The folks at Moments in History, eager to tap into the torrent of money still being thrown around in the collectable card game market, have released their Eastern Front edition of Tank Commander, a collectable card game of WW2 tank warfare. The game’s 164 different cards comes in four rarities and each card represents one vehicle, one anti-tank gun, or one squad of infantry or cavalry. The rest of the cards represent special events, equipment, and terrain. The decks are composed of 30% German combatants, 30% Soviet, and 40% special events and terrain. Play begins with the gamers selecting a scenario to play out and then selecting the scenario-defined cards to start the game with, although having all these required cards in the historical scenarios is problematic because this is a collectable card game and, unless you spend an obscene amount of money on the game to get all the cards (yeah, I consider $89 for a card game an obscene expenditure), then you will most probably not have all these cards required for the various scenarios. I did not, and I had six decks to work with. This is only a minor problem, since the three historical scenarios can, in no way, simulate the actions portrayed, and they are not as interesting as the other six scenarios, which only require the players to spend build points to form up their at-start forces and terrain. The combat unit cards are rated for their anti-tank to-hit numbers at long range (two cards away) and close range, armor penetration at long and close range, the AFV’s front and side armor protection values, high explosive value, small arms value, and melee value (if the card is infantry or cavalry). Unfortunately, the early rules did not list what numbers on the cards are the armor protection values, the explanation of the values of special equipment is erroneous and confusing, and the placement of the small arms and melee values for infantry was poorly thought-out, which adds to further confusion. However, I have been told that most of this errata has been corrected in the new rulebooks. The illustrations of the card descriptions are also very tiny and hard to read, but this is endemic in collectable card games that must use such small rule books. The cards all have illustrations, but these illustrations have no one standard style. The equipment, anti-tank gun, and infantry cards use photos and paintings, while the vehicle cards use beautiful renditions of the vehicle with its camouflage markings and good use of detail and shading. But these well-drawn tanks have been placed on terribly ugly backgrounds and the terrain cards themselves demonstrate a poor use of space, where the majority of the card is blank, the various terrain modifiers are tiny, and the terrain illustration is the size of a postage stamp…which might be a blessing as the terrain illustrations are just plain hideous. The best terrain illustration is for the village, although no small Russian village I know had a huge domed castle that looks like the palace from Eisenstein’s “Alexander Nevski”. The cards work well enough and have few typos...the only false vehicle illustration that I could find is the Soviet truck, which was supposed to be a lend-lease American Studebaker 2 1/2 ton truck but the illustration is of an American M3A1 White scout car with its convertible top on. The game’s battlefield is made up of twelve spaces (three wide and four deep), upon which the players may place terrain that they purchased with build points or were given in the conditions of the scenario. The terrain grants various combat modifiers, may block line-of-sight, and/or slows the movement of the combat units as they travel through them. Since victory is given to the player who takes possession of one or more of their opponent’s rear line areas, the players will have to select a proper amount of combat units to fill out their three spaces in their rear line instead of selecting a few super-tanks. This rear line security is best done with lots of infantry equipped with special weapons, like panzerfausts or flame throwers, and placed in terrain since infantry in terrain cannot be attacked except by close combat melee. This is pretty much the only case where infantry can serve a useful purpose, since, as the game’s name suggests, this is a game of tank combat. Infantry, unless they are equipped with those rare special weapons (the German panzerschreck bazooka is given an armor piercing rating which far exceeds its historical abilities), has only a ten percent chance of sergeant Rock-ing a tank. Play of TC moves along smartly, with the player moving a group of cards one or two spaces (depending if the combat units are fast or not) on the battlefield, or fire one card at another, or play an instant special event card (such as Artillery Barrage, Coordination, Reinforcements, etc.), and then draw one card (two, if the player performed no action) and discard. The other player may respond to these actions by playing interrupt cards such as placing a Stream or Minefield on a moving group, responding to an Artillery Barrage with a Counterbattery Fire card, and so on. The main way to get the ball rolling is to move the cards from a friendly group into an enemy-occupied position to engage in a melee with the defenders. In a melee, terrain offers no protection, except for infantry in foxholes or bunkers, and all anti-tank fire goes against the vehicles side/rear armor protection values. Vehicles must use their small arms rating to attack enemy infantry, cavalry, anti-tank guns, and trucks. This represents the amount of machine guns mounted on the vehicle, so players should be mindful of this and not melee enemy infantry/ATGs with tank destroyers, which, mostly, had no machine guns on them. Regular ranged fire is simple, with the players trading blows with each other. High explosive values are used against anti-tank guns and infantry/cavalry not in terrain at short range. This is the main way that artillery is used in the game (unless the player has a wealth of rocket artillery cards). In anti-tank fire, even if the firing unit doesn’t have a chance of piercing the target’s armor it still has a 30% chance of eliminating the tank by immobilizing it with a track hit or, if a natural 1 or 2 was drawn on the to-hit roll, then the shot goes against the tank’s side/rear armor (which may be halved if the shot originally went against the side armor by the playing of a flank shot card or the combat is a melee). So even a 37mm anti-tank gun has the ability to take out a monster tank which makes the owners of these behemoths leery of going on solo rampages across the battlefield without fear of being taken out. The statistics on the combat units seem reasonable enough, but I found a few confusing examples: The penetration value of the PzKw IVj is lower than the PzKw Ivh, although they both have the same long 75mm gun. The Soviet 76.2 P obr. 36 anti-tank gun has a higher armor penetration value than the SU-76m, KV-1s and T-34 m43, which mounted this gun. The German PzKw IIIj, with its 50mm gun, has a higher armor penetration and high explosive values than the long 76.2mm gun-armed Soviet tanks mentioned above. The data that I have states that the 50mm KwK 39 L/60 gun can pierce 45mm of armor and the 76.2mm gun can pierce 120mm of armor. We do note that TC is built for Killer Decks; a profligate player can load a small deck with late-model super tanks. The rules limit the players to no more than two duplicates of any special event or equipment cards, but if the player sent in the very rare Tank Repair Shop card and got four King Tiger tanks, then that player will be very hard to beat. No, you cannot trade in this card for a platoon of JS-3s since MiH’s view is that, with East Front games, everyone’s favorite side is the Nazis. Me? I like to play the winners. Regardless, TC is a fast, simple, colorful, and mildly entertaining game. Players, looking for more than a rock-paper-scissors treatment of WW2 tank combat, will be disappointed, but high simulation value is not to be found in card games. Capsule Comments Graphic Presentation: Except for terrain and some infantry illustrations, very good. Playability: After the players figure out what has been misrepresented in the rules, the game is very simple to play to completion. Replayability: If you like the game, good, with nine different scenarios. Historicity: Nice, but you get pre-war klunkers and late-model tanks fighting side-by-side. Creativity: A lot like all the other WWII card games. Wristage: Not an issue. Comparisons: Echelons of Fury is better graphically and has better developed, albeit some nonsensical, rules. The Last Crusade is the best of the WW2 card games in simulating combined-arms battles. My favorite is still Avalon Hill’s Up Front. Overall: Tank Commander is a good game for the younger players and those who want to kill some time blowing up paper tanks. from MOMENTS IN HISTORY Each deck contains 60 cards and one 56 page rulesbook for $9.95; $89 for twelve-deck box direct from MiH. MiH c/o Admiralty House Publications, PO Box 6253, Los Osos, CA 93412. 303-534-9723. Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. II # 23 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com