Miniature Wargaming with Spudnick: AAR: Iron Cross. Tank Attack!

Sunday, August 21, 2016

AAR: Iron Cross. Tank Attack!

What can I say! I love tanks! Both my wife and I are fans of them. So it is no real surprise that we have to have a tank game from time to time. And for our first game of armor in a while, we decided to test out Great Escape Game's newer rule set of Iron Cross. I read about this game, but as a surprise, our good friend, Hugh had mentioned looking into it. Normally, when he mentions rule sets, they tend to be a little more complex. For World War II, he is a huge fan of Chain of Command based off it tactical abilities. I feel that Chain of Command could flow better as a multi-player campaign system. At this point, I probably have the troops to do such things! Either way, I digress!
For those who have not played Iron Cross or for that matter, heard of it, the system works of initiatives. You start a turn rolling for the highest die. The one with the highest die, chooses whether they want to take the initiative to move, fire, and etc... or not. However, the player can chose to react to the players moves if the roll and pass. Also, if a roll to react passes rolling a six, you take over the initiative, thus possibly screwing a plan. If that happens, the opposing player can react! In other words, the roll can be reversed. You, as a player, can actually pass initiative off one a the opposing player at anytime after one command action. The command chips was based off of each unit plus two for the command, and your units can have multiple actions as long as they beat the number of actions already taken. Example: if you took three actions, you have to roll a 3+ to pass and take action!
For the first time playing, Kalissa and I had a blast! It was a relatively simple system with all sorts of tactical fast play options. Some of the major pluses was that there was not range modifiers, unless you were within 12" at close range. You had two actions and could easily understand the mechanics after the first two turns. The game was about pins and kills. You could lose a tank after having too many pins, but you had the option of taking pins off of one or both actions of you turn, depending on how you do it. We found that several tanks on Kalissa's side were abandoned just based off of pins. And in some hits can cause pins to nearby units as well.
So below was our Sunday game. We playing on a 5' x 10' table. Really, I had originally set up the table mats for finishing off highlights, since both mats are a commission job. Hopefully, they won't mind a test run on their mats. I guess I could call it a board balance test run! Kalissa ran a large portion of her XXX Corps. consisting of 9 Cromwell tanks, three Sherman Fireflies, and two M-10 Achilles Tank Destroyers. I just ran five Panther and three Panzer IV H tanks. Needless to say, Kalissa lost a bit earlier in the game due to losses, but we were having too much fun testing out how the game works to care! She lost everyone. I lost three Panthers.