Editing M60 Patton (section)

===USA===
[[File:M60A3Stats.jpg |300px|left|thumb|Valley forge, Custer's ranks, San Juan Hill and Patton's tanks, and the Army went rolling along...]]
[[File:M60a1.jpeg |300px|Right|thumb|Go ahead. Make my day.]]
First employed by American forces in the 1950s, the M60 Patton remains the mainstay of U.S. Army tankers in 1985 and is the sole main battle tank operated by the U.S. Marine Corps. Caught five years into the process of phasing its M60s out in favor of the newer and better M1 Abrams (introduced in 1980), the U.S. Army has waded into the fighting with a sizeable fleet of Pattons. The Marines, meanwhile, still having to make do with the second-hand stuff, will be enthusiastically destroying things that somebody else has to pay for, old tanks be damned. The M60 Patton may not be as good as it once was in 1985, but it's a workhorse and that's good enough.

Despite being a vastly different and considerably older design, the M60 Patton is basically armed with the same weapons systems as the older model [[M1 Abrams|Abrams]] (sans one .30cal) and can dish out the same damage. The M68 105mm Cannon has a ROF of 2 both moving and staying still, meaning the M60 can use its mobility while still being capable of engaging targets. The ''Laser Rangefinder'' rule allows the M60A3 to engage targets beyond 16 inches without adding +1 to your shooting rolls. The AT of 20 is more than enough to punch right through anything lighter than an MBT and stands a decent chance of damaging things like the [[T-72]]. With increasing amounts of Soviet armor available at frontal 18, you may decide to complement your tanks with a few ATGMs to reliably punch through a line of tanks.

On the defensive, however, the M60 comes up a bit short. The Patton has front armor 15, only one more than the [[T55AM2]], which means that Soviet Tank guns will perforate it like an oversized balloon, to say nothing of ATGMs. The side armor is a similarly lackluster 8 (which is actually one less than a T55AM2 but still 2 better than the [[Chieftain]]), making it vulnerable even to some of the heavier autocannons. It gets worse, the M60 lacks any kind of additional protection, including Bazooka Skirts, so what you see is what you get on this thing. And coming as it does from the 1950s, the M60 Patton has no internal armor to shield the crew from an ammunition explosion, meaning that a hit on its 105mm shell storage will send the turret flying and kill everyone inside just as a similar hit would on a Warsaw Pact tank.

While players may look at the obsolete armor that the Patton boasts- it's got the same frontal armor points as a T-72M, for Chrissakes- and run back to the Abrams, consider the point costs. Even the base Abrams costs ''double'' that of a Patton, i.e. 8pts compared to 4, (to say nothing of an M1A1HC) meaning that a platoon of M1 tanks could translate to two platoons of M60s. With the effective doubling or more in firepower, players with a preference for damage or the ability to preserve their tanks using LOS blocking will find the Patton to be far more cost-effective.

U.S. Army and U.S. Marine tank units may take Patton Platoons ranging in size from 2 to 5. There is a lot to be said for buying two M60s instead of a single Abrams, although that does mean your NATO force suddenly gets expensive, model-wise. In the typical infantry heavy meta, players will often find they are a strictly better option than the Abrams with the spare points going for additional [[US Mech Platoon|Mech Platoons]] or support instead.

TL;DR: Cheaper, decent tank, more fragile, but also more economical (for your list not your pocketbook).