. These tanks are the ones that suffer the -2 die penalty when attacking outside the 120 degree arc.

I photoshopped an image I took from my Zuntzu PC module for TOI to demonstrate this forward arc and flank arc. Everything within the gray bars is the flank arc and any shots coming from there will hit the tank at a -2 armor penalty. I don't think it's important to have two separate rear attack penalties. Like one for dead on rear and the other for the side. They basically balance out since the rear has a smaller profile than the side does. So while the side may have better armor than the rear, the side is easier to hit because it's bigger. Hence I just use -2 for all attacks originating from the flank.

Someone please tell me how to add pics on this site. This is the most unintuitive forum system on earth.

Lebatron said:

1. I think your concerns regarding turretless TD fire and move are relevent to facing, obviously. I don't subscribe to the unofficial rule preventing a fire-move action for turretless TDs. I think this idea is unduly restrictive. I support the idea that these units can fire-move or move-fire...please note the distinctions. Fire-move action fires and THEN moves upt to 1/2 MP allowing full FP dice. A move-fire allows the unit to move first at 1/2 MP but accepts the FP penalty for move and fire... -1 additional FP die. Turretless TDs would nee to turn within the hex tie fire outside of the forward 120 deg arc and this would be considered a move-fire action. Would this be an acceptable compromise?

2. I firmly believe that TDs should have some type of concealment rules as vehicle characteristics to model tactical doctrines and actual usage, regardless turret or not.

3. Now...front/side/rear: As an old groniard with a few years of WW2 gaming, I can safely say that there is nothing more satisfying than outmaneuvering an opponents frontal armour. If we use the hex side as the orienting point for frontal armour AND agree that HV side armour provides the largest profile for aiming then I feel it shouldn't unnecessarily complicate the rules if the front and rear armour hex faces were given specific HD values. This would focus the units owner to maneuver with intelligence and the opponent to devise devious new outflanking tactics. Since TOI LOS rules are quite basic and easily understood, bein the hex line to the front/rear plates is clear and still supports your point regarding side profile being the largest area. Thus:

FRONT ARMOUR: 1 hex

SIDE ARMOUR: 2 hex per side

REAR ARMOUR 1 hex

I do see your point regarding the new semi official rule about restricting turretless TD's (TTD's for short) fire and move action and its application under facing rules. I've been on the fence here. While the rule seems like a good one to add flavor and make them feel distinct under the normal rules is it a good rule to continue to apply once facing rules are added in? When I originally posted my "super simple facing rules" I debated whether to this semi official new rule from Bill Jaffe or work it in. I decided on the latter. I will now post what my alternate would have been.

Super simple facing rules. (without Bill Jaffe's new take on TD's)

A unit is surrounded by 6 hexes. The front 3 hexes are frontal, and the back 3 hexes are flank. At all times a vehicle must face a hex side. No corners. In the arc of the front 3 hexes a vehicle may fire without penalty. To fire outside of this arc a vehicle must either turn or rotate its turret. If the vehicle rotates its turret to fire it suffers a -1 die penalty to its concentrated fire attack roll to simulate lost time in trying to acquire new target. If the vehicle must turn to fire it suffers a -2 die penalty to its concentrated fire attack roll. When performing a fire and move action the vehicle will not suffer any additional penalties because it is assumed the various effects of aiming and reacquiring are already simulated in halving the firepower. When supporting a lead unit in a combined fire attack the above penalties of -1 or -2 are taken into effect if the supporting vehicle has to fire outside of its frontal arc. Subtract the penalties first, then halve to determine attack strength, as per normal rules. Note: a turreted vehicle may choose to turn in all cases, instead of rotating its turret with the intent to change its facing for future attacks.

Attacks originating from outside the frontal 3 hex arc are considered hits to the flank of a vehicle. When hit in its flank the vehicle suffers a -2 armor penalty.

Your take on fire and move and move and fire can be used as a separate house rule. Also why limit it to TTD's? I can see a tank doing the same thing under your example. Fire first for full firepower, then move half the allowed MP. So apply this alternate take on the fire and move action to both your tanks and TTD's if you like. But overall I dissagree with your idea here, and here is why. A normal concentrated attack in TOI does not represent one carefully aimed shot, nor does the fire and move action represent one not so carefully aimed shot because you moved. Rather a normal tank attack means say 3 or 4 shots in that time period. Hence, full attack dice. A move and fire action does not allow the crew to get off as many shots because some of that time is spent traveling. It does not matter at what point in time that traveling takes place. Hence, half firepower because less shots are being made. Your proposed rule allows a moving tank to be just as effective as one spending it whole turn just focused on shooting. See the problem here? Moving takes time, time away from firing. You can't have your cake and eat it too as the old saying goes. Essentially FFG got the fire and move action right and I see no need to change it. The only question is to allow this action or not for some units. And as Bill Jaffe pointed out fire and move should not be allowed for the TTD's.

