March 12 LA RC Tank Battle Day

[BcuriousR]

Deleted original post.

[Rubicon99]

FRAG always battles Axis and Allies. Dice are used by the defenders to establish what bridges could be blocked, where mines are set, etc. Then, it's game on!

LA is very different and sees A LOT of new players come and go. This means skill levels and quality of tanks vary greatly so rules have to be kept simple.

The small core group of long time player do their best to ensure fast, aggressive and interesting battles as these are what the new younger players seem to like. Since new players are the future of RC tanks LA understands that they must be catered too.

Couple this with the fast growing numbers of “Cold War” and modern tanks being used and it makes WW2 German vs US battle themes dated. Younger players tend to like more modern types of themes. Simply look at the photos throughout this entire thread will clearly show the large number of modern tanks taking the field.

Now San Diego tank club (619 Tank Battalion) is quite different. SD still keeps with simple rules but does do more themed battles. Usually more modern themes like Arab vs IDF, Warsaw Pack vs NATO or simply green vs tan tanks. Player experience is slightly higher and the more experienced LA club members tend to make the trip down for SD battles.

[BcuriousR]

I was just pointing out that others play differently. Our "dated" games are pretty fun. We have no qualms with modern armor, "young people", or others who play by different rules. Sorry to jump into this thread, I just thought the ideas of how gaming could be were open to discussion. Sorry.

[DavidN]

I think we play probably 8-10 battles on each event. Most of us probably bring more than 1 tank. If we can have 1 WWII battle and 1 modern era battle in between of our battles, I don't think it is too much to ask. It is more fun for me to see all the German tanks line up at the German building at one end. The US or Russian tanks are at another building (Barbie building, lol) from the other end. And when the battle is over, we can have a nice victorious picture of the winning tanks roaming in front of the opponent's building :-)

Another idea that I have is each player gives himself a skill level between 1-5. 1 is new and 5 is highly skilled. Then we can still divide the team by nations. For an example: One team of 3 players with skill level 5 and play with the other team of 5 players with the skill level 3. Total by skill levels will still be at 15 for each team. It doesn't have to be the same amount of players on each side all the times. If the skilled players or buddies want to play together, this could be good for them. And again, it will be just 1 battle like this out of the 8-10 battles we play.

It just plain weird seeing a panther shooting a panzer III, lol.

My 2 cents :-)

[Rubicon99]

I was just pointing out that others play differently. Our "dated" games are pretty fun. We have no qualms with modern armor, "young people", or others who play by different rules. Sorry to jump into this thread, I just thought the ideas of how gaming could be were open to discussion. Sorry.

It is open. I was just pointing out the why of LA battles. Don’t get me wrong I like a good period battle day with a solid set of rules and that’s why I drive 200 miles round trip down to San Diego to partake in their battles.

[quitcherbitchen]

We need flags. I get confused on the mixed bag battles on who is on my side.

[Rubicon99]

We need flags. I get confused on the mixed bag battles on who is on my side.

Not having “flags” can be problematic at times regardless of in LA, SD or PHX. But the more one plays the easier it becomes to recognize who is and who is not on your team. I always take a hard look who is on my team before a battle starts and then shoot every tank I do not recognize. Yes sometimes their is a bit of mistaken identity and a team mate gets hit. I have been on both ends of that happening many times.

The general rule of thumb myself and a few others use is...When in doubt IF they are pointing their barrel at you they are most likely not on your team.

[Rubicon99]

I think we play probably 8-10 battles on each event. Most of us probably bring more than 1 tank. If we can have 1 WWII battle and 1 modern era battle in between of our battles, I don't think it is too much to ask. It is more fun for me to see all the German tanks line up at the German building at one end. The US or Russian tanks are at another building (Barbie building, lol) from the other end. And when the battle is over, we can have a nice victorious picture of the winning tanks roaming in front of the opponent's building :-)

Another idea that I have is each player gives himself a skill level between 1-5. 1 is new and 5 is highly skilled. Then we can still divide the team by nations. For an example: One team of 3 players with skill level 5 and play with the other team of 5 players with the skill level 3. Total by skill levels will still be at 15 for each team. It doesn't have to be the same amount of players on each side all the times. If the skilled players or buddies want to play together, this could be good for them. And again, it will be just 1 battle like this out of the 8-10 battles we play.

It just plain weird seeing a panther shooting a panzer III, lol.

My 2 cents :-)

Jeff is pretty open to doing a few “like tank” battles. You just have to step up and take charge of setting it up.

Handicapping sides is a double edge sword. There is a reason it is not done often. Just two experienced player can easily defeat four or five new or relatively new player as long as everyone has their tanks set to the proper Tamiya protocols which is more often NOT the case with newer players.

