TacWWII Tactical Cards

For the recent Stary Boleslav game I created some cards players could play to help them in key moments. I thought I'd describe them here in case others would find the idea useful.

The intention was to give players an additional tactical option. Something that might help in a key moment, perhaps mitigating the effects of a poor die roll, and maybe adding a little narrative detail. At the same time I wanted to avoid making the cards too powerful. No one wants their carefully crafted plans destroyed simply because their opponent played a "Thousand Bomber Raid" card!

I created the cards in Pages on my iMac and printed them onto 200gsm card.

The cards were intended as one-use and were allocated randomly between the player groups. The Soviet command teams got four cards per team while the Czechoslovaks got six across their whole defending brigade. With some duplicates the cards were as follows:

Ace Pilot - You can re-roll one die in aerial combat.

Heroic Speech - You can re-roll one morale check die roll.

Skills and Drills - One of your companies can re-roll one failed Tac-roll-to-change-Mode.

Shortcut - One of your companies can treat an area of Heavy Going as normal ground for movement purposes this turn.

Friends in High Places - You can elect to re-roll one air support die roll this turn.

Molotov Cocktails - One infantry platoon is treated this turn as if it had assault engineer kit.

Excellent Staff Work - You may write a new order and attempt to transmit it this turn.

Superb Junior Leadership - You can reorganise to combine two companies into one without the need for a Tac roll.

Panzerfaust Cache - One company has plentiful supplies of anti-tank weapons. This turn, if they are in Defence Mode, they can fire at hard targets in phases A, C and E.

The last card is described as I should have designed it. In reality I didn't make it clear that the card was meant to be used just the once and I accidentally increased the range of a Panzerfaust. I don't think this had game-breaking results, though.