Bolt Action: Head to Head – Tiger Vs Churchill
Use these tanks to your advantage with these second edition tactics.
Andy Singleton of VolleyFire Painting takes a look at how you can use two of the most famous World War II tanks – the German Panzer VI Tiger I and the British A22 Churchill, Mk III – in your Bolt Action second edition games.
The Churchill – $32.00
The Churchill Mk III can be fielded at any experience level, with a Regular tank being costed at 265 points. The vehicle features an armour 10+ rating, as well as a hull machine gun, medium anti-tank gun as well as a coaxial machine gun, although it unfortunately also has the ‘slow’ rule.
Slow limits the Churchill to a maximum speed of 6” with an advance order, and 12” with a run. This forces the Chruchill into its role as an infantry support tank as it’s not armed with a weapon to truly terrify enemy tanks, however it is still a capable weapon that can at least put pins on anything, and destroy most vehicles, especially once it gets under half range.
With the changes brought in with Second Edition, the Churchill now has a 1” blast for it’s medium anti-tank gun, and this makes it quite adept at taking out snipers, weapon teams, and command elements, and fulfilling its wartime use of supporting infantry and helping them advance to an objective.
In game, tactically I feel the best way to use this tank is as moving cover for your infantry with it’s large size offering decent obstructions to lines of fire, and using it to grind up the board to get to where you need to be whilst throwing out supporting fire to wherever is most pressing. At 265 points as well, the vehicle won’t eat a huge amount of your force for what is a very resilient vehicle and you will still be able to have a decent mass of bodies to keep it company.
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The Tiger – $41.00
In Bolt Action the Tiger is available at both Regular and Veteran levels, and weighs in at a hefty 395 points. In first edition the tank was a superlative tank killer, however was not great against infantry. With introduction of templates, the Tiger is now quite capable at dealing with blocks of troops too now that it’s super heavy anti-tank gun can now fire a 3” template with +3 pen, allowing it to kill even veteran infantry on 3+.
However, armed with a super heavy anti-tank gun the Tiger still really shines as a tank destroyer. Adding +7 to pen rolls means that there’s a good chance to kill anything you fire it at. With armour 10+ the ability to resist return fire is significant too. I’ve had one Tiger destroy 3 enemy vehicles in a single game before…
Whilst effective in regular games, Tank Wars is the best environment for this big cat to shine. I find placing one on the flank in particular to be effective, as the threat it poses is generally enough to channel your opponent away from it and towards your cheaper and more numerous armour, and if you’re particularly lucky might even sneak you a lucky flank shot on something.
AdvertisementI try not to move the Tiger too often, preferring to limit the hit modifiers it receives, however it can make a good spearhead as well forcing your opponent to deal with it if used aggressively. With the added flexibility second edition affords the tank, I plan on using mine far more frequently than I have before too…
For the real world history of both tanks check out the full blog post here.
Are you using either of these in your Bolt Action forces?
