Table Tactics New Product Release

[DrLarsen]

I see the Tiger in a class by it’s self.  There were other larger tanks but they never seemed to make production or much less see the battlefield.

For the most part you’re probably right that the Tiger was in a class by itself, as the Western “heavies” weren’t as big.  The Josef Stalin II tank (JSII) was dimensionally bigger (if a tad lighter), had a bigger gun (if a lower velocity) and was actually made and fielded in bigger numbers than the Tiger.

Admittedly, the Western “heavies” were both smaller and made in smaller numbers, but they were competitive and they could have been made in larger numbers if priorities had been different.  (One of the big Monday-morning-quarterback questions of the war is “Should the US have given a higher priority to the Pershing or would it have hurt Sherman production too much to do it?”  I think it isn’t an easy question, because I don’t think the Sherman was a bad as its critics often make it out to be, and yet I don’t think that giving more resources to the Pershing would have done as much damage to the logistic process as those who held up the Pershing claimed it would have… And Monday-morning-quarterback questions are just the sort of thing that arm-chair-generals love…)

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GOing by what Dr. Larsen said - remember your original A&A product - “We Need More Stuff!”

Your primary market will always be Axis & Allies gamers. They “want more stuff”, but stuff that works with what they have (same size, etc)

[DrLarsen]

Just for y’all’s reference, here’s a nifty little comparison table I put together for WWII tanks

World War II Tank Specifications

Type Tank weight gun caliber length width height
Heavy Tiger 57 t 88mm (930 m/s) (27’9) 11’ 8” 9’ 10”
JSII 46 t 122mm (806 m/s) (32’6”) 10’ 2” 8’ 11”
Pershing 46 t 90mm (823 m/s) (28’4.5”) 11’ 6” 9’ 1.5”
? Panther 45 t 75mm (1120 m/s) (28’5”) 10’ 9” 9’ 10”
Medium Comet 34 t 77mm (1120 m/s) 21’ 6” 10’ 1” 8’ 6”
Cromwell 28 t 75mm (620 m/s) 20’ 10” 9’ 6.5” 9’ 3.5”
T-34/85 27 t 85mm (792 m/s) 21.9’ 9.8’ 8’
T-34 76.2mm (612 m/s)
Sherman 30 t 75mm (619 m/s) 19’ 2” 8’ 7” 9’ 9”
Pnzer IV 25 t 75mm (790 m/s) 23’ 9’ 5” 8’ 10”

NOTES:

1. For length, I didn’t have all comparable #'s handy; the numbers in parentheses include the length of the barrel hanging forward

2. Note that I put a question mark next to the Panther in terms of category; it was supposed to be a “medium” tank, built in response to the T-34, but grew in size in development.  If you assume that the Panther is a “medium” and the Tiger is a “heavy” then the conclusion you have to draw is that the German tanks were over-engineered and over-heavy for their class, since both are much heavier than otherwise fairly comparable tanks from their opponents.  When you think about the fact that the Germans were out-produced so much numerically, it suddenly starts to make a little more sense…

[DrLarsen]

Oh one more thing:

As I was putting together the data set above, I noticed that despite the US tank’s reputation for burning (supposedly because of the use of petrol engines) both of its favored UK competitors also used petrol engines, as did its German opponents.  Its height was, yes, higher than it should have been, but not as much taller than you might think just by looking at pictures and profiles that aren’t strictly to scale: we’re talking a foot taller than a Comet and 6 inches taller than a Cromwell and it was shorter than a Tiger or Panther.  Also, unlike all of the above except the Panther, it did have sloped armor.  The Russians seem to have gotten something right from the beginning, with their sloped armor + low profiles + diesel engines, but they didn’t have the sheer mass of their German direct equivalents (i.e. Tiger vs. JSII/ Panther vs. T-34) and guess what: the Sherman did OK vs. T-34’s in Korea.

