Born in the waning days of the cold war (1989), MBT looked to show tactical-level combined arms warfare in central Germany in the late 80'ies to early 90'ies, or "The great international exercise", as I have heard it described by cadets at the Danish Army’s Officers academy.
Had it happened it would have been at bloody, messy affair, and MBT is no different. Life is cheap on the modern battlefield, as you will find. I originally bought this game, as my third wargame ever (all AH titles) after reading Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy. His descriptions or mechanized warfare had me hooked, so naturally I wanted to try it out.
Rules
The rules are typical Avalon Hill-style, with a well-numbered rulebook. The rules are divided into the usual 3 sections: Basic, Advanced and Optional rules, for layered complexity, starting out with basic movement and shooting, adding in the advanced section elements as: terrain effects, infantry, soviet doctrine, missile weapons and advanced movement rules.
The optional rules add effects of weapons hits, minefields and entrenchments, artillery and air units (Helicopters and air strikes) and finally Command and control (the order markers mentioned below). The rules are short and to the point, explaining all, illustrating with written examples where necessary, and a very few illustrations.
Components
The unit counters are very nicely detailed (for its age, mind) with detailed linedrawings of the unit type, Identifying text and an ID#. Turreted units (Tanks, IFVs etc.) need an extra, smaller counter on top signifying the orientation of the turret (and whether the turret is buttoned or not). This makes stacking several units in the same hex somewhat difficult, but cautious commanders wouldn't want their troops bunching up like that anyway, what whit the threat of artillery and air strikes.
Markers are easy to read for most part, and several of them uses counter facing to grade the effects or present different option on the marker. As an example, the order markers come in two different varieties, one for stationary units, one for moving, each giving 4 options, from its alignment with the counter top (This needs a bit of honesty on the part of the players, but is a quite workable solution).
By modern standards the counters are a bit drab, and the choice of colours not the best, but the different nations are clearly distinguishable, and only the soviet counters are in any real danger of fading into the terrain.
The 4 mounted map boards have very nice artwork in the typical Avalon Hill style, and are geomorphic, giving a good number of different possible layouts. To get even more diversity from the map boards, the different colours on the board can be assigned as different types of terrain, making the map boards represent anything from open plains, to rolling farmland to dense woods.
The layout of the boards are reasonably balanced, so no matter how you set the boards up, the access to objective hexes should be fairly evenly distributed.
Unit stats are printed on data cards, in some detail: Mobility ratings, weapons accuracy, penetration and damage values are indexed for range, giving a quite detailed weapons model. Protection is presented in the same detail: Armour values are given for single facings, and divided into protection from hard penetrators (KE) and explosives (CE), from different angles and from rising, level or falling shots.
Hit locations are also determined on a table, from angle of impact and type of vehicle. This keeps all the necessary information present in a compact format for the players (and you simply couldn't cram that amount of information on the counters).
Gameplay
The game turn is divided into 7 phases:
Initiative: Roll a die to see who goes first
Command: resolve all sighting of units, and place order markers (Optional rules)
1st Air phase: Aircraft and helicopters move and attack
Fire: All units with fire orders, or close assault resolve their fire. Overwatch from fire is resolved
Movement: All units move, Overwatch from movement (and fire) is resolved, Overrun is resolved
2nd Air phase: Aircraft (that didn't appear in the 1st air phase, and helicopters move and attack
Adjustment: all the final bookkeeping and adjustments of turret facings
Units are given orders that determine what actions they can perform, but they aren't required to reveal the order marker, which leaves a degree of uncertainty: Is that M1A1 in overwatch, ready to shoot the [Deleted] out of me if I move of fire my T-80, or is it waiting to move itself later in the game turn?
Players fire their units one side at a time (all units on one side fire, then the other side's. Firing is simultaneous, with a provision for counter fire against missile shooters), then move all their units one side at a time, thus moving 1st or 2nd can become really important, depending the present situation.
Use of ammunition isn't tracked in the basic or advanced game (optional rule) but missile ammo should be tracked, unless you want to make Apaches with hellfires the only viable weapon on the US side.
