Chicago Skirmish Wargames

One of the games I was excited to see at Midwest Miniatures Expo was What a Tanker!, a game of WWII tank combat made by Too Fat Lardies. Each player runs one or up to a handful of tanks. Each tank has a two statistics- Armor and Strike. Those are the defensive and offensive abilities of the tank. Most tank have one or two special abilities called Features.

To start each turn, one die is rolled for each tank to establish initiative order. For its individual turn, each tank rolls six dice and those results determine what your tank is able to do this turn. Briefly, 1=move, 2= acquire a target, 3=aim, 4=shoot, 5=reload, and 6=wild or other special actions. Ideally, you will get a good mix of die results and be able to find a target, shoot it and reload, ready for next turn. The special abilities also come into play here. My tanks were fast, which meant I could convert any single die to a one for extra movement.

This Game saw me running two Soviet t32/85 tanks versus another player's two German Panthers. In the first turn, my left tank got  a lucky shot and destroyed one of the panthers. More frequently, a shot would cause temporary or permanent loss of command dice, reducing the options for future turns.

On the right side of the board, our tanks were not able to get off a successful shot. This might be a good time to mention that we were using 15mm tanks that were originally painted with other games in mind. The terrain is mostly paper buildings, which look quite good at this scale, especially with some added lichen and flock.

I took both of my tanks in, trying to surround the remaining panther. This looked to be going ok for a while, but eventually my tank hiding behind that house was destroyed. My remaining tank pursued around some woods and eventually found itself with its back to the panther's front. This did not end well for me and my final tank was destroyed.

I very much enjoyed What a Tanker! and I have picked up the rules in PDF. It might be fun to use with some of our Konflikt 47 tanks some time. I have also seen a facebook group dedicated to playing this game with 1/144 Gundams. Too Fat Lardies also appear to be working on a set of fantasy rules- a significant departure from their norm- so I will look forward to seeing those.