So, yes, Shermans were, in fact, outclassed by Panthers & Tigers, but that’s basically due to the fact that it was outCLASSED (as in, up against tanks of a different category).  Against much more numerous Panzer IV’s it was OK and it would be OK vs T-34’s in the future.  But the fact remains that any 30 ton tank is going to struggle 1-on-1 vs a 45 or 60 ton tank.  Which means that the Pershing probably should have been given more priority, given the trend of the arms race; but it’s easy to Monday-morning-quarterback these things as an armchair general…

[Table Tactics]

@lnmajor:

Yes we want big boards, but lets face it your tanks are out of scale with the other ground troop pieces. I just dont get the infantry sorry. :| I think a real oppertunity missed here. If you change what your doing in the future, I will happily buy your products.
Things needed:
anti-tank guns
German Rail Gun
Fixed artillery gun (like Singapore 1942 game)
Coastal defense guns
blockhouses
Rail stations
Kayusha rockets and German V2 rockets

Even with tiny tanks that are smaller then infantry units, how would you fit all this stuff on the board?

[Table Tactics]

@reloader-1:

Jack,

I hear the final nail in the coffin for the French pieces…

Methinks that they will be in A&A size after all? Tell us it is so!

The French tanks are not cut yet and I will let you know after I get the additional tanks in cad what size they are in my scale and consider you requests.  8-)
My cad computer caught a virus and is out of action at the moment.  Also using the scale function is simple. Once the tank is designed it only take a few clicks to change the size.

[Imperious Leader]

Even with tiny tanks that are smaller then infantry units, how would you fit all this stuff on the board?

They would not be in the same space at one time?

The idea is keeping them of similar size makes it look like they belong. Nobody wants giant tanks next to micro sized tanks. Keep them all small so that the map people play on does not need to be larger just to fit your Fat Albert tanks.

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Exactly! We already have very nice factory made tanks – we just want more of them! That being said, they need to match exactly to A&A scale and color to be worth buying and placing on our boards.

Awesome news on the French pieces – I can’t wait until I go forth to beg King Table Tactics on my humble request to make the French pieces smaller  :-D

[Table Tactics]

By the end of September I hope to know if TT will be changing direction to produce a complete product set.  If that ends up being the direction we go it could be done in 6 to 9 months.  That would be a 9 country set with land, sea & air units.  In the scales and units requested.
My limits now is that I am a one man one wallet operation.

@DrLarsen:

Just to be clear, TT, please don’t see this as a critique of your pieces, per se.  I actually think I rather like them in the size that they are.  The issue isn’t one of perfect accuracy; in this we aren’t like the miniatures/ tactical wargamer.  I think I can speak with confidence that the strategic wargamer, represented by the AAA boardgames crowd is more interested and more concerned with the overall look of the piece set, on the board, as a whole, rather than individually perfect pieces.

…So, if you did a complete set of pieces with AFV’s all set to the scale of yours, planes set to a scale not bigger than TWG, infantry to somewhere around HO scale, ships not bigger than 1/3000 scale, etc, all in affordable plastic… I’d happily fill my FMG Ammo box with them and be thrilled with the purchase!

The problem comes when you have less than a complete set from any one manufacturer and thus have to mix and match.

And the only manufacturer that makes a usably complete  model line (in affordable plastic, anyway) currently is WotC, so if your goal is to create a set of accessories that supplements or fills in the gaps in their line-up, matching them in color and size is gonna be key.

FMG has promised such a set eventually, though, so perhaps filling in FMG’s gaps is the ideal project (Unless FMG takes too long, in which case an alternative complete set might be an opportunity…)  You’re idea of creating a perfect board might also be a good one, perhaps supplemented with doing some categories FMG couldn’t get to in their first run (like “Superbattleships” or “paratroops”).  If you two coordinated, it could be ideal: him doing a complete piece set and an awesome piece storage box, you doing a compatible supplementary piece set and an awesome new board!  I’d spend some money putting together a set like that!  (I already have started to, actually, having sprung for the ammo box, along with just about any AAA and accessory product I’ve ever been able to find…)

With pieces, though, the key is, to either be COMPLETE or COMPATIBLE, because if you’re neither then the strategic gamer doesn’t know what to do with your stuff and will buy some to show his support, perhaps, but not nearly as much as he would otherwise.

