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Patton's Best

(14/05/2021) I noticed that I slightly abandoned this project. I've recently been inspired to get back into Avalon Hill games and will update and complete this soon-ish.

There are also a few poor design choices born out of my misunderstanding of the rules. I'll fix those too.


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I am still working on this, as you might notice only 2 Tanks have snap points and only a quarter of the calendar. I've tried to simplify things where I can, like making the 18 Tanks one mat with different states, and doing the same with the crew and their abilities.
You will still most likely need an After Action Report sheet, but I do have a simple version of it in the Notebook. The rulebook is avaliable on BoardGameGeek.
Also the scans are fairly bad, I am working on getting better ones, but I have named every piece for ease of reading.

If you like The Hunters and B-17 Queen of the Skies, you should like this game.


Game Description.

Patton's Best is a World War II solitaire wargame. It was designed by Bruce Shelley and published by Avalon Hill in 1987.

The game puts the player in command of an M4 Sherman tank belonging to George Patton's 4th Armoured Division in Northern Europe. The game is played on an abstract map which portraits hypotethical territory in Normandy, several tables and a depiction of the tank, on which the player puts cardboard counters to indicate the actions performed by each member of the crew, the kind of ammunition currently loaded in the main gun, the current state of hatches, turret and gun orientation, and other information.

A game is played in turns, each one corresponding to 15 minutes of real time: when random die rolls indicate that combat occurs the action switches to combat rounds, during which the player directs the actions of each crew member (driver, assistant driver, gunner, loader and commander himself) moving the tank and firing its weapons, while the randomly determined enemy reacts with actions determined by random die rolls influenced by what the player does. The player wins by earning victory points by knocking out enemy units and capturing enemy territory, and preventing the enemy doing so. After a game is over the player has a chance to improve his tank, switching to a later or improved model, and to improve the skills of his crew.

The game is quite detailed in terms of single-tank warfare simulation, including rules for machine guns, smoke deployment, target acquisition, enemy spotting, crew casualties.