The command rules allows you to change a certain number of your order markers between moving and non-moving markers in the command phase, determined be the size of units you have brought to the battlefield and the number and seniority of your leaders.
NATO units have quite good C&C and can change a large portion of their markers, giving them a quite flexible response, while the Soviets are more rigid. The rules for soviet doctrine offsets this by making platoon-sized units act as a single unit on the board, all with the same order, all firing at the same target, etc, but allowing you to buy units at a big discount.
The dreaded hordes of armour from the east is a reality in this game, and if the soviet player knows what he is about, swamping NATO defences is quite workable.
Overall assesment
MBT is detailed - very detailed - in what it attempts to do, and it does it quite well, in fact. There is a good degree of suspense to resolve that shot from your Leopard 2 into the front/side aspect of an advancing T-72, looking up AP-factors and modifiers, determining if and where the round hits and the effects of it. This is the meat of the game and it works well. Almost too well...
After a while you get a feeling for the penetration vs. armour ratings of typical scenarios (say: T-80 firing at the front aspect of M1A2's: penetration isn't possible at more than 4 hexes), and that takes a bit of the fun out of it - Penetration values do not vary, taking some uncertainty out of the equation. Likewise, damage effects don't scale with the degree of penetration: One point of excess penetration is as good as 35 points or even more.
It might be fairly realistic, but for me, it seems... wrong?... that a shot that cannot possibly inflict damage at 5 hexes, will destroy its target almost every time from 4 hexes. This gives MBT a bit of a chess-like feel. AH and the General had a tendency to analyze their games to death, I fear that they went a bit too far with MBT. It is bordering on being a game that can be "solved".
From a play balance viewpoint there are other problems: The M1A2 is simply too powerful for its point cost. Trying to go toe-to-toe with it with anything other than M1A2s is close to impossible. Your only hope is buying tons and tons of T-80s with doctrine and overwhelm the Yankees with waves and waves of armoured onslaught, in the hope that some can break into the American rear, and get some rear-aspect shots in.
(The sister game, IDF has a similar problem with the gun-armed Panhards, they are much too powerful for their point cost, at a bit of a problem for game balance, at least they burn as well as the rest of the bunch)
There are other idiosyncrasies as well: With a turn length of 1-5 minutes it seems a bit strange that tanks can only fire at a single target (with typical real-life engagement times of 10-15 seconds), and that no one can fire more than once in overwatch; Or the fact that turrets can only traverse in the adjustment phase, and then has to keep that heading for the entire turn (working around this would in part invalidate the detailed armour model, but still doesn't sit right with me).
It's part of the game model; I know, but it still seems wrong somehow, or at least not how I would have written it
In its favour the command and control rules introduces some command friction in the picture, and the engagements are fun and involved to play out. The point-purchase system more than makes up for fact that the game "only" ships with 4 scenarios (Meeting engagement, Delaying action, Defensive engagement and Counterattack), so there is more than enough replay value.
The included Tables of Organization and Equipment gives a broad range of standard formations to try out, but I miss more nations, such as the French and British in the counter mix (my own national army, the Danish, can be clubbed together from German and US equipment).
Bottom line
MBT is bordering on Ameritrash, with its strong story: You really feel part of the engagement, but at the same time it doesn't quite deliver what it wants: Tactical combined-arms warfare in the 80'ies. The map is simply too small and crowded to portray the momentum of manoeuvre warfare and force levels (battalion sized).
However, if you are into experimenting you can experiment with some fairly exotic ideas: How about using heli-borne Speznaz troops with flamethrowers to close assault the M1A2 on the other side? Or basing your entire defence on 2 apaches, 2 artillery batteries, and 6 forward observer units? - The first one very nearly worked, while the second one flopped badly!
I played the [Deleted] out of my copy of MBT, and still like it. But for a truer simulation of the command issues and dynamics of modern armoured warfare, I would pick Force Eagles War in the TCS series.
If you want to see MBT in action, there is a very informative series replay in the General, and be sure to check the variant maps and scenarios in the files section for this game!
Last edited on 2007-08-06 16:13:27 CST (Total Number of Edits: 2)
Posted Thu Jul 26, 2007 12:06 am