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I like it!

[CWO Marc]

I’d like to add some comments to this discussion.  I agree with DrLarsen that the more compatible your pieces will be with the existing set of A&A sculpts, the more appeal they will have among A&A players.

I got to appreciate just how tricky the issue of compatibilty is earlier this year, as I was impatiently waiting for Europe 1940 to come out so that France would finally get a sculpt set.  As a little exercise until August 2010 finally arrived, I went through my large collection of non-A&A sculpts and tried to assemble a set of pieces which could temporarily serve as France.  Even though I have lots of sculpts from all sorts of games (both current and out of print ones, and including supplementary pieces like the full line of Table Tactics sculpts which were released prior to the newest ones), I wasn’t able to settle on anything which was fully to my satisfaction when used with the A&A sculps.  Here are some examples of the compatibility problems I ran into:

• The A&A sculpts are detailed and are made from hard plastic.  This material gives the pieces a solid look, and it can be sculpted at a fine level.  The vast majority of the non-A&A sculpts I have are made of soft plastic, which in most cases has a glossy sheen (or in some cases a translucent appearance) which makes the sculpts look less solid.  Most of them are also sculpted with much less detail, though I don’t know if this is a limitation inherent to the material used or if it’s just due to less effort being put into the sculpting itself.  A good yardstick to compare the level of detail is the face of infantry pieces: in some of my non-A&A sculpts, the face is quite rudimentary.  Of all the infantry pieces I have, the only ones which are made of hard plastic and which have the same level of detail as the A&A ones are the troops from The War Game: World War Two…but they’re the wrong size (a point I’ll return to later).

• The A&A sculpts depict Second World War units.  That eliminates a large percentage of my non-A&A sculpt collection (which includes pieces going all the way back to antiquity), though there’s some wiggle room at the margins.  For example, the “War : Age of Imperialism” game from Eagle Games, which is set in the late Victorian era, includes some troop pieces whose costumes would make them acceptable as colonial infantry.  They’re made of soft plastic, however, and the detail isn’t as sharp as I’d like, and they’re not quite the same height as the A&A troops, and they’re the wrong colour: they’re more of a dark indigo than medium blue.  Another example: Table Tactics has produced some nice World War I “rhomboid” tanks and modern Abrams tanks, which both look great and which are exactly the same size as A&A tanks; because they’re from different time periods, however, they look too antiquated or too futuristic when used alongside A&A tanks.

• Also related to the issue of what the units represent is the question of nationality.  I already mentioned that the infantry pieces from TWG, although they are very well detailed, are too tall compared to A&A infantry, but there’s the additional problem that they all represent German infantrymen (regardless of their national colour-coding).  This contrasts with the long-standing distinctiveness of infantry in A&A.  The A&A games published after the Milton Bradley edition have included mixtures of nationally-distinct sculpts and of sculpts shared by more than one country…but even going as far back as the Milton Bradley game, all the A&A games have had distinct country-specific infantry sculpts (the two marginal exceptions being the use of Russian pieces as Chinese infantry in the original Pacific game, and the use of British infantry as ANZAC troops in the new Pacific game).

