Infantry Assaulting Tanks

[Charles]

The following debate arose in a recent game.

An infantry squad of 12 men with anti tank grenades charged a stationary 8+ armor tank. He rolled 11 4’s, 5’s, and 6’s for a total of an 11 penetration. He then made a roll to damage and rolled a 1. I said that a natural roll of 1 is always a miss as explained on page 107. He argued page 107 only refers when shooting at a tank as it’s under the shooting at vehicles section. Close quarters does not specifically say whether or not to use that rule.

Thoughts?

[Stuart Harrison]

He’s creating a distinction that doesn’t exist in the rules.

Also “Close quarters does not specifically say whether or not to use that rule.” is the wrong burden of proof.

Rolling to damage in close quarters is the same as rolling to damage vs shooting (p79, Close Quarters, Fight First Round of Close Quarters, Attackers Roll to Damage, third sentence “Roll to inflict damage in the same way as for shooting…”. Vehicles follow the same rules as for infantry, with the exception of things explicitly stated in the vehicle rules (p99, Vehicles, second para of the introduction), so he would need to find a part of the vehicle rules saying that specific rule DOESN’T apply to close quarters damage rolls vs vehicles.

[Charles]

Thanks!

[Charles]

As a follow up question to that, we have always played that when the rules call for a damage roll to be added to penetration, a 1 misses. Examples would be when +3 HE or +3 flamethrower hits a an inexperienced squad, it still misses on ones to damage. Otherwise, the rule would read you automatically kill all within the template or all hit by the flamethrower.with no additional roll needed. Even when a flamethrower hits a regular infantry squad needing 4’s, we play it misses on 1’s to damage. Are we playing this correctly?

[Stuart Harrison]

Yes. A natural one failing is a part of the roll to damage rules regardless of the penetration value of the weapon.

[Greg]

A 1 on the Damage Table doesn’t “miss”.  The crew is stunned and the vehicle is Down for the remainder of that turn.  (Per the Damage Results on Vehicles pg 226 of the main Rule book.

[Stuart Harrison]

@Greg – you are correct for the damage results chart, the discussion is about the roll to damage, the step before you get to the damage results chart.

[Paul Nettle]

After some thought, I agree the rule on page 56 triumphs.  I did originally think that the rule on page 107 only refers to heavy weapons.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by Paul Nettle.

[Greg]

“An infantry squad of 12 men with anti tank grenades charged a stationary 8+ armor tank. He rolled 11 4’s, 5’s, and 6’s for a total of an 11 penetration. He then made a roll to damage and rolled a 1.”

The second sentence threw me, as he said the roll was damage, not to penetrate.  So, 11 + 1, yes penetration failed.

[Stuart Harrison]

@Greg, you may have tripped yourself up with terminology. There is no roll to penetrate, it is a roll to damage.

Penetration (pen) is usually a weapon stat that modifies that roll to damage. In the case of close quarters that pen value us generated by scoring hits (the second sentence in your quote – he rolled 11 hits giving a pen of 11). A successful roll to damage would then lead to a roll on the damage results chart – he rolled a 1, no damage, no damage results chart.

[Greg]

Since the penetration was 11, and the armor was 8, wouldn’t there have been 2 rolls to damage?

?

[Stuart Harrison]

You’re thinking of massive damage, which is a successful ‘roll to damage’ that beats the damage value by 3 or more – the two rolls are on the damage results chart, not the roll to damage. Failing the roll to damage means no massive damage, no 2 rolls on the damage results chart.

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