Wargame review — Tank Duel

(My review of the first two expansions is here.)

Move Over, Gunther

Designer: Mike Bertucelli

Player count: 1-8

Publisher: GMT Games

While the concept of war conjures up many different images and indeed has inspired an onslaught of movies, no martial element seems to fuel the collective imagination quite as effectively as the tank. Sure, war planes go faster and ships offer their own alloy of might and elegance, but tanks are much more relatable. For one thing, they work hand-in-hand (so to speak) with the infantry, the basic building block of any army. For another—and this may be the crux of the fascination they hold over us—the fact that tanks operate on land brings them vertiginously close to the everyday vehicles we’ve all grown accustomed to. Cars, trucks, big rigs… There’s an immediacy that pulls tanks within our reach. In a bind, we’re pretty sure we could drive one of those steel behemoths.

Yet, strangely, few games have tackled those mechanical beasts head on. Oh, there’s always a handful of tank counters in your run-of-the-mill wargame, but how often do you find yourself in the thick of things, maneuvering your metal fortress across treacherous terrain while trying to spot an enemy tank—and get off a shot before he does?

This is exactly what designer Mike Bertucelli and publisher GMT are proposing with Tank Duel, a title that mixes the old with the new in an exciting and volatile package.

In this first volume, Russia clashes with Germany as both sides control a handful of tank lining up for the carnage. Each tank is represented by a large player board, loaded with weapons stats, stations for crewmen, range indicators, and more. On that board are logged a tank’s successes, using the victory point track, but also its failures—usually in the form of wounded or dead crew members.

Let’s get one essential bit of info out of the way right now: there is no game board in Tank Duel, and movement is completely abstracted. Range is relative to what is imagined as the middle of the battlefield, meaning that if Tank A is marked at 400 meters and Tank B at 200 meters, both are 600 meters away from each other. (Older gamers might be reminded of Avalon Hill's Up Front, and they wouldn’t be wrong.) No lines of sight, no zones of control, no movement point allowance—the system feels strange at first but quickly becomes natural and fades in the background when the shells start to fly.

The beating heart of Tank Duel is a deck of Battle Cards, each of which features a Battle Number (from 1 to 100), one or more card effect, possible terrain effects, and a series of icons, triggers and markings. Each turn, a player must manage all of his tanks using a single hand of cards, which means that not all of his machines will be able to move or fire. First, each tank gets assigned a face-down initiative card. That card’s action will be disregarded: only its Battle Number is considered. Then tanks act in order, from lowest initiative to highest. When a tank’s turn has come—after going through a quick procedure to figure out whether a blazing tank survives or goes from bad to worse, or whether a demoralized crew rallies or decides to bail out without ceremony—its controller selects one of his remaining cards and launches the beast into action.

A Move card allows the tank to get 200m closer to of farther from the middle of the battlefield—with two Moves played together making that distance 400—but only if the Move card shows a number that is equal to or lower than the moving tank’s Move Level. (You used that Move 4 as an initiative card? Too bad.) Playing a Flank card while moving makes it possible for the tank to flank a spotted enemy, thus gaining access to more vulnerable armor. Playing a Terrain card after moving will stop that tank behind a building or in a wood, while not playing such a card will keep the tank in motion and make it harder to hit—unless the opponent plays a Terrain card on his turn, which could halt the moving tank in the middle of an open field, or worse, in a muddy bog.

A Smoke card hides the active tank behind an impenetrable curtain, provided the tank is actually equipped with a smoke dispenser, of course.

A Leadership card can conceal the active tank, spot an enemy, or steal a random card from an opponent’s hand.

Discarding any card enables a wide array of minor actions, which includes loading special ammunition (for that extra kick we all crave), and rearranging crew seating after Gunther the driver got more than he bargained for.

With a Fire card, the active tank can take a shot at an enemy they’ve previously spotted.

And that’s when things start to go boom.

First, the Fire card’s number needs to be equal to or lower than the active tank’s Fire Level. (Again, you should have thought twice before you used that Fire 3 as an initiative card.) Then the player declares his target and looks up his to-hit number based on the active tank’s ordnance chart: the closer you stand to your target, the bigger punch you deliver.

To that base number are added several modifiers, such as +20 for the play of a Leadership card, -20 for a Tactics card, +10 if target is flanked by the firing tank, plus size modifier, cover modifier, and so on. The player flips the top card of the battle deck and looks—intently—at its Battle Number: if it’s equal to or lower than the modified to-hit number just arrived at, the target is hit (but keep in mind cards 96 through 100 are automatic misses). If the attack was successful, another card flip determines the exact location of the hit. (Alternatively, the firing player could have played two Fire cards together, which enables him to select the hit location without resorting to the randomness of a card flip.)

