I just picked up a reserves Panther and was surprised to see the year as 1943.
What’s up with the years. Leiter I’ll look to you again on this one. Is this an exception? SS Panther G 1942. Regular Panther D 1943 !
I’m not an expert on the Panther but I do know that the D came before the G. Any thoughts on this one?
The only thing I can think of is that the SS did get the best equipmest earlier than the Regular army but man that is a stretch (especially with the D and G models)
Axis Fan out
No… it is the Panther G that was a mistake… no Panthers were produced in 1942 other than a few possible protypes in november/december of 1942 (production of the tank started late nov 42). Their was a prototype avalible in september, but it was purly 4 testing purposes. The Panther didn’t see any action until the battle of Krusk in july of 1943 (in fact the offesive was delayed to get new weapons like the Panther into the front… and it didnt preform well due to mechanical bugs that wern’t fixed in it being rushed to the front and a few tactical mistakes that lost a lot to anti-tank mines in the opening attack).
This has always bothered me so my playing group just kinda gentlemens agreement the panther G to 1943.
FYI the sad thing is the Panther Ausf. G wasnt even produced until 1944
http://www.onwar.com/tanks/germany/tfpantherg.htm
The Panther G is also the most type of Panther produced (starting in march of 44) http://www.achtungpanzer.com/pz4.htm
If we look throughout the game there are simlar mistakes but this is clearly one of the biggest, especally since it is a popular peice!
*we debated this on the avalon boards too… there are many big date mistakes, but the Panther G is one of the biggest… also KV-1 is labled '42 even though it was in the red army in '39 Winter War and even the flavor text on the stat card refers to KV-1 action that took place in 1941…
Thanks, I suspected as much. Does FOW have this type of trouble. Whats the deal, all the subjects are documents out the wazoo in history books, this could have been easily avoided.
As dictator_wanna_be said, it’s the Panther G that is incorrect. The only version of the Panther produced in 1942 was the Panther A, and that was only a handful of prototypes. The Panther D’s first major battle was Kursk, though it was actually in the field a month or so before that (and plagued by technical difficulties). Lastly the Panther G wasn’t produced until '44.
The Panther G should be a '44 unit, though don’t hold your breath for official errata ;)
While the KV-1 was used in the Winter War they weren’t the same that were fighting in Kursk; they were early prototypes that hadn’t even finished being tested. They had many serious defects that weren’t fixed until after the war. Also the tank was upgraded to the KV-1 Model 1940 and still had defects. None of these tanks were on the level of the later KV-1s, such as the only one currently in AAM. In 1941 the armour was upgraded and the KV-1 Model 1941, or KV-1e was born; this is the tank the fought in the Great Patriotic War. In July 1941 it was upgraded once more with the 76mm gun (F-34) mounted on the T-34/76s. The tank was given even heavier armour (ahem, hulking mass), which reduced it’s mobility to less than that of a T-34/76 (which would be… speed 3); creating the KV-1 Model 1942, or KV-1c - the unit used in AAM.
Some subsequent models were the KV-1s (for increased speed), the KV-85 (1943, 85mm gun).
As the Panther G highlights though, there are some… quirks with the years. Part of this can be explained by the fact they only use years and not months for the dates; effectively there’s no difference between a unit becoming available in January of a year, and December of that year. There’s also the decision to be made of whether it should be ‘rounded up/down’ or not to make it a little historical; i.e. if the unit was available in November 1942, would it be better as a 1943 unit or leave it at 1942 even though that could mean you have it appearing now in scenarios where it shouldn’t really be available. Sometimes simplicity makes things more complicated.
Edit: The KV-1 text is correct, it just happens to be a non-sequitur with the actual unit on the card which causes just a little bit of confusion.
