Landing with a thump and a clatter of tracks recently “What a Tanker” is a low-level game of tank duelling from Too Fat Lardies. It’s aimed squarely at the multiplayer tank smash-up market. This is a game that most WW2 players have probably already got enough toys to play, and at £16 for the PDF version of the rules it won’t drive a panzer division through your hobby budget.
So what’s the story?
Force Composition
Unusually for a Lardy game, this one has a points system! Players are free to set up their games however they like though, it’s a bit of guidance to achieving reasonably balanced forces and not a hard and fast rule.
Intended mostly as a multiplayer game, the authors suggest that playing one tank per player is probably the best way to experience the game. That in itself is going to decide how many tanks are on the table, so you can match up roughly equal vehicles each side and possibly use points to help you do that.
The game has rules for playing as a campaign, and your tank crew will gain experience that give them bonus abilities. Once they achieve ace status (five kills) they’ve got the option to either upgrade their tank (and lose all their bonuses) or stay in their current one and enjoy their ace status. So if you’re playing the game as a club league the choice of vehicles on the table will be largely set by who’s playing.
The career ladder breaks the war down by country and year. For each year the weakest tanks are your starting vehicles. If you’re playing a campaign your crew must pick one of these and earn the upgrade to a higher level vehicle.
It’s worth noting that the only vehicles available in the rulebook are all proper tanks, tank destroyers or assault guns. In short: it’s got to have tracks. There are no armoured cars and no rules for wheeled vehicles included. AT guns, infantry and artillery are also not included, this really is just a tank game.
Nuts-and-bolts wise, each tank has two stats: the gun and armour. On top of that,some have special attributes, such as being “fast”, having a “slow turret”, or being a tank destroyer.
One strange omission is anything denoting tanks with two-man or one-man turrets. Given that a large part of the game is about how the crew within a tank work together in action it seems strange that the single biggest lesson learned during combat in WW2 about crew co-ordination hasn’t made it into the game. The existing mechanics could easily model it with a few simple additional rules: all the parts are there to make it happen. It’s a little baffling that it’s not in there. It must have been considered during playtesting and I can’t see any good reason to leave it out. I for one would be very, very tempted to house rule it when playing early war scenarios where it’s going to be important and add a lot of fun flavour to the game. I really think they’ve missed an opportunity to model an important historical factor in a way that few other wargames have really been able to do. [/rant]

Do you button up and protect your commander, or should he stay head out and benefit from acquiring targets much more easily?
Command and Control
Each vehicle operates independently, using a now-familiar Lardy mechanic: command dice. Each vehicle starts with six command dice, and when rolled the results can be used to try to activate various crew positions:
- 1’s activate the driver to move the tank
- 2’s allow the commander to acquire targets
- 3’s are “aim dice”, where the commander directs the gunner onto the target
- 4’s activate the gunner to shoot
- 5’s activate the loader to stick a fresh one up the spout
6’s are wild dice that can be turned into any other dice, or used to improve rolls to hit and damage, or used to rally disorder off the crew.
Each tank plays all their command dice and then play passes to the next tank. Players can play their command dice in any order. You could shoot-move-shoot if your dice allow, for example.
Initiative order is diced for at the start of each fresh round. Players can try to improve their chances by holding onto one or more 6’s from their previous turn.
As detailed below in the “Combat” section, damage to the vehicle is represented by loss of command dice. So as your vehicle takes damage it becomes less responsive. If you lose all six dice, your crew bail out. This kind of progressive decay of command and control under fire is a bit of a Lardy trademark, and something I really like in wargames. I like rules where the chaos and confusion are baked into the core rules of the game, instead of being a sort of “take a morale roll” and pass/fail binary afterthought.
Movement

It can be difficult to score critical damage from the front, but this Cromwell one-shotted this PzIV by dashing around and hitting it in the flank
If you’ve got 1’s or 6’s in your command dice you can move, potentially quite fast. Some tanks have a “fast” attribute which allows them to convert any other dice into a drive dice. This means they’re guaranteed to be able to move, other vehicles aren’t. I can see some people getting upset about not being able to move when they want or as fast as they want. On top of this, move distances are random, although the standard move is 2d6″ so at least it’s on a bell curve and therefore somewhat predictable.
