Ep.43 Rivet Counters - Long Ranged Penetration | Tabletop Tommies Bolt Action Podcast

Welcome to Tabletop Tommies. I'm Jonny. And I'm Phil. And in today's episode, we're going to go through some rules. Some potentially misplayed rules, or some rules that you might never have played yet, so that you know what they are when they come up. Before we do that, I just want to add a clarifier on the Armies of Slovakia episode.

One of the things we missed in that episode is if you take the Slovak Generic Reinforced Platoon, so not a generic reinforced platoon of the Armies of Slovakia, but the specific selector the slovak generic reinforced platoon we missed an option in there so in the tank slot you can actually take a panzer 2f a panzer 3n or a marder 3h as your tank option so nice little bit of extra variety there for you i don't think it hugely changes our summary of the strength of slovakia but it

is something we missed so we thought we'd just throw it in now as a bit bit of a clarifier an additional announcement is that the pack and the tickets are now live for the world open war team england qualifiers so if you are english by the criteria laid out in the pack and you are interested in playing for team england at the world open war you can join the facebook event page for more information and even if you're not planning to join us for world up more itself

but you do just want to see how a very competitive tournament runs you're more than welcome to come Come along and test your mettle against the players who are looking to get into the team. All the information on the qualifier, such as the restrictions and the selection criteria, are in the pack. So get yourself over to the Facebook page if you're interested.

So, Johnny, what is today's episode all about? Today's episode is all about penetration, inspired primarily by the new Italian rules from Case Blue.

Loose so these have caused quite a few questions in the community because not only are they quite a good set of rules if you're facing off against the traditional stewart spam and competitive tournaments but they also give the italians a really nice boost and so i think we're going to see these rules coming up very frequently now especially at tournaments and so i think the best place to start is maybe if you would just read the rule for us phil

so what is the rule that we're talking about specifically so this is from case blue it's the new italian rules which this particular rule also applies to hungary and romania and it's the improvised at rule so if i read the italian version and substitute italian for hungarian or romanian as appropriate so the italian army suffered from a chronic deficiency of anti-tank equipment what at weapons weapons they did possess often struggled against Soviet tanks such as the T-34 and KV-1.

As a result, Italian soldiers often had to improvise any way they could to knock out Soviet armour. When rolling to penetrate enemy vehicles using AT grenades or weapons with less than plus three penetration, the player may elect to re-roll the result.

Thank you very much sir so the first question that i've seen the community asking is does it work for small arms like rifles no is my immediate gut response because they don't have a penetration value it's not that their value is zero they just don't have a penetration value because they're not classed as a heavy weapon exactly that's.

My reading of it as well if you look at the the weapons chart on page 225 of the bolt action rule book rather than saying pen zero they just have a dash in that slot because as you say they don't have a pen value so it's not like their pen pen value is less than three they don't have one and so that's also so rules is written i'd say it doesn't apply to them but also i know alex the author replied to one of these questions on the facebook bolt action page saying that it was

also the intention it doesn't apply to small arms i think his plan he has passed it back to warlord for future faq because it is a question that's coming up quite a bit but when we'll see that anybody's guess i guess so presumably people were maybe wanting this to apply to small arms fire for instances when they're firing small arms at soft skin vehicles and they need to roll that six to damage they don't get that six by reading the improvised at rule in a certain way and

suggesting claiming arguing that small arms do have a penetration value of zero that therefore allows that reroll against soft skin vehicles is that right exactly yeah that's exactly where the the thinking was okay but i think for clarity small Small arms never get that perk, I don't think. And so that hopefully nicely clears that up.

The next question, though, that arises from this exact same rule. Which would be interesting to get your thoughts on, is your heavy autocannon. Now, that has an anti-tank shell of plus three penetration. So that anti-tank shell doesn't. However, at long range, there is an argument or a question people have asked. Do you get to re-roll at long range because of the additional minus one, Okay, so the wording is then that weapons with less than a plus three penetration may re-roll the result.

