In my continuing quest to standardize and normalize unit stats across all the official and user-created materials, I've stumbled into some confusion regarding the Firepower Against Vehicles (FAV) of the British QF 6-Pounder and American M1 57 mm AT guns. I'll share my thinking here, with sources listed at the end . . .
First, note that these two guns are functionally the same--the M1 57 mm is an American-made copy of the QF 6-Pounder, and both had a barrel length in calibers of L/50.
The original FFG DotF expansion (published 2008) unit reference sheets state that these guns have FAV = 9. The 1A Games DotF expansion (published 2015) unit reference sheets state that these guns have FAV = 6.
The 1A Games Operations Card "Crusader III" (A09), published ca. 2016, represents the up-gunned Crusader variant, armed with the 6-Pounder, with "a range of 7 and firepower of 9 when attacking enemy vehicles." These are the same stats as those published in the original 2008 DotF expansion.
The closest comparison with other officially-published ToI stats would be the German 5 cm Kampfwagenkanone 38 (L/42) and 5 cm Kampfwagenkanone 39 (L/60) tank guns on the base Panzer III unit (former) and up-gunned variant presented in 1A Games Operations Card "Panzer III Ausf. J" (A10). FAV for these guns is 6 and 8, respectively.
I compared the historical stats of these guns using Wikipedia, and from the ballistics tables it appears to me that the QF 6-Pounder and M1 57 mm guns were meaningfully more effective than the German guns in that they could penetrate thicker armor at the same ranges, plus the German guns had an overall shorter effective range. The differences are not drastic, but sufficient, in my interpretation, to translate into game mechanical differences.
Taking all of this into consideration, my finding is that the 1A Games designers erred in reducing the FAV of the QF 6-Pounder and M1 57 mm from 9 to 6; the FAV should be 9.
Sources
Fantasy Flight Games Tide of Iron Days of the Fox Expansion (2008).
1A Games Tide of Iron Days of the Fox Next Wave Expansion (2015).
1A Games Tide of Iron Next Wave Operations Card "Crusader III" (A09) (2016?).
1A Games Tide of Iron Next Wave Base Game (2014).
1A Games Tide of Iron Next Wave Operations Card "Panzer III Ausf. J" (A10) (2016?).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_QF_6-pounder
.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_cm_KwK_39
.