Regarding your second point. Yes for TTD's the prepared ambush trait would be a smart addition. Yet I do not agree that the M10 should get this. It is more like a tank and was not used like the Stug or Jagdpanzer. Same goes for the M18. As I said, Patton did not see it as a TD and more or less in most cases it was used like a tank, but without Overrun of coarse because of its extra vulnerability to infantry in close combat. The M10 is best treated as it is right now. A tank with weak armor, but good gun.

Point 3. More detailed armor characteristics. I would say your going a little overboard on detail here. For one thing the direct rear shot would be extremely rare. And a direct head on shot does not need to be modeled so closely either. The 120 degree arc IMO is well enough to define the front. Reducing that to 40 degrees is once again going way below the resolution of TOI. That is even going below the resolution of Conflict of Heroes, because in that system the 120 degree arc is considered the front too. I think if you played with the 120 degree arc as front and everything else as flank, as one does in Conflict of heroes, you will still find plenty of tactical thought is involved.

I haven't played tide in about a month and that last game was via my Zuntzu PC module. If you're willing to playtest to explore these ideas with me I would be very open to playing some games with you using facing rules.

I'm bringing a section over from the "No Luv for Brits" string in order to maintain the focus on facing.

In "No Love for Brits" you said:

"Now you can try and split hairs, but how much could you really? Say you wanted the rear to suffer a -3 armor penalty instead of -2 because you say the rear has less armor. True, but then I can come right back at ya and say the rear has a smaller profile than the side and thus is harder to hit so give it a bonus of 1. Then are we not right back at -2 for either the side or the rear."

I certainly understand your point, but disagree with the logic. If we differentiate the front and rear armour faces by giving them their very own specific hex side, then we have already factored in the smaller profile and thus made them more difficult to hit by reason that the firing unit must be directly astern or ahead to hit them. Moreover, in most cases, firing units will need to move and fire in order to line up a stern shot (sorry for the nautical references), unless the tank is either being stalked by multiple units, the commander is a dolt or an ambush is sprung.

Although I like CoH, there is at least one TOI forum contributor with a very low opinion of the game due to the rewriting of the rules. Moreover, I doubt that FFG (or any game company for that matter) is going to so blatantly import another game's concept without at least some change to make it appear original (James F. Dunnigan...).

Lebatron said:

The idea was to apply this concept to assault gun type units only...not tanks, infantry or light vehicles. Again, I understand BJaffe's reason for the no fire and move, especially in the absence of facing rules. But since your want and ambush model for turretless TDs, the fire-move concept blends two models into one without being too restrictive. It also makes the assault gun type units more fun!

I like the idea of modeling ambush, but disgree with adding extra die for it especially with facing rules...regardless the version used. A hit on front armor is a hit on front armour...ambush does not change the main gun penetration factor unless the target is hit on weak armour (side or rear).

Lebatron said:

I'm aware of the various games that roll to hit and then for damage, but would caution against using D&D as an example (when talking to historical gamers).

A better example might be Warhammer 40K since FFG seems to be attuned with GW on several subjects. This system also uses the hit-then-damage dice rolling system. It also differentiates between front, side and rear armour faces.

I much prefer the TOI rolling system that quickly and elegantly gets to the heart of the matter...breaking things!

I brought this over from the "...Brits armor" string.

My point here is that front/side/rear armour is well accepted within the greater wargaming community. The at large GW Warhammer 40K community is very familiar with it. Miniatures gaming makes facing rules a bit ticklish at times (definitely some hair splitting there). Hexes makes it that much easier and quicker to differentiate front from side from rear.

Lebatron said:

I tried to add the FFClickOnce module to my Firefox version but was unable. Seems the module needs to be updated to work with 3.6.6. I downloaded the IE version but it runs slower than a game company coming out with a new expansion .