It’s not unusual to be able to move 4d6″ or even 6d6″ in a single activation. If you’ve already acquired a target it’s quite possible to do a massive charge and nail them in the flank as you drive by. Flank hits are very nasty. The “fast” tanks have a big advantage here, and positioning is crucial. Most of the game is about trying to drive your tank into an advantageous position, with the target acquired and the gun laid onto them and loaded.
Terrain does play a big part, linear obstacles will severely cut movement while also making it harder to spot and hit targets. So you’ll need to be maneuvering to take advantage of that.
From our limited play so far we found that the high move rates allow tanks to often get quite close, and it looked a bit silly in 28mm on the recommended 6x4ft table. The game played fine, but with all the tearing around I think smaller scales like 15mm will look better. Upping the table size would have the same effect, I’d recommend at least 6x6ft for 28mm.
One unusual rule that looks like a bit of fun is that bridges are pretty rickety. You have to dice to cross one, and if you try crossing a weak bridge in a big tank you might just collapse it. Wooden bridges will let only the very lightest pass, and even stone ones might crack if you take the heaviest of the heavies across. If it does collapse it’s an insta-kill for your big fat Elefant or KV.
Deployment and Scenarios
These are basic in the extreme. Three slight variations are provided in the rules, but this is basically a “start on your table edge and go for it” game. Forces are assumed to be matched and victory conditions are the same for everybody.
There’s nothing to stop you from coming up with your own scenarios, of course.
Combat

Depending on your terrain, combat can be quite up close and personal
So you’ve managed to drive your tank into a good position and spot your target? What happens next? Well, assuming you’ve got the gun loaded and the right command dice to fire it you roll a 2d6 to hit, with a basic score of 6. This gets modified by cover, and if you succeed you’ve hit the other tank somewhere. Front, side and rear armour is modeled, but the front zone is fairly narrow (60 degrees to the front) giving much larger flanks than most other games.
There’s only one range band, over 48″ your to-hit score goes up but only by +1, and there’s no adjustment to gun power for range. The ground scale really only covers the closest part of the gun’s range so things like position and cover are judged to have more effect then the small amount of power the gun loses over that range.
Once you’ve hit the firer and target roll a handful of dice for their gun and armour, and compare the successes. The firer’s target score drops as they get flank or rear shots, and it makes a big difference. Flank shots from late war tanks can easily result in a one-shot kill, while head-on ones rarely will. Early war tanks tend to nibble away at each other a bit more, as you need three unsaved hits for an outright kill: difficult if you’re only rolling four dice to start.
Any unsaved hits result in a loss of command dice, and possibly some additional effects if you roll well enough. Early war tanks should be able to survive several good hits from their contemporaries, late war ones are probably dead or ineffective after a couple of hits.
Amusingly there are rules for ramming, but it requires some lucky rolling and doesn’t count as a “kill” for crew experience so it’s of fairly dubious benefit.
The game is all about getting kills in, as it’s these kills that you’ll use to climb the career ladder and get better tanks.
Morale and Psychology

The game rewards teamwork to outmaneuver the enemy, but ultimately only one of you can claim the kill, so it pays to be bold!
There are no specific rules for psychology in the game, something that normally makes me suspicious of a rule set. However, it turns out there are some subtleties at work.
First of all, the temporary damage that tanks can pick up works similarly to the “shock” that other Lardy rule sets tend to use. It’s an abstract way of showing any kind of temporary reduction in effectiveness, which is going to include fear and disorder among the crew. That’s why the commander can rally it back off, and bring the crew back to full effectiveness.
The player also provides some of the psychology, the desire to keep your crew alive and level them up will mean that players won’t want to expose them to unnecessary risks.
About the closest thing What a Tanker has to an actual morale rule is that when a tank is reduced to zero command dice the crew automatically bail out.
Victory Conditions
The game is played co-op. If you destroy all the tanks on the other team, you’ve won. However, since players may want to avoid risking the pointless death of an experienced crew there is also the option for one side to throw in the towel once the odds get to 2:1 or worse.
For example, in a 3-a-side game, if one side gets down to their last tank and they’re still facing two or three enemies they have the option to withdraw and concede the game. That’s a sensible rule IMO.
Yes, but is it fun?
If you’re looking for a super-serious simulation, you’re probably not going to be happy with What a Tanker. Likewise if you want to put a tank company on the table and watch them sweep majestically across the Russian steppes in formation, again, this is not the game for you.
