Requesting help to create a British Centaur Dozer

Here is my starting point:

Centaur Dozer
Nationality: United Kingdom
Vehicle – ?

Special Abilities: ?


Year available: 1944
Cost: ?
Speed: ?
Defense: ?/?
AI: -/-/-
AV: -/-/-

It would have no armament. Yes, it could remove tank obstacles.

I would agree with ober here as that makes the most sense. Another option would be add low silhouette(this vehicle had cover in clear hexes and gets cover on a roll of 6) as it is very low to the ground which would bring its points up to 15.

Thanks to Ober, Thor711 and CptHellCat for your input. Let me give you some insight as to what this unit will be doing.

This scenario is a combination of a river crossing and an airborne landing. It will be depicted as two separate battle boards that are adjacent to each other but divided so as to make handling of game pieces easier. So I will refer to them as north map (primarily where the airborne landing will occur) and south map (where the river crossing will occur.) The Allied (Mostly UK) ground force starts south of the Rhine River. It's airborne (Combo UK & US) forces begin the game off board. Axis(German) forces start with one third of their force on the north side of the Rhine River. The rest of their force starts off board and comes in as reinforcements.

The Rhine River snakes across the southern map flowing roughly east to west and is one hex wide. There are no bridges across the Rhine. The Allied team will have to bridge it. The northern map also has a river running east to west , but it is merely hexside terrain. Its' name is the Issel River. Historically there were 9 bridges running across this river which the airborne force had to seize and hold . For my scenario I'm depicting 4 bridges.

As of now, my Allied victory condition is that they must control two of the four Issel river bridges and have a completed pontoon bridge constructed across the Rhine River by the end of the scenario. Another condition is that they must show at least one clear roadway / pathway from the Rhine River pontoon bridge to either of their controlled Issel River bridges. This is where the Centaur Dozer comes into play.

Historically at this point along the Rhine River it is lined with 5 meter high dykes on either side. Obviously, their main purpose is flood control, but they aloso act as a barrier that the Allied force must deal with. They were not easily transversed by vehicles. So the dyke must be breached on both sides of the river to allow for quick passage of road traffic. The Allied player will not have to worry about the "home bank" side of the river. That side begins the game with a breach already completed. The Allied team starts the game with Sherman DDs which will assist the LVTs carrying the initial river crossing force. Once they have crossed the Rhine there is one hex of clear and then they will encounter dyke terrain which runs along the hex side edge much like hedges. Vehicles will need to make a movement roll to cross it. Once a pontoon bridge has been set up, one of the first vehicles across should be the Centaur Dozer. It will use a special ability to breach the dyke and make it passable for vehicles without having to do a movement roll. In addition to this task, the Dozer may need to clear rubble from shell holes or ruins in town hexes.

So I need to come up with a special ability that would allow this Dozer to : breach a dyke, fill in shell holes or clear a path through rubble so that a clear path can be constructed from the Rhine River pontoon bridge to one of the Issel River bridges. For now, I don't anticipate that the Dozer will need to remove obstacles, but I might as well add an SA for that as well. Default would be to simply use the AVRE SA.

As for the proposed stats by Ober. I would bump the speed up to 4. Most Sherman tanks are speed 4 and I would like to have this unit be able to keep up with them. The proposed defense of 6/4 is fine with me. It doesn't need any armament. Its' main task is an engineering one.

So any ideas for a dyke breaching / road clearing SA?
How much would the full AVRE SA add to the unit compared to a limited AVRE SA that takes out Pillbox removal?

Centaur Dozer
Vehicle - Dozer
Year available: 1944

Cost: ?
Speed: 4

Defense: 6/4

AI: -/-/-

AV: -/-/-

Dozer AVRE SA - Limited to clearing Minefields, Barbed Wire and Tank Obstacles

Road clearing SA - text needed

ok, that is a good start for a Dozer Blade SA. Now a question....

* Should breaching a dyke, filling in a shell hole, clearing rubble or forest be something that the Dozer automatically succeeds in doing or should there be a die roll? If a die roll, then what should it be? 4 or higher on a 6d?

I would cost it at 12. I have a spreadsheet that calc's AAM & WaS unit costs with pretty good accuracy. Regarding how easy it is to clear terrain, that depends on your scenario and its use while balancing accuracy and playability. Realistically, clearing a 100m hex in 1 turn isn't going to happen, but it probably needs to for a scenario to work. It probably depends on how many of them you have in the game - if there are more, the probability can be less. If there are only a few, it may need to be automatic. I prefer a die roll b/c units do this just to move thru difficult terrain, and Demolition requires a roll to remove a bridge or obstacle. Changing a terrain type (at least enough so that it is passable) is pretty much comparable to clearing an obstacle. Setting charges to blow a bridge wouldn't happen in a turn either but it works for game play.

In my earlier post that's what I meant by adding a road section - essentially making a passable route thru the hex, but not changing the entire area of the hex to clear terrain. It would be a path thru the shellholes or rubble, but the shellholes and rubble would still be in the hex for units to take cover in.

Where/when are you going to run this?

P.S. using your card templates right now to make units for a Guadalcanal campaign!

This past Saturday I had four friends over to do a play test of my Bounce the Rhine scenario. I used a small paper counter to represent the Centaur Dozer. After the British Engineers laid down a pontoon bridge over the Rhine River, the Centaur Dozer quickly followed behind some of the initial vehicles making the crossing. It breached the River Dyke during its' assault phase and allowed vehicles to cross over it immediately. We stopped the play test before the scenario ended, but my guess is that the Dozer would have breached the Dyke at least one more time and then would not have much more to do. So I'm thinking it would be better to make it an automatic thing rather than have to do a die roll.