Obviously, with a penetration of plus three as the base, if you like, or the standard for a heavy autocannon, on that reading, you wouldn't re-roll because it's got a plus three penetration. The wording is with less than plus three. Exactly, yeah. But then the counter-argument is, at long range, it's now a weapon of only plus two penetration.

Penetration and so it now gets to reroll so if you're if your steward backs up an inch suddenly the auto can get better at penetration got it okay so i guess this is going to come down to when you're adding the various modifiers to the penetration or the damage chart when you're running for penetration it's whether or not you lower the penetration value or you lower the dice result due to the modifiers yeah that's exactly my thought as well is it are these modifiers to the

dice roll or the penetration value of the weapon okay now page 106 of the rule book has some information on that so the bottom right paragraph so this is the damage versus armored targets section okay page 106 yeah so because armored targets have a damage value of seven plus or greater it is.

Impossible for them to be damaged by small arms fire hits from small arms fire are ignored they cannot damage the vehicle and hits do not pin note that open top time of targets are an exception to this general rule as described on page 118 so this is because small arms fire doesn't have a penetration value to get you up to a result of seven plus yeah just universally small arms can't hurt armored targets basically is what that says yeah okay next next paragraph when shooting

against armoured vehicles with a heavy weapon and a heavy weapon is defined as something with a penetration value earlier on in the rule book the following penetration modifiers apply. In addition to the weapon's own modifier as shown on the weapons charts see page 62.

Remember these additional modifiers do not apply to small arms fire or to fire against soft skin vehicles but only to shots from heavy weapons against arm and targets and then remember also that unmodified role of one always fails to damage regardless of modifiers.

So the three modifiers that are referenced here then is hitting a vehicle side or top armor gives a plus one additional additional penetration modifier hitting a vehicle's rear armor gives a plus two additional penetration modifier and firing at long range gives a minus one additional penetration modifier yeah and so my reading from that is these modifiers aren't to the actual weapon and the weapons penetration value is a modifier to your dice roll so you roll

your dice and let's say you get a three you then add on the weapons penetration value of three to take you to six you might be be shooting the rear armor so you had another two on to take you to eight and then let's say you're at long range you take that minus one off that dice roll and so that takes you back to seven because the long range is in the table with the side and rear armor i read the long range not as a modifier to the weapon but to the modifier to the

dice roll to the result of the dice roll okay what do you think so what does it say in the actual shooting section of the rule book with with regards to rolling to hit, rolling to damage, and so on. What do you mean? Well, so if we take it back, so obviously the firing at armoured vehicle section of the rulebook is a special additional part that follows on from the general rules with regards to shooting at units and damaging units.

So if we look at the original section in the rulebook on shooting, if it says there roller d6 add the following modifiers that is different to roller d6, with these modifiers already taken into account with regards to your penetration value and then see what the result is does that make sense so page 56 is where you've got roll to damage roll to damage yeah.

No it's rolled to penetrate isn't it it's rolled i mean the bit that i think the bit you're looking for is actually in the 106 paragraph where it says the following penetration modifiers apply in addition to the weapon zone modifier okay so the let's go back to the heavy water cannons and heavy water cannons penetration modifier is plus three i'm then firing a long range to bring it down to plus two am i then am i doing it's bod mass for want of a better phrase in the sense of am i doing

all of the modifiers independently of the dice roll then i roll a dice and whatever the previous result of all my modifiers was gets added on or am i rolling a dice then adding the penetration value of the weapon then taking away or adding further modifiers such as long range side armor rear armor well i think the weapon always has that penetration value is my reading because it says when shoot because so to jump back to that 106 paragraph yeah when shooting against

armored vehicles with a heavy weapon the following penetration modifiers apply in addition to the weapon's own modifier as shown on the weapons chart and so i think the weapons pen value is a modifier you're adding and so that long range isn't modifying the original pen value i think it's just an additional modifier and so you're going up because the pen value down because of the long range, up because of the rear armour, etc. Okay, yeah, so that in addition then is actually a key clause there.

