Panzer Miniatures Rules AP Direct Fire Example

     The following is an example of direct fire of AP (armor piercing) ammunition in The Panzer Miniatures Rules. In this example we have a T-34/76 M42 (Soviet card S-14) tank firing at a range of 800 meters (16 inches) against a PzKpfw IIIN (German card G-13) using AP ammunition and impacting on the Front/Side angle armor.

     For this example, Junior Lieutenant Ustov led his platoon of T‑34/76 M42 tanks into a hull down firing position on a crest and engaged the PzKpfw IIIN tanks crossing the river. The following is a detailed example of the AP Fire game mechanics. The vehicle data card – one of 64 data cards found in the basic release of Panzer – describes the T-34/76 M42. The information on the data card is organized in lines or
groups. The first line is the nationality, card number and vehicle name. The second line on the card is the movement line which includes the movement rate and type for cross country movement followed by trail movement and road movement, next is the transport modifier for towed and leg, and finally the vehicle weight. The next line is the main gun type, ROF (rate of fire) N for normal and special ammunition  availability. The A:a6 is for special ammunition availability, the a6 means that the special is available on a roll of less than “6” on a d10.

     The T-34/76 M42 fires three types of ammunition; AP (armor piercing), HVAP (hyper-velocity armor piercing), and GP (high explosives and machineguns). Next to the type heading is a line that defines the range class of the gun; P (point blank), S (short), M (medium), L (long), E (extreme) and D (damage  modifier). For each type of ammunition the card shows a range in inches over a penetration. The GP line of the card has a box around the GP fire for P (point blank range) which shows that the vehicle has a coaxial machinegun.

     Remember Junior Lieutenant Ustov. His platoon of T-34/76 M42 tanks is shooting at a moving target at medium range. The AP HIT chart and AP HIT MODIFIERS are shown here. Engaging a PzKpfw III/N tank at medium range would mean that a roll of 50 or less on d100 would be necessary to score a hit. But,  Junior Lieutenant Ustov’s tanks have two negative modifiers. First the target is moving which shifts the modified hit chance down two rows, and the platoon has an overwatch order with the target to the front shifting the hit chance down another row to -3/M or 35% chance of a hit. Overwatch allows Ustov’s  gunners to shoot during the enemy movement or fire, picking the best moment to fire. 

     Junior Lieutenant Ustov’s platoon is hot today and the three shots are a 17, a 31 and a 22. The first shot has a hit location of 09 - the 0 in 09 read as 10 - resulting in the PzKpfw III/N being immobilized with a track hit. The crew checks morale and passes the test remaining with the vehicle. The second shot rolls hit location rolling a 27 and hits the turret face. We will examine the results of this hit in a moment. The final hit location roll is a 71 striking the hull side. When checking the location and damage both dice are rolled at the same time to reduce the die rolls in the game and speed play by convention the tens die is the location and the ones die is the damage—zero being counted as ten in both cases.  The T-34/76 M42 uses a  76.2mm L/43 gun which penetrates 8 armor at medium range. The first hit on the PzKpfw IIIN was a track hit which immobilized the tank - damage is ignored on track hits. The second hit struck the turret face which has an armor value of 10 given the angle of impact which failed to penetrate causing no damage. If the turret had been facing the shooter the armor value would have been 7 allowing the round to penetrate and the 7 damage result would have been a KO -knock out. The third hit strikes hull side a 5 and penetrates however a damage roll of 1 means no damage. The PzKpfw IIIN crew checks morale again and passes.