Rules Review - What A Tanker!

What a Tanker! is one of the newest releases by Too Fat Lardies, and they were so kind to donate one of the books (and a matching token set) to our project!

What a Tanker! is designed as a multi-player tank duel game. It is recommended that each player fields a single vehicle, but you want at least 2 vehicles per team, and in my experience, each player can easily control up to 3 vehicles. There is a point system that gives you an idea which vehicles are roughly equals, and it works very nicely. Of course there are some very powerful vehicles like the Jagdtiger, which will give your opponent some head ache if he invested in a more balanced force, but these kind of matches should be very rare.

The game also features rules for campaign play, in which your crews earn experience, get promoted to more expensive vehicles and gain special abilities. Five kills give you ace status, and you’ll gain a special ability or upgrade to the next tier of tanks.

Each tanks has two main attributes, Strike and Armor. Strike is the strength of your gun, and armor is, well, the strength of your armor. Besides that, there are some special rules like Fast (more opportunities to move), Rapid Fire (only needs to reload once per turn) or Iron Fist (better chance to deal permanent damage).

Each player uses a dashboard for each vehicle to keep track of its status. 

The activation is kind of similar to Chain of Command. Each tank has 5 command dice whih are rolled at the start of each activation. Different results allow different actions: 1 is movement, 2 is target acquisition, 3 is aim, 4 is shoot, 5 is reload and 6 is a wild card that can be used as any other dice, to give you an advantage for initiative next round or to modify to hit numbers. Yes, you need to go through a lot of steps to shoot at your enemy. And yes, you may be all set up and ready but can’t get the “4” that will actually allow you to deal out some pain. But in reality, these moments are rare, and they are what gives this game spice. You will be very often have those “stand up”-roll, when this one drive or shoot dice will make or break your gamble.

Once you are unleashing on an opponent’s tank, you roll 2D6 modified by movement and terrain to hit. After that, you roll your Strike dice and your opponent rolls his Armor dice. Depending on positions, you’ll need different results to score kits. For example, if you hit the front armor, you’ll need 5s for hits and 6s for critical hits, on the rear armor you’ll get hits for every die showing a 3 and criticals for every result of 4 or more. The target needs 5s or 6s for saves. Compare the results: More saves than hits means the shot didn’t do anything. An equal number of hits and saves means minor damage and the target falls back. If you score more hits than saves, you’ll do damage: temporary damage if you rolled more ordinary hits than criticals, and permanent damage when you rolled more critical than ordinary hits. If you have 3 more hits than the target has saves, the target is outright destroyed by your shot. Temporary and permanent damage costs you command dice, and permanent damage also affects your hull or turret.

If your tank is reduced to zero command dice, the crew will bail out and the vehicle is destroyed. Matches often develop into a game of cat and mouse when each side hopes for the right combination of dice to come up to support their fiendish plans, but it never gets dull.

This is What a Tanker! in a nutshell. It is a fast, fun game with a lot of randomness, but it rarely feels frustrating. Definitely on the “beer & pretzels” side of gaming, but still pleasantly sophisticated, and a great way to have some fun with a unique way to play.

And the winner of our raffle will not only get a copy of the rule book, but also a set of tokens for their dashboards!