Nuts! Big Battles - Sneak Peek #6 - Vehicles

Vehicles – both the fighting and transport varieties – played an enormous role in WWII.  Here’s a look at the defining features of Vehicles in NBB.

As with infantry, the Platoon is the basic organisational structure for vehicles.  A Tank Platoon, for example, is made up of two models (so each model represents two vehicles).  A Tank Company is formed with three Platoons and an additional vehicle for the Company Commander. The same rules for Chain of Command that apply to larger Infantry Bodies also apply to Vehicle Bodies, with the exception that the distance allowed for maintaining Cohesion is 4” rather than 2”.

In comparison to Nuts!FE, where we define every man in the tank's crew,  stats in NBB are more streamlined. They feature:

• a single  Rep for the entire vehicle/crew (determined randomly)
• an Armor Value  (between 0 and 5)
• an Armor Piercing Rating (APR) for the Main Gun (between 1 and 7 - if applicable)
• two Movement rates (On-road/Off-road)

Let’s take a look at some examples:

German StuG III Assault Gun

               StuG III G: Rep X; Armor 3; APR 4; Move 9/6

American M26 Pershing 

             M26 Pershing: Rep X; Armor 4; APR 6; Move 9/6

M3 Halftrack Transport

           M3 Halftrack: Rep X; Armor 1W; APR 0; Move 9/6

(Spot the ‘W’ after the Armor value? This indicates that troops being transported in this open-topped vehicle can also be targeted with Small Arms or Mortar fire. And APR 0? No Main Gun means no Armour Piercing capability).

An important aspect of how vehicles are handled in NBB is their Front Facing, which is defined by a line drawn across a vehicle's front edge, like this:

Front Facing on a StuG Assault Gun

If you score a hit on an enemy vehicle from behind its Front Facing, you’ll be more likely to penetrate and destroy it. Front Facing can also restrict what you can target: A vehicle with a fixed Main Gun, like the above StuG, can only fire at targets in its Front Facing. A vehicle with a turret however, such as the Pershing below, can fire in any direction, but is still more vulnerable when taking a hit from behind its Front Facing.

Front Facing remains the same, but the rotating turret
 allows an M26 Pershing to fire in any direction

Next time around, we’ll put all these numbers to work when we look at Tank Combat.