Two similar checks are then executed for penetration and damage—the latter relying on the top card of the damage deck. Depending on whether damage was light, heavy, or perhaps critical (!), the ensuing destruction can go from a wounded crewman to tracks getting blow away (that tank’s moving days are behind it), to the outright explosion of that poor machine.

Following the fireworks, crewmen might have to bail. When that happens, a battle card is flipped for each man trying to get out the hell out of there: if that card features an icon that depicts the reason for the attempted escape (fire or explosion being the usual culprits), the crewman is killed. Of course, wounded crew must flip two battle cards and survive both—nobody said life would get any easier with shrapnel embedded in your right leg.

This procedure may seem lengthy but is in fact very intuitive and becomes second nature by the time you’re mourning the loss of your second T-34.

Whenever a crewman dies or a tank gets blown up (or, less spectacularly, abandoned), the opponent earns points. And the more important the crew member, the higher the point reward. The game ends after a number of “deck shuffles” as specified by the scenario, at which point the player or side with the most points wins. 

WAR PRODUCTION

The deep game box is stuffed to the brim with counters and markers of all kinds, several decks of thick, reliable cards, a mountain of player aids… but the real stars of the show are the 16 double-sided tank dashboards. Ever dreamt of sitting at the controls of a 1943 Tiger, or a massive IS-2m? Now’s your chance. They’re even printed on cardboard as thick as steel plates.

It’s a beautiful package, with exciting board art and attractive card backs I don’t mind spending hours staring at while blowing away my friends.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

The rules to Tank Duel are pretty simple, and the 20-page rulebook does an excellent job of laying them out in an organized and methodical manner. It’s one of those elusive rulebooks that are both excellent teaching machines, but also efficient reference tools—with an index at the back!

The much more voluminous playbook rides in with reinforcements in the form of a 20-page tutorial (that you probably won’t need—and that’s a positive thing), advanced and optional rules (hello infantry and anti-tank guns), a handful of scenarios, solitaire rules and example of play, plus a nifty card index and designer’s notes.

Overall the game is easy to learn and exciting to get into gear. Easy enough, in fact, for you to teach it to your buddy in about 20 minutes—something that can’t be said of many wargames.

FUN FACTOR

Without reaching for the cheapest pun within range, Tank Duel is a blast.

What it is not is a serious simulation or an intellectual exercise in armor command. You (abstractly) move around, get an enemy tank in your sights, try to find the best angle of attack, and fire away. The fun lies in trying to outflank your opponent, getting one of your tanks closer to the front for some scenario points (and the ability to draw more cards!), while using the rest of your armored machines to keep would-be attackers in check, and blasting away until everything on their side of the battlefield is ablaze.

Multiple options on each card force players to make deliciously difficult choices. Will you use your only Fire card to simply shoot at your opponent, or would it be more valuable to move your infantry forward, or perhaps open fire with one of your anti-tank guns in an advantageous position—or just use the low Battle Number to give yourself an edge when the initiative phase comes around?

Things also get hairy (i.e. interesting) when crewmen start to kick the steel-reinforced bucket. A dead driver will immobilize his tank until you spend an action moving someone else to his seat. (And depending on who takes his place, your tank might not move as well as it previously did.) The same goes for your gunner, your loader—and God forbid your commander should get hit.

Multiplayer is possible, with several players on each side, but I vastly prefer the head-to-head match: it forces you to operate your entire complement of tanks with a single hand of card, which in turn creates agonizing and game-changing decisions.

The game comes with a card-driven AI that makes for a nice enough adversary. However, it requires that you constantly recalculate whether enemy tanks have high or low quality shots, which wasn’t to my liking. It became too cumbersome for me, but your mileage may vary.

PARTING SHOTS

The only real beef I have with the game lies with its scenarios. Most of them are of the sandbox type where you’re given a basic situation and asked to pick your favorite tank match-up, along with a more or less experienced crew, as you see fit.

Me? I want historical scenarios (or plausible hypotheticals) that force me into unenviable positions and scream that I have to get myself out of them. The playbook proposes two such scenarios, which is not nearly enough. Give me more! I’d happily buy a scenario booklet in a ziplock bag.

Everything else about Tank Duel puts a large smile on my face.

One of my favorite aspects is how a game ends: while the “shuffle” card is always shuffled in the bottom half of the battle deck, the “game end” card—upon the very last reshuffle of the game—goes anywhere in the deck, leaving opponents no room to breathe, no margin of error. The skirmish might end at any time now, and if you don’t make up for lost time (and points) with your next two or three actions, that’s it, you’re toast.

Of course, you can then just play another match.

And I know you will.

Not exactly a great situation—but hey, the game's over!

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