310 Offensive on the Istra

Hello to everyone,
I like the idea of armored train as units on the map.
These new units could solve the limit of artillery cards, providing a effective and reliable long range firepower with the drawback of being vulnerable by the opponent as any other units.
I've think about some traits for the armored train:
Equipment: May be stolen by enemy squads. Do not add dice when assaulted. May not perform Fire and Movement Action
Fragile: Is destroyed when Heavily Damaged
Inherent crew

For heavy artillery i would consider also:
Long reload: This unit can’t be placed in Opportunity Fire mode

What do you think about?

I like the idea of a "whole new type of unit".

Let's not forget that bringing units such as Katyusha, Nebelwerfer or Armored Trains onto the map would also allow you to partially bypass the limit of artillery cards (excessive cost with the risk of never being able to fire during the game).

And last but not least they rightly become goals on the field with the risk of being eliminated by the opponent.

In case there were many variants (related to firepower) one could think of a miniature (in the field) with standard characteristics and several operational cards specifying the characteristics to be used in that particular scenario.

Great question!

For armored trains that are not simply artillery guns on rails, I think it would be cool to have them as units on the map. This would make them vulnerable to attack, but considering the wide range of armament on these types of trains (12.7 mm through 76 mm at least), they are also appropriate to the scale of ToI.

One could attempt to create a whole new type of unit--Armored Trains?--that could have varied Armor and Firepower ratings in accordance with the consolidated reference stats, or one could make these scenario-specific units. I'm agnostic about this approach, but my key recommendation would be to ensure their firepower is calibrated to the other unit statistics. For example, an armored train with 12.7 mm MGs is going to be a much different unit than one with 76 mm tank turrets (and there's variations between these extremes).

The rail artillery guns, in my view, are best treated by the artillery card mechanic of ToI, but I can envision all kinds of fun scenarios in which armored trains with guns in the 12.7 mm through 76 mm range could play a cool role as on-map offensive or defensive units. This gets to the interesting nuance of Katyusha and Nebelwelfer guns, which to me are right on the border of being off-map artillery or on-map units that may be destroyed.

Ciao James,
yes I can access the file via Google Drive (you did an tremendous work).

Together with Pino we were thinking about adding one Soviet armored train and a German one (Panzerzug). What do you think?
Any idea or proposal on any statistics is welcome!

Perhaps they could be considered as units off the battlefield (like Katyusha rocket launcher) and converted into simple operations cards, but I like the idea of seeing them in the field and making them a "possible target".

The Armored Train unit in this scenario is a cool idea!

Poking around the Internet to get some idea of what the stats of this unit could be, it appears that there were quite a few Soviet armored trains during WWII, with varying amounts of armor protection and armament. Armament appears to range from 12.7 mm machine guns through 25 mm and 37 mm anti-aircraft cannon up to 45 mm and 76.2 mm guns with varied barrel lengths (in turrets taken from obsolete tanks such as the T-28, as well as what appear to be larger cylindrical turrets special-built for the role).

Whatever array of armor and armament you end up going with for this unit, note that my consolidated unit stats spreadsheet file provides calibrated stats for all of the guns noted above. Let me know if you don't yet have access to that spreadsheet (it's up on Google Docs and I've shared it with Alessandro and Willem).

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Sources:
wio.ru/rr/ww2sov.htm
www.rbth.com/history/335978-soviet-armored-trains-wwii
www.militaryfactory.com/armor/detail.php?armor_id=745