I for welcome handicapping if it was Tamiya on Tamiya or HL on HL systems. But mixing Tamiya, HL and Clark in a handicapped battle does not make it balanced. Just to many variables.

[DavidN]

As I stated before, it is nice to mix or match tanks up for just 1 battle out of the 8-10 we play. If that battle is a handicapped battle, let it be...since it's still fun and it motivates the new people. Then gradually we can approach them again with the rule.

I play basketball. It is not easy to fill up 15 players to play together at our set day and time. So when we have new player joining us, we kinda let it easy on him a little bit.

[RichJohnson]

Ok my turn here I guess.
Ive been going to LA tank for about 8 years now. I got San Diego tank started up before I was going up to LA with just 3 people. Our first meets were in a lot at Miramar College, which is now a nature preserve.....

Any way, the rules for both clubs have been play what you bring. Restrictive rules for realistic force on force battles hinder individuals by number of tanks, money for tanks, what runs this month, or what they want to run vs what they have to run.

When I started, there were very few Allied tanks, fewer yet American tanks. German tanks were everywhere. And a few Russian ones. All WWII, modern stuff was only made by Tamiya and very few could afford that.
There also used to me many more kids battling with old HL tanks and mako boards and some just had HL tanks, so we had to allow a HL only battle every two tamiya battles or so for the kids.

Back then it was very difficult to get one side stacked up with Allied tanks, I usually had more shermans on my table than everyone else combined. With 4 options, HL or tamiya, pershing or Sherman, that was it. Though we did allow plenty of M41s to battle as WWII allied as there were alot of them, since it was the first US tank HL produced and cheaper than the pershing when it was released. The Sherman didnt come out till around 2016 I think.

It was still hard to stack an all allied team, so we had to augment with panzers. All those darn German tanks that modelers seem to be so in love with in every scale of modeling for some reason just overweight a field to one side.

It has not been until recent years that we have had an abundance of US armor showing up.

Now take this into account, the Allies vastly out numbered the Germans so contrary to what we had been having show up for battles we should have lots of medium shermans and a pershing or two battle a hand full of heavy panzers. But that was never the case.

ALso take into account what people want to run. I for example have wanted to run the most recent tank I have completed or nearly so, to break it in and get it going. Usually thats a sherman but not always. Lately its my Merkava. I litterally want to drive it till it breaks so I can fix it better. This last battle I also still wanted to run my M5 Stewart as well and I swapped off between them. I also tend to always bring my M32 which is still an underway project but it works, just incase someone flips a tank over and we can do a scale tank recovery video for fun.

Now, trying to pair people off on sides into axis and allies gets even harder when you take into account other variables. I am always going to be in an allied tank, though I suppose if needed I could run my Merkava on the axis side, oh the irony there...... Any way, if you break out tankers by their rating, that really is just how good they are combined with how good they are crewing a specific tank. I have never really been very good with my M60. I tend to drive it a little light footed in battle. So far the two events I have used my M5 Stewart in have left me questioning where my gunnery skills are. I have done a fair amount of zeroing with the tank to make sure it shoots straight and does not shotgun blast other tanks yet I seem to have lots of trouble on the battlefield hitting targets. I have not figured out why yet. So to assume that I may be a deadly tanker and pair me up while I am using that tank would be a mistake.
As far as my Merkava, I am still getting the hang of using it with its new control boards' driving style and its a big damn tank, so Im not really playing it as tactfully as I could, I am just going out there and trying not to hit things while still shooting at other tanks. Just having fun with it still.
As others have probably figured out, they will likely have some tanks that hit their target every time they fire, and other tanks that they just seem to have to struggle with to score hits on other tanks in battle.
At this last battle day I had two shermans in my Jeep I did not bring out because I didnt want to. Had I brought either one, they are both point and kill tanks. Very accurate and I am well trained to crew them. But I didnt want to.

My overall point for LA Tank is people dont want to loose over and over usually...... People also usually want a fair fight, although for a couple of us even numbers is not what we call a fair fight but that aside, the LA Tank staff generally knows the regulars pretty well and tries to split the teams up based on skill level combined with numbers of tanks by weight class rating. I can think of one person specifically that no matter what side he is asked to battle on he will only walk over and battle on the side he thinks will win. He really hates loosing LOL.

I will say I have thoroughly enjoyed the LA Tank events where I could fight on an all US armor side and have nothing but shermans and pershings next to me shooting at panzers. But this has rarely been able to happen.
Even when it did, other tankers would want to swap their german tanks for American tanks half way through the day. One of my old Army buddies was like that. He used his Sherman about 25 percent of the time that was it.