• Colour-matching is tricky.  The original Milton Bradley A&A pieces (of which I own quite a lot) had colours which were for the most part incompatible with the current A&A colour schemes.  Furthermore, the shades used in MB for a nation’s infantry pieces didn’t even necessarily match the shades of the same nation’s equipment pieces (for example, Japan’s troop pieces were amber and its equipment pieces were butterscotch).  And most of the MB colours were, in my opinion, rather dull and sometimes even nondescript: the U.S. pieces, for example, were a kind of brownish green that I find unattractive.  TT did a good job of replicating these colours in its original expansion sets, but this means that those pieces share the same colour incompatibility with current A&A pieces as the MB pieces do.  The “More Colors” TT release, on the other hand, matched well the sculpt colours in A&A Revised (although, ironically, the British lime green pieces were never used by A&A again), so the “More Colors” release achieved the prefect combination of providing correctly-sized sculpts depicting World War II era equipment at a good level of detail and in colours matching some of the current A&A colours.

• Differences in size can look awkward with equipment, but can be acceptable as long as the contrast isn’t too great.  Note for instance that some A&A equipment sculpts of the same general type – bombers for example – do show some small size differences, but still manage to look fine next to each other.  This works because, in real life, units are built in different models having somewhat different sizes, while still falling within a general size range.  (For instance, fighters come in different sizes, but all are way smaller than bombers.)  Even minor size differences in troop pieces, however, can be fatal because, at that tiny scale, only tiny differences in height (such as those found among the A&A troop sculpts) look believable, meaning that they look as if they’re just caused by a difference in posture or by one soldier being a taller man than another.  My sculpt collection includes many types of WWII infantry pieces, but few of them come close to being the right size and many are quite different (including some which are about half size).  Some also have a more “stocky” build than the A&A ones, so even if the height and level of detail matched, they’d still look incorrectly proportioned.

So, to end where I began, I’d like to concur with the board members who’ve been expressing a preference for supplementary pieces (both from TT and FMG) which are as compatible as possible with the A&A ones.  Sculpts which vary considerably from the established A&A sculpt set (in the various categories I’ve described) could have great appeal to other board gamer (for instance people who play Tide of Iron have been mentioned a few times) – but for the A&A market, a high degree of A&A compatibility would be the preferable way to go.

[Imperious Leader]

That would be a 9 country set with land, sea & air units.  In the scales and units requested.

Yes thats great BEFORE and DURING each point in this process, get input from us so you avoid making mistakes. This is what FMG did and they will do very well from it.

WE are like a live studio audience providing feedback. Use us and you will prosper.

Lets us know which types of units you want and we can do research on sculpts to get good candidates, You can make polls of the choices and see the results really quickly.

Just go step by step unit be unit nation by nation.

[lnmajor]

What he said  :-D

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One thing I know for sure is that Jack has incredible plastic quality - his is as good or better than WotC.

Judging by his color matching of the 1984 set, he will be able to produce quality sets that match existing colors and can augment our forces.

Where do I send my money for a pre-order?  :-D

[Imperious Leader]

I got my order of jacks tanks…

American have some tanks that are usable, which are 4 in each pack. The others i had to toss out

German pieces are a bit simple, but good. I got a yield of 12 tanks each set. The elephant looks really nice but it makes the smaller American tanks look like rats next to elephants

Its almost like these pieces are for 3 different games, Memoir 44, Axis and allies, and god knows what. They are not even compatible with each other.

Please by all thats holy, look at what FMG is doing and just commit to a similar line of pieces, perhaps drawing from alternative models of tanks so that the maximum number of pieces are produced.

[reloader-1]

Exactly! Let’s go for as big a range of units as possible!

[Fishmoto37]

@Variable:

Any chance the TT tanks are big enough for Tide of Iron?

The U.K. tanks from TT are close to the U.K. tanks in ToI. The other TT tanks are slightly smaller than ToI but the ToI tanks are far from uniform scale themselves.

[Imperious Leader]

I think they should work. Especially using the larger tanks.

[AXIS426]

CWO Marc-
Sounds like the two of us have the same pieces and thus share the same views and opinions about “the unit scale debate”, I agree word for word and thought for thought with your entire post! I could not have said it any better.
Thanks for a very well thought and worded post!
Thoes426 :evil:

[Table Tactics]

@lnmajor:

What he said  :-D

I read this one & all of CWO Marc.  :-D