I'm a Firefox user too and did want ClickOnce to work on it too but it only did so in previous versions. Someone needs to update the clickonce addon to work with 3.6 and up. So for just Zuntzu alone I fired up IE to do the install of Zuntzu. After this is done however IE does not really have to be used anymore. You just click on the Zuntzu shortcut or directly on the Zuntzu module being used. In my modules case load time for any scenario will take about a minute instead of seconds like some other game modules because I'm using much higher resolution in my module. This makes my tank counters look great even close up. Anyway once the scenario is loaded it should not have a problem with speed after that because everything is then loaded into memory. My PC module is about 70MB in size. Compare this to the average one at 10-20MB in size. These ones are smaller because the res is poor. Zoom in and things begin to look ugly. Not on mine. In my book, I would rather wait a little longer for the scenario to load than to suffer ugly graphics for the next few hours of play.

Bazookajoe said:

I was going thru some old TOI stuff and came upon my printed copy of "Experimental Rules for TOI, V1", by Andras Kopcsik. This is an excellent grimoire of advanced rules for players interested in "upping" their games. It has many great ideas but three stand out based on recent discussions.

1. Uses front, side and rear armour concept oriented on either the hex side or hex angle. I prefer the hex side version for TOI (the angle version for BON).

2. Turning within the hex. This specifies MV values for turning within the hex and for reverse movement (to keep frontal armour towards the threat or due to urban environment).

3. Limited arc of fire rules for assault gun type units. I like this version as it allows the unit the flexibility of movement while placing type-restrictions due to configuration. Allows Fire&Move order and requires MV points to be used for reorienting field of fire by spinning within the hex (thus requiring a Fire&Move order).

All these rules are very simple and easily applied as advanced rules to the basic game. The Rules can be found in the FFG TOI scenario section: http://app.fantasyflightgames.com/tideofiron_scenarios.html

How do you mark the last direction of a tank (front or rear) and a turret on the board?

neu.descolado said:

At this level of resolution, I would be strongly against introducing turret facing.

I agree with KlausFritsch the scale of the game doesn't reflect the level of turret facing.

For anyone interested, here's my Haus Rule on turretless vehicles (StuG III for example)

No Turret (NT) Vehicles:
Re-roll any 1 defensive die. Minus 3 movement points on Fire and Move action.

Brummbar: reroling one defensive die is for all practical purposes equal to +1 in armor. But yes, a penalty for fire & movement and a bonus on protection due to its decreased hight sounds resonable for a non-turreted tank.

An other tought: what bonus could be given to a fire & movement action for other vehicles designed for that purpose? Full-firepower with a fire& movement might be to steep. I was more thinging of somewhere between half and full firepower, but how can it be written as a simple rule with no loophole?

Grand Stone said:

Not quite.

+1 Armor gives the potential to stop more hits (ie. going from say 4 dice to 5 dice could potentially stop 5 hits) whereas a re-roll could at best only ever stop 4 hits.

While it may look like a minor difference, it adds to the playability and provides some variance.

Brummbar: yes its a minor difference, but the probability for the difference having any effect is very very small. The probability for rolling all 5 dices at or above 5 is 1/ 243, and its only in this case where there is any difference at all. +1 in armor is so much simpler, and in my opinon +1 in armor is a better choice.

But my point is that it isn't better armour...it's just harder to hit (turretless)...thus the re-roll.

I don't think it complicates things but rather enhances and makes the game better (there isn't a lot of wiggle room with the system so every little bit counts).

Brummbar: I agree that renaming a +1dice armor bonus to a low-hight bonus is of +1 dice feels nice and thus might be benefitial.

The only problem is that the turret tanks do not rotate! But the "facing" idea is very interesting.
Can use the fatigue token ("edge" of lightning) pointing to direction the front tank.

I've made the card for the StuG III available on my website (scroll down to the ToI cards) for those who are interested.

Cheers!

Brummbar said:

Nice card, Please keep making them, so I do not have to make my own.

I like the Schürzen rule. Could be used to introduce a bit of difference between the Panzer IV variants.

As a side note, I think the the silhouette on the back is actually a StuG iV...

By the way, I have created cards for Specializations and Fortifications. They are not as pretty as your cards, but helpful. Do you want them for your website?

Thanks, glad you like them.

Like most, I wasn't happy that the StuG and the PzIV were in essence the same when the Normandy expansion was released so decided to do something about it. I think there is just enough variance here now to reflect the differences.

As for your Specilizations and Fortification cards, I would be interested in seeing them for sure! Please email me with them.

(ps - so what makes you think the silhouette is a StuG IV?)

Brummbar said:

What was your e-mail again?

Do you want Word files, PDFs or both?

The StuG III was based on the Pz III and had six small wheels per side. The StuG IV was based on the Pz IV and had eight small wheels per side.