Too much tank for too little tread: Overloaded as a crippling vehicle attribute

There are many negative attributes that a vehicle can have in Flames of War. Some are quite benign. Unreliable? Unless you are racing around the table on a regular basis, it really doesn’t hurt much. Slow tank? Annoying, but with the sheer amount of slow going terrain standing around it really isn’t a killer attribute. Even awkward layout and one man turret aren’t dealbreakers given the usual long range or numbers in platoons with these rule.

There is, however, one attribute that consistently scares me into not taking certain units: Overloaded. In a game where hiding in terrain and digging enemies out of entrenched terrain features is essential, overloaded is crippling (as it must have been in real life).

                                                               (Overloaded!)

For those of you who don’t recall, an overloaded vehicle bogs down during a bog check on a roll of either 1 or 2. Additionally, very difficult terrain requires the overloaded vehicle to re-roll successful skill checks.  This means that the overloaded vehicle bogs down twice as much over bog standard rough terrain, and far more often in very difficult terrain.

The table below outlines the bog rate of veteran, trained and conscript vehicles over very difficult terrain:

Skill rating	Normal bog rate	Overloaded bog rate
Veteran	33%	44%
Trained	5%	75%
Conscript	66%	89%

Even veteran overloaded tanks are going to want to avoid assaulting infantry in buildings, crossing rivers or any other task that requires very difficult bog checks. Conscripts shouldn’t even think about it, with nearly 9/10^th of tanks bogging on the way in.

For tanks such as the SU-100 or King Tiger, huge armor and exceptional range keep them safe, and maybe they won't find themselves in risky assaults. However, for the smallest and most "normal" tanks that are overloaded, this rule really hurts a tank's utility.

Common Overloaded Vehicles:

Hetzers	Sherman Crab	SU-100	Super Pershing
King Tiger	T1E3 Aunt Jemima	SU-85m	Bison (15cm sIG)
Panzer IV/70	Deacon	Jagdtiger	Marder 1

I bring this up as I recently became the proud owner of a unit of hetzers (pictures below). Now, I love the hetzer. For those of you who play World of Tanks: Blitz on your tablet, you’ll know how much the hetzer hetzes all over its enemies in that game. My favorite times playing have been running my hetzer around sniping all manner of enemy tanks. It is adorable to look at and in Flames of War it has good armor and a good gun. However, it is cursed with overloaded.

          (painting credit goes to David Colman - he painted them, I gave the finishing touches)

I have wanted to include hetzers in my lists for some time, but I’m finding it very difficult to get past this one rule. The sheer number of high AT guns in late war means that armor 7 is generally not too tough to crack and therefore these tanks need to utilize cover and difficult to hit numbers as their protection. Granted, there are a lot of fields and walls and the sort on tables that would give cover without bog checks, but many tables (especially at say stores where 28mm games are played heavily) are limited to multiple sets of woods. If you’re stuck with woods and other rough terrain as your protection, suddenly stormtrooper is generally less useful, maneuver is less useful and the risk of bogging and being left out to dry is a big threat. This becomes more damaging when you’re in a position to take the veteran tank hunter platoon. Their rule is brilliant in corn fields, but a death trap if you’re stuck with woods. 

                                         (How I think my hetzers will end up every game)

Are hetzers worth it?

In terms of stats, hetzers have a similar armor profile as stugs (7/2/1 as opposed to the stug’s 7/3/1), the same gun as the stug (32”/2/11/3+), a hull machine gun and it is skinny enough that you can fit more hetzers into the same real estate as stugs. The late model stug G also has a co-ax machine gun, protected ammo, skirts and a higher price.  

Per unit cost in Desperate Measures

	Veteran	Trained
Hetzer	85	65
Stug	98.75	76.25

As you can see, the veteran hetzer is roughly 15 points cheaper than a veteran stug, and at the trained level the savings is a little over 11 points. I honestly think that the additional machine gun, protected ammo and skirts, along with no overloaded trait, make the stug an almost no-brainer in comparison to the hetzer. Due to overloaded and lack of skirts, the hetzer struggles as an assaulting vehicle against enemies in rough terrain or who have integrated shooting AT, while the limited number of machine guns makes infantry assaults against the tanks a higher possibility.

                                        (Someone failed their bogging check)

As I said before, the hetzer is one of my favorite vehicles of the war and I really want to find them worthwhile. I’ll definitely be taking some from time to time on the strength of their cuteness and where points are tight, but I just can’t see them being a go-to in the way that stugs (or panzer IVs) have been.

Do you have any thoughts on how hetzers can be made more effective, or tactics that let you use these little tank hunters to full effect?