What A Massive Tanker

Seven People!

Thirteen Tanks!

Our Biggest Game of 'What A Tanker' So Far!

The truth is the game was thrown together at the last minute, loads of people turned up wanting to play and we had an eclectic, random assortment of vehicles to choose from. We went for a 1943 Russian setting whis allowed us to use a wide variety of vehicles.

On the Russian side we had: 2 x T34/76, 1 x KV, 1 x SU76, 1 x SU85, 1 x Lend-Lease Sherman, 1 x Lend-Lease Valentine

The Germans were simpler: 2 x Stug III, 2 x Pz III and 2 x Marder

Here's one of the Marders. I ran them both. No turret rotation to keep track of, which is good but, on the downside, the crew are always exposed to enemy fire.

Everybody in the middle went for cover, although I think what was available favoured the Russians more than the Germans - they had good strong walls and we just had hedges.

We lost a Stug early on. And one of my Marders took so many hits that the crew abandoned it.

The rest of our force moved to engage the Russians, who were now happily ensconced in nice defensive positions.

The Panzer IIIs managed to set themselves up too, but terrible activation dice meant that they never really got to shoot at anything.

My surviving Marder, however, had an amazingly lucky time of it. I pushed it out into the open in order to get a shot at the SU76, accepting that doing so would probably see it blown away by the supporting Russian tanks. But it wasn't; they either missed or their shots were deflected by the armour. I plugged away at the SU76 until it was destroyed, and then engaged and seriously damaged one of the T34s as well. The plucky tank-destroyer was still operational when we called time on the game, albeit with some minor damage.

One of the Panzer IIIs wasn't so lucky, destroyed by a long-range shot from the Sherman.

The other Panzer III? Very lucky. A T34 had worked its way behind it, and got in two clean shots. Both hit but, amazingly, bounced off the armour.

Anyway, by this stage we'd been playing for over three hours, so we called it a night. The Russians were still mostly fighting fit, whereas the Germans were down to a Marder and a PzIII. And maybe a Stug; my memory has deserted me here. And all of them had reduced dice pools. We called it a Russian win, but we think they very much had the edge in terms of kit; the points system in 'What A Tanker' doesn't really reflect actual capabilities we feel.

Was it fun? Oh yes. Loud and boisterous, according to the people on the adjacent table. And it ran smoothly, despite the size of the game.