My mate very kindly brought me in some reaing material today and in amongst it was December's White dwarf. Flicking through I came upon an ambush write up:
Looking at the table made me think the imperial guard commander was about to get shot by an angry commissar. Mixed force of infantry and tanks on the road.
Lead unit 3 heavy weapons teams and where is the scout walker? The thing designed for point and flank work - at the back! Then to make matters worse the tanks are all on one side of the road and the infantry all on the other, which begs the question, either the player is a complete novice, or the rules mean tactics mean nothing, or in fact it was a set up game and the ambushers were meant to win. Either way playing on a 4 foot wide table with guns that could drop a shell 30 feet away seems a bit pointless. The ambushers start 6 inches away from the road. Sorry rant over, no disrespect to anyone who plays 40k it just seems odd that's all
So, no imagination in plannning that scenario then...
Why does it not it surprise me at all that GW bodged that one.
Those rules were originally actually quite good, back in the Rouge Trader era, they were meant to be used for scraps between a couple of squads per side. In the RT book the only scenario was a fistfull of Marines defending a burned out farmhouse against a couple of dozen Orks, at that level they were quite fun. Its only since the bean counters took control the rules have gone down the toilet, "ermm we need another few million, rewrite the rules so we can sell a lot of overpriced tanks willya?". But yeah I'm in complete agreement, one guy at our club does WW2 in 28mm and the sight of KV2 and Tigers on a smallish table just makes no sense, the MGs on those things can cover (lengthwise) the entire table, and if cover is tight enough they wouldnt be there until the PBI had cleared it out. But live and let live if they want to play with all those vehicles whether Farty Kay or Rapid Fire, let 'em get on with it and enjoy their Panzer Porn.
Gordon