Saturday, November 12, 2016

Achtung, Panzer!

Picked up a copy of TANKS by Gale Force 9. Fun little game. Very stripped down WWII game with total focus on tank combat.

Yes, it's a game, but this is clearly designed as an introductory WWII armor miniatures game. The game provides two Shermans and one Panther as plastic model kits (the same 15mm kits produced by Battlefront). The models are clean, well cast and easy to assemble. All pluses that will hook the budding model builder. Heck, I've been building models for decades and I enjoyed putting the models together.

As a game, it's well written and easy to pick up. At the same time, there's a good degree of strategy and planning required. It's initiative system is reminiscent of Star Wars or X-Wing. High initiative units move last and shoot first. You get data cards for a variety of tanks for the major powers - the United Kingdom, Germany, the Soviet Union and United States of America.  No Italian, French or Japanese tanks at this time.

There are modifiers in the form of crew and equipment cards.

Game play is straight forward. The game may start to bog down with more than a couple of platoons of tanks on each side. Terrain and cover are both represented with simple easy to grasp rules.

Overall this is great for casual play by grognards and veteran gamers and as noted above a great intro game for gamers new to tabletop gamers.

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