What's the best way to take on a Tiger??

[Buzzard45]

OR any of the heavy tanks? If all you have is light/medium AT guns, medium arty and infantry.

What if your best can't penetrate with a side shot and the tank has infantry support?

Can it be done?

[Black Sabot]

I'm going to find out in a couple of turns...
So far, my plan has worked; Try to avoid giving them a target and neutralize the supporting infantry.
The tricky bit of getting close and assaulting the beast is the next step.

You could try just blasting it with everything and hope the crew just can't stand the noise and dismount. Works great vs Matildas if you're an early war German

[Belisarius]

Pound it with artillery and keep klonking away at it with what AT guns you have.... then get the infantry up close.

"klonking" works even better for crews with inferior discipline. KV-1's are easily subdued by just shooting at them. The crew will be too suppressed to do anything. Tigers are not that easy

[Gary Tatro]

If you do not have anything that can penatrate from a distance your kind of F*cked. But if your ATG's can penatrate the sides from a distance here is a little trick. First set your ATG's to a short range so that you do not use op fires. Next if there is some way to hide an aproach to the beast, via trees, smoke or hills send a half track with infantry or a Motor Cycle unit to show up on one of its sides at hex one. This will force the Tiger to turn and fire at the incoming unit. Say the Tiger is facing to the right. You have an unit come at it from the top now it is facing up after it has fired at its unit. Now two things will happen it will miss the unit it has fired at or it will hit it. If it misses you now have a golden opportunity. Now that you have a side shot use your ATG to pound away at the Tiger(you should get about 5 shots). If you get a hit this will knock off any infantry that is riding on it (this is important), maybe you will get lucky and get penatration. If no penatration, now unload the infantry in the half track, and since the your opponents infantry is no longer riding the Tiger you can assualt it. You can destroy any AFV with an assualt, armor does not have a factor in it. Your assualt success is bassed on the number of men in your squad plus a bonus if you are engineers or if your unit has a AFV killing weapon (grenades do not count), also if your unit passes both its moral and experience check it will get a bonus, if it does not pass its moral check it will not even attack. If you fail in your suppression rally until you are under a suppresion level of 10 and assualt again, repeat until your rally fails. Assualting a AFV creats a lot of suppresion for it even if you fail so now you can run other infantry with halftracks up and assualt again.
Now if you have heavy artillary 100mm or larger these will suppress AFV with closed tops. So plot for a .4 and once the tanks are suppressed (and all the infantry that were not in AFV's) you run in your infantry in halftracks and assualt away.
Now remember smoke and good recon play an important part of this, it is also important to concentrate all of your artillary when you are doing this. Just say no to shot gunning. Otherwise the tigers will not be suppressed enough and will blast you as you try to close.

[Kemper Von Boyd]

My answer would be: smoke, smoke and some more smoke. I've found out that in a shooting match, when there's more distance to the other units than 15 hexes, the Germans win every time. However, if you go up close and personal with infantry support, those Tigers are as vulnerable as anything. I had to watch in a recent Pbem match, how my company of Tigers was chewed up in a fight in the woods. It was painful.

Dropping HE with artillery works almost as well. Kills the infantry and gives bad visibility.

[Tequila]

What makes this complicated is that people will protect their Tigers and other heavy tanks with infantry around them to spot the enemy infantry trying to sneak in and assault the tanks.

It didn't take me long in the Watchword Freedom campaign to understand this You send a Tiger in the woods, even the wide open, it doesn't matter where, without infantry support you can guarantee an assault coming your way from enemy infantry with pretty good success. Always keep ground troops travelling with your best tanks.

[Wolfleader]

Drop your weapons, toss your hands up in the air and hope the Tiger's crew are in a good mood.

Seriously though, use an anti-tank gun and have it blasting away at the tank in order to draw fire from the tank, a few scout cars and fast moving light tanks are effective at drawing fire as well.

When the tank stops taking pot shots at your AT gun and scout cars, (assuming that it has probably used up all its op shots )have an APC quickly speed up to the tank, drop its infantry load (preferably engineers) and close assault the tank or have some of your tanks flank the tank and shoot at its side and rear armor.

[Orzel Bialy]

jump out of your mobile target platform and run for the nearest bunch of trees. LOL :p

[RayM]

Even though it is in a different theater, learning to employ an armor-Marines team can provide some interesting lessons. In many Pacific scenarios and especially the campaigns, learning how to use combined arms teams is absolutely vital to success.

Part of my learning curve was forcing myself to keep the armor and Marines together no matter what. Without fail, if I let the tanks loose (basically, hey diddle diddle, staright up the middle toward the VH), they would always end up surrounded and close assaulted. Or they got stuck in the open after being hit and eventually destroyed because they no close-in protection. Now admittedly, the tanks were mainly M3s and some M4s but the learning points were still there.

In playing several ETO scenarios, I quickly realized that the same concepts applied.

I have also had some success in getting the enemy tank to turn away and present a more vulnerable side or rear.

[Irinami]

Originally posted by RayM
Part of my learning curve was forcing myself to keep the armor and Marines together no matter what... Now admittedly, the tanks were mainly M3s and some M4s but the learning points were still there.

You played Munda too?

Okay guys, my tips:

1.) Isolate a tank or group of tanks.
2.) Detach 3+ infantry squads per tank, and any supporting fire you can muster.
3.) Blast at the tank and assault the tank. Start with your most survivable weapons, then work (one shot from each, round-robin style) down to your infantrymen. Once one tank stops opfiring, switch to another... but SAVE the infantry assaults until necessary!
4.) Once they stop opfiring, assault them. As said above, only rally until suppression is under 10 (10 sometimes will assault, sometimes won't)... no further. You want to assault as many times as possible.
5.) End turn. If the enemy can still fire during their turn, hammer them with the guns again... then assault.
6.) By the end of the 2nd turn, they probably can't fire anymore. Leave 3 (or more) infantry units per tank to assault constantly. You will tie those suckers up, and eventually kill them. This is a good job for those beat-up units you're trying to spare destruction.