So going back to our heavy autocannon, so what you're saying then is that a heavy autocannon would not be able to re-roll using the Italian improvised AT rule because it fails at the first hurdle because its penetration value is not less than plus three. Yes, exactly. And I also think that improvised AT rule,

the weapon always has a plus three penetration value. So I think, yeah, going back to the improvised AT rule, I think that clause of weapons with less than plus three penetration, that autocannon, no matter how you shoot it. Always has that plus three penetration value with an anti-tank shell in it. Yeah, so it fails then at the first hurdle in the sense of, first clause, does it have a penetration value of less than three? No, right, stop reading.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's, I think the only place where there's a little bit of uncertainty added is underneath the table of modifiers where it says vehicle side armor, for example. It says when shooting the side armor, et cetera, the weapons penetration value is increased by plus one. And so they've said that these things are modifiers to the role. And then in a bit of clarification text, it says that it's actually modifying the weapons penetration value.

Yeah as opposed to saying the weapons penetration value is always x however you then add various other modifiers up or down to the dice roll exactly yeah so so starting at one or six the bit that we read yeah that bit there implies that these modifiers are just modifiers to the rule yeah but then underneath that it's talking about the actual weapons penetration value yeah that's what i was getting at with my whole bod mask thing but not explaining it very well

which is do you do Do all of the modifications and then you do the dice roll or do you effectively stop, you drop things out as you work down the list of clauses? Yeah. I think, so the way I think I would rule this is that the heavy auto kind of never gets to use the improvised AT rule because it is a weapon with plus three penetration. And additionally, the modifiers are modifiers to your roll rather than modifiers to the actual weapon.

That's the way that i think i would rule it i mean what about you i think based on what we've read and said putting me on the spot then yes i'm now thinking back to the question we had many many episodes ago about hmgs yeah and whether or not hmgs can pin at long range and i now think that they can yeah so i think we said in that episode they can't yeah this whole question when it came up reminded me of that and it's one of the reasons i wanted to do this episode because i actually

think we were incorrect if that is what we said at the time i think i think i think i was quite clear that was what i said yeah yeah in pre in pre-case blue days i will add yeah and i think we might have been wrong and i think that actually a heavy machine gun at long range can still pin and can still pen.

If it can get through the armor and so for example let's say you've got a the rear armor on a m24 chaffee light tank so armor eight on the front armor six on the back you're firing the hmg at long range so it's strength one yeah or penetration value one the rear armor of six i would need a five but i'm at long range and therefore i need a six to glance the rear armor whereas i think we we argued previously that you've reduced the penetration value to

zero of the weapon and so it couldn't do damage therefore you can't pen yeah but i actually now think it can do damage at long range because it still is a heavy weapon it still has a penetration value even if we do the reading of the rule where the minus one takes it the actual weapons value to zero it still has a penetration value admittedly that value is zero but it still has a value and so i actually think that at long range heavy machine guns can still damage and therefore do still pin but

what are your thoughts phil do you think that the hmg do you now think the hmg can do damage at.

Long range or are you still of the mindset that it can't i think on the same logic with regards to heavy auto cannons and improvised at then it can what i'm also thinking is this would be something that it'd be really good to clarify in version three yeah i think if we ever see another faq i think that basically tidying up one of those rules tidies up the other yeah because if we tidy up the improvised at to say that weapon is always penetration three regardless of range then that

also tells us that the hmg is always penetration one regardless of range equally vice versa if they do say that the heavy auto cannon can do this then it mean the auto cannon does drop down down to strength two at long range then it means the hmg drops to zero i think that probably still needs clarity as to whether and penetration zero weapon can do damage i would argue it can either way and so if if you're arguing the other way i'd say we definitely do need that faq don't we

an interesting one though yeah i mean and i guess it does have you know for some people maybe you're listening why does this matter.