On the flip side, if like me you tried Gale Force Nine’s recent game “Tanks!” and thought it was a ridiculously oversimplified and frankly a bit dull, you might want to give this a go.
What you get is a lightweight multiplayer game that has a lot of friction, some lightweight resource management and a lot of tactical decision-making. It’s a hoot to play, and shines in a club or convention environment where you want to put a bunch of people around a table and have them smash up each others’ tanks. Think of a table version of the video game “World of Tanks”, but with most of the really ahistorical bits trimmed out.
10 Responses to “What a Tanker” Review
Gregory Padilla says:
Excellent overview. We’ve played two games so far…more planned by the weeks end.
JOHN BOND wargaming stuff says:
Thanks for the review Andy , still waiting for my hardcopy here in Australia.
You mentioned scale, what scale are you thinking of using for the game?
cheers john
Andy says:
We’ve played it in 28mm so far, the game worked fine but I think it looked a little crowded. Movement rates are quite high, it’s easy for tanks to close the gap on a 6×4 table and you end up with 28mm tanks banging away at 6″ which looks a little odd IMO. I’d suggest using a smaller scale, or a much bigger table. 8×8 might look better if you’re using 28mm?
My club wants to do western desert in 15mm as our club period which will hopefully look good on a 6×4. While we’re getting the desert terrain and miniatures together for that we’ll be using one of the guys’ 20mm 1940 France stuff. So in short we’ll end up doing at least three scales!
Alan Saunders says:
That seems a fair review of the game. We played it for the first time last night and found it a lot of fun, although I’m not sure our terrain was as restrictive as it could and should have been.
You make an interesting point with regard to the limited turrets of early tanks, and I wonder what the best way of reflecting them is. Maybe some kind of limit on how many *different* actions a vehicle can perform is the way to go (no more than three different dice types can be expended, excluding Wild Dice. So in a turn you can load, aim and fire but not reload and move, for example, unless you use wild dice to do the latter tasks).
I was disappointed not to see some mechanism for multi-gun or multi-turret tanks, such as the T35, Char B and Lee/Grant. Again, it’s probably not impossible to come up with something.
Andy says:
Rich has mentioned that he might put something about multi-gun tanks into a next Special. I don’t think it should be too hard to manage though: you’ve got a fixed hull gun with strike 6 and a turreted gun with strike 4. Commander acquires targets like normal, but each gun needs to aim/shoot/reload independently. You could use two dashboards, or modify the existing one to have extra aim/reload boxes?
Brisko32312 says:
“Given that a large part of the game is about how the crew within a tank operate together in action it seems strange that the single biggest lesson learned during combat in WW2 about crew co-ordination hasn’t made it into the game. […] I for one would be very, very tempted to house rule it when playing early war scenarios where it’s going to be important and add a lot of fun flavour to the game.” Would you mind to share your ideas? I am always looking for input to shape out tnak encounters and make them a bit more realistic/authentic.
Andy says:
I think it’s going to depend on exactly what you’re asking the commander to do. If it’s a French tank where the commander has to be hanging out the back then I’d say you can only acquire while unbuttoned, and while doing so you can’t aim/shoot/reload. If he pops inside then you can aim/shoot/reload but you can’t acquire as he’s too busy and can’t see.
If you’re just talking about a tank where the commander is also the gunner, but has a loader (eg: Panzer II) then again I’d say you can’t aim/shoot while unbuttoned, but I would allow him to acquire while buttoned as he did have some decent visibility in that case.
Pieter says:
My first thought is that you get command dice equal to crew + one, so an R35 or Pz I has only three dice. If each dice is a crewman action, that seems pretty correct (although I can’t say if it would work as a game).
Richard Naco says:
Typically excellent review, Andy. We’re looking at running this at a tournament (where it will be a long way from the most serious game played that weekend), so how long would games go if we allow two vehicles maximum per player?
Andy says:
Richard, how long is a piece of string? Lots of variables.
Lots of tanks = longer game, obviously
Early war = longer game, as the small guns struggle to get an outright kill and just nibble away
Lots of terrain = longer game
Personally I would limit it to just one tank per player. It’ll make the game snappier, help newbies to manage their dashboards and the game just works better when players are personally invested in “their” tank.
We generally play about 4-6 people with one tank each and get a couple of kills in a game of about 2-3 hours in early war. We do recycle players as they get knocked out, too.