Also, what do you do then with modern tanks? Now that is getting to be about half the tanks as gamers and younger adults prefer more recent history or modern stuff to old slow WWII tanks.
So your still going to be left with advantages for them and where to put them.

In San Diego we have a larger field and more experienced RC folk and so while we still use the rule run what you brought, we do often tailor battles to create different scenarios. A few of our folk only have modern tanks and some others only have WWII tanks.
Still we host events such as our all Modern Tank battle every July, for fast moving battle play with all modern equipment head to head. Then there is our "October War" Arab - Israeli themed battle every October to cater just to those people that have built Israeli Shermans. We gathered quite a few every year for that event in Southern California, and now there are Centurians out there as well as plenty of tan panzers and tan Russian armor. We have a really good time with that event.
But still allow any tank to battle even if it does not fit the theme. We just exclude those tanks from group themed photo ops, thats all.
We do timed battles with points, we do tan vs green, and we do axis vs allies too if we can. I think that will come to be our June battle theme.

So none of our battle plans nor our actual battle rules have been written in stone. Our few rules that we do have, have evolved over time with the changing technology available to us.
The LA Tank club host is quite open to suggestions and letting the group do what they want to continuously change things up to make things interesting.
So trying to divide teams up into themes is surely possible and easy to do if you have enough of each side, however your still going to have to mix in the modern stuff here and there for fairness and hope that you have balanced the sides as even as you can or one side is going to get slaughtered outright. I quickly recall a battle several months ago that was literally 2 on 6, and the 2 won so be careful what you set up.

[DavidN]

Doesn't it look a little nicer when we start a battle like these ....









We spent hours working on our tanks to make them look similar to the tanks from our past history. And when we put them into battle to play, we sided them up next to the enemy tanks to fight together on the same side. It just feels weird. Sometimes, I didn't feel like taking pictures of our battles.

[Rubicon99]

Doesn't it look a little nicer when we start a battle like these ....









We spent hours working on our tanks to make them look similar to the tanks from our past history. And when we put them into battle to play, we sided them up next to the enemy tanks to fight together on the same side. It just feels weird. Sometimes, I didn't feel like taking pictures of our battles.

No one is saying we do not want similar tanks on the same sides. But the reality of RC tanks being such a small nice hobby dictates the need to be flexible and open minded otherwise there would be no battles.

It’s hard enough to get 4-5 people to show up on a regular basis let along the dozen or more needed to truly have themed battles with similar tanks on each side.

There are three regularly active clubs in the south west, LA, SD and PHX. All three have the same issues and challenges and do their best to just have enough minimum attendance to even have a battle let alone worrying about having enough for similar tanks on each side.

The key to making battle days what you ultimately want is to build the number of regular attendees and bring new players into the hobby. This means a lot of extra work like having loaner tanks for spectators and new people to drive and being active on multiple media and social outlets promoting the clubs and battles.Trust me I have been doing it for years it becomes tiring fast when the progress is very slow to show lasting results.

[DavidN]

As I stated before, I am only asking for 1 battle (with this set up) out of 10 battles we play all day. Is that too much to ask?

[Rubicon99]

As I stated before, I am only asking for 1 battle (with this set up) out of 10 battles we play all day. Is that too much to ask?

Take the lead and set it up. That is the best way to give a “like tank” battle a go. As has been said Jeff is very open to listening and letting members take charge of many battling aspects.

[DavidN]

I will have a talk with Jeff on this issue.

[RichJohnson]

It will be fun to have a actual axis and allies but still plan to have the modern tanks in there somewhere. Just remember that you may have to wait to do it until you have enough of each side to set it up. You dont want to out number one side to the other by more than one or two tanks at the most. Otherwise the short side is going to be really unhappy with stacking the odds.
So days for this kind of play will be limited to the right moment when you have enough of each show up.
But I do look forward to it, so I will always have shermans at the ready.

[DavidN]

I will ask Mr. President of the club if he could allow me to have just 1 battle to run with my intention. During the day, I will go around to check with each member on the type of tanks (primary and secondary choice) she or he wants to play in our "special" battle. With the info on all the tanks from all the committed players, I will decide if we will have a WWII Axis versus Allies, Eastern front, Western front, WWII era against post-WWII era, or whatever type of battle. Then we will probably play it in the late afternoon.

We might need to loan Haojii a tank if he comes to play :-)

[quitcherbitchen]

I only have a Panzer so I guess I will be German.

[DavidN]

I only have a Panzer so I guess I will be German

I surely think so since you also have the German building :-)

[quitcherbitchen]

Well, I just bought a Heng Long Pershing Static from Toucan for $100 shipped. That will be my Allied tank. I figured with a TK 40 board and a light emitter LED I can get it going with very little money..