But i think it is relevant in the sense of we are because of the new case blue rules and the italians we are starting to see more and more italians appearing at higher level competitive events because this does make them very good with regards to auto cannons and as we start to see well not start to see as we do see auto cannons appearing at in those competitive events because generally speaking you're facing armor 8 vehicles

so if you've got a light 8 a light auto cannon you know at the very least that you can stick a pin on it and glance it from the front and penetrate it from the side if we start to see more and more more Italians being taken, there's going to be more instances where somebody might be using a heavy autocannon with this Italian special rule, having this very conversation in the middle of a game at an event.

Yeah, I think it's certainly want to clarify with a TO, either if you're planning to bring your Italians or if you are facing them before the game starts, just clarify this rule with a TO because it could, there could be a moment in the game where the heavy auto cannon goes off at long range and suddenly you have to make that decision when it actually matters.

It's always better to have these decisions before mars and also i mean heavy machine guns are quite rare generally but if you are running against americans especially thematic americans a lot of the vehicles come with a heavy machine gun as standard yeah and so like your m3 half track which is a very thematic transport choice that's coming with hmg as standard we really do need to know how how this affects it and so i think check with your to but the way i am currently leaning is that.

Heavy autocannons don't get to use the improvised at rule at any range and heavy machine guns can do damage even at long range can pin and pin pin naturally yeah the pinning was it was the thing we were discussing in the episode way way back yeah yeah well i think i now think they can do both damage hand pins as in hmg shooting the rear plus one plus two it can get out it can get over the line okay yeah yeah so i think if i pull up my m3 half track pulls up behind a

stewart with its vulnerable bum yeah armor five on the back i'm at long range so minus one for long range but plus three for the rear arm of the stewart it's still plus two net overall it's plus two two net overall which means i only need five a natural five on the dice to do superficial damage and a six to do a penetrate and hit that's my thinking natural six surely no because it's it's rear armor is five isn't it because it's you get an additional plus one on the back of a stewart

yeah yeah and so it's minus three but my weapon has been dropped to zero effectively and so a five does glance six to the pen that's for thinking yeah yeah so that's my summary did you have a summary you wanted to throw in?

No no no no no unless you want me to have a summary and i can put one together just if basically just if you disagreed would be the summary if you know i think if you disagreed with that summary then you could give your summary yeah that like oh no actually i still don't think they can pin and do damage at long range in which case we then have a an ongoing going thing i think in the absence of very very clear rules wording and and almost and i've said this before

almost like sequential stages mapped out based on what we've read and and discussed that that makes sense to me the pen value is always whatever the pen value is then you affect affect the result with the modifiers rather than reducing the pen value or increasing the pen value yeah but and it's just the only thing that adds a little bit uncertainty for me is on 107 where you've got both versions basically written quite clearly where you've got one version that says you're

modifying the role and one version that says you're modifying the weapon.

And it's one of of those we we don't see it all the time but we do see it where the the fluff that precedes or follows a specific sort of you know rule bit can often sometimes give a different spin on on what the rule has said yeah and that actually i'm going to take that and run with it and i'm going to say that those bold subheadings of vehicle side on my vehicle top armor those clarifying statements i'm just going to read them as sort of fluff for

one of the better word yeah they're just explaining the rule and they're not the actual rule itself and therefore we should always defer back to the original rule rather than the explanation statements that's what i'm going to say going forward so join us in 50 episodes time when we change our minds and go back to the original reading of the rule that we had brilliant hopefully by then in 50 episodes time we'll have a new version and it will it'll be clearer yes yes please he says

in february 2024 yep Yep, get that on the record. If there are any other rules, questions you'd like us to look at and see and hear our thoughts on them, we might not get an answer for you, but we'll certainly hash through it. Do let us know. Send them in. Please continue to like, share and subscribe. And as Johnny has said, drop us a message. Any rules that you want us to discuss, clearly or unclearly, depending on your view on this episode.

We're very happy to pick that up. And indeed, if there's anything else you want us to discuss on the pod, ta ta for now ta ta for now.