Review

Tigers and Stalins

WWII Tank Rules


T&S, pub by M. G. Pub. Inc, consists of a digest-sized rulebook of 40 pages, including 2 pages of designer's notes and 16 pages of equipment data and charts. As author David Elmore states early on, T & S is an introductory set of rules. His intent wasn't to advance the state of miniature wargaming as much as it was to advance the state of getting new gamers involved in wargaming. I think Elmore succeeds handily.

Scales are: 1 inch equals about 40 yds (guesstimate); 1 unit equals one vehicle/gun/squad; and 1 turn equals a very short time.

The play sequence is sequential at the vehicle level. Players each place a number of chits equal to the number of elements (vehicles, guns, squads) the player with the most elements has in play. Chits are drawn, one at a time, from the cup and the owning player fires, moves, fires and moves, or does nothing, with a single element.

T&S is a tank game ("You can NEVER have too many tanks!" - Elmore, in the intro) and most of the game's attention is paid to antitank combat. Fire combat involves one D20 roll to hit and penetrate (hit likelihood decrease with range and target armor factor is subtracted from the hit number), and one D10 roll to determine damage, based on the hit angle (there are 5 basic angles, with a clear template to measure them) Damage consists of: miss; movement; turret; and KO. For game purposes, towed guns are immobile; they are placed and remain in place for the rest of the game.

Infantry is generic. They all shoot and fight the same, by casting 1D10 on a simple miss-suppress-kill table. Aircraft are represented to the extent that they make one or more ground attacks and then go away. Simple antiair rules are also included. Vehicle charts include a basic selection of AFVs for Germany, Britain, the USA, and the USSR.

What's missing? There's no spotting, other than simple LOS calculation. There's no morale. There's no command control. There's no artillery. Are these omissions a problem? Not for the target audience. These are the rules most of us have used for years, in one form or other, scribbled on an index card, to get a couple of bored 10 year-olds to start pushing around tanks.

T&S does a very good job as a first-level introduction to tank gaming. The average gamer (read: referee), with the help of a card listing vehicle characteristics for the tanks in play, will have NO need to refer to the rules while running a game. Neither will the players... Once the hook is set, then move the new gamers on to a more detailed set of rules. Priced at $6.95, these rules are priced as unpretentiously as they're written. Available from your local game shop. Recommended! - BILL RUTHERFORD

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