Congrats to the scenario designers on remembering that the Russians don't have hand-held AT weapons.

What a shame that the Reinforcement deck just copies the regular wording and DOES allow the Russians AT weapons.

What about the PTRS-41 (anti tank rile) was used by the russians from 1941.

The anti tank specialization dosnt just represent bazookas and panzerschrecks. it represents squads with "enhanced effectivness in attacks against vehicles" which an anti tank rifle would do.

Aussie_Digger said:

The old AT rifle would not be able to damage anything from the Panzer III on upwards. It could damage light vehicles, though.

The specialization represents generic AT capabilities, I think. Any combination of AT rifles, Molotov Cocktails, captured Panzerfausts, Stachel Charges etc.

my point was that the russians had handheld anti tank weapons

It isa bit of a moot point as to what the AT specialisation represents, bearing in mind that the original game didn't have ATGs and the current game still doesn't have low calibre ATGs. I believe that the original TOI just intended to represent bazookas and panzerschrecks without anticipating extension into other periods of the war. The Russians did have an ATR and Molotovs, but as a previous poster observed these would be ineffective at the distances represented by three hexes in the period of the scenarios. Perhaps they could use captured PFs, but this wouldn't be a regular occurrence and could be represented by awarding an AT specialisation in the setup. I understand that Russian AT capability was mainly provided by ATGs and tanks.

A short range anti-tank specialisation version would be a nice additions in general. +X to firepower but no boost in range. But maybe the EXPERT bonus versus tanks actually represent Molotovs and other similar weapons.

However, I agree with the orginal poster than the AT-specialisation is different mainly due to the range.

Grand Stone said:

Don't forget that we already have cards such as "take down the beast" giving extra firepower to certain squdas. There's also an entire tankbuster deck.

Perhaps a scenario special rule could specifically state that the Russians e.g.need to pay +2 command to the listed cost on the card to be allowed to use the AT specialization. It could of course also say that these cards have to be discraded from the deck or that they may buy a squad + AT gun instead of giving this squad the AT specialisation. While certainly a valid point has been made here, I think it's a relative detail. It's a much bigger problem that many scenarios in the FoTB expansion are clearly unbalanced.