[rbrunsman]

Everyone keeps mentioning the gamey way to beat a Tiger. i.e. drive your HT full of infantry up next to the Tiger and close assault. I doubt any driver would willing do that, not to mention the infantry rioting in the back as the idiot driver says, "Come on guys, let's go take out that tank!"

You either need a big AT gun or lots of smoke or sucker the Tiger into close quarters (woods, buildings, etc.). That, or hope for a lucky shot. I got a KingTiger for fun once and JJ's puny 50mm AT gun immobilized my KT on the first shot. It wasn't much good to me after that.

[RayM]

Irinami

Oh yeah...more than once in fact...very humbling until you learn....highly recommended!

[Easy8]

Smoke, suppress with direct fire and arty, then flambe.

As has been stated here, use smoke or terrain to close.

Pound it with everything you can to clear out infantry escorts, expend op-fire, and suppress

When it's safe to close, move up a flamethrower (tanks work best because of the 2 hex range) and blast away.

Bye-bye Tiger!

[Buzzard45]

Pretty much what I expected but I was hoping for a miracle. Noboby said PRAY but some came close. Keep the ideas coming.

From what I gather its a 5 point combination
1. Hit it with as much concentrated arty as possible with a .4 delay.
2. Isolate it with smpke.
3. Use up its OP fire with movement or fire.
4. Suppress it with what ever long range units you have.
5. Close in with infantry after the supporting infantry has been sent packing and assault with at least 3 squads preferably with a HQ squad and the company HQ along for ralies after missed assaults.


Its a numbers game:rolleyes: The more the better. Tough to do but not impossible.

Now what if there is a platoon of them. Leap-frogging towards you 5 hexes apart? Two forward, two sitting as support? Any changes?

[Belisarius]

If they're leap-frogging, then there's the OBVIOUS answer:


SMOKE. You can't support what you can't see. Smoke between the pairs will let you deal with the forward tanks first without having to worry about overwatching Tigers. And smoke directly behind the first ones, as the rear won't be able to close in without running into your guys close-range.

[Buzzard45]

Originally posted by Belisarius
If they're leap-frogging, then there's the OBVIOUS answer:


SMOKE. You can't support what you can't see. Smoke between the pairs will let you deal with the forward tanks first without having to worry about overwatching Tigers. And smoke directly behind the first ones, as the rear won't be able to close in without running into your guys close-range.

True, but it also means that there are 3 Tigers(with support) within a range of 5-7 hexes of where your target Tiger is. Anything you send to close assault is likely lost to counter attack. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

[Belisarius]

My point was that if you have ground-pounders adjacent to the targeted Tiger, the smoke will prevent nearby Tigers to counterattack, as they risk getting assaulted when approaching.

This is why you want to lay the smoke directly behind (and even on) the target Tiger. Keep an open "corridor" towards your guns, that way you can keep hammer away as the infantry gets close.

[Buzzard45]

Originally posted by Belisarius
My point was that if you have ground-pounders adjacent to the targeted Tiger, the smoke will prevent nearby Tigers to counterattack, as they risk getting assaulted when approaching.

This is why you want to lay the smoke directly behind (and even on) the target Tiger. Keep an open "corridor" towards your guns, that way you can keep hammer away as the infantry gets close.

Good answer!!

What about patience? When I was playing JJ in 1941, He knew I had Matildas. What makes him so good is that he waited until he had a killing shot and gave ground until he got it. BTW by the 2nd last turn, he had all of them in a similar manner. Of course, his recon methods let him know exactly where they were and when to expect them.

OP fire is not the way to win but counter-attack on your terms may be. The smoke in your method gives the advantage to the defender, so counter attack can be counter-attacked. Howvever, the numbers have to be with you. If all you have is one platoon of infantry and one platoon of light/medium AT, The best answer may be to RUN AWAY or Hide with a range of 1. (zero is fine for snipers but a whole squad can't hide that well. Unless they are Rangers.)

[Belisarius]

Versus JJ?

That's a totally different volume in the SP:WAW tactics encyclopaedia! He's extremely patient and will take good time figuring out where you are and what you have before going in. Last game he massacred my Tigers by effectively robbing them of any support, using halftracks, smoke and LOTS of artillery on my infantry positions. Then he chewed up the Tigers with an M4/M10 combo. M4s to drain opfire (yes they died too) and moving in the M10 for the kill, then withdraw.

With scarce resources, the solution is probably running away, if you have terrain to do it. No use if you're already pushed so far back that the opponent controls your own deployment area. Find forests, or even better a ridge with a back slope, and sit tight.

[arethusa]

I just finished a run-in with a couple of Konigstigers a few minutes ago in a PBEM game.

1)The KTs were hit with some small artillery first to stop them moving and shake up the infantry riding on top.

2)Just to be sure, I took pot-shots at them with infantry at medium range until all the KTs op-fire was used up. My infantry would only fire once, then rotate to another unit for the next shot until all response from the KT was done. KTs don't have much success firing at infantry from 5 hexes so I only had 1 or 2 individual casualties.

3)Once the KT was silent, rushed in with a Ram Badger. It took only two burps from it's flamegun to toast the tank and one more to finish off all the infantry that had been supporting it.

I've consistently found flame weapons to be worth their weight in gold against infantry, armour and bunkers. They seem to be the strongest weapon in the field as long as you can have the patience or the knack to get them up close enough to do their job.