Finally we did it! After more than twelve months of Covid hibernation, we actually were able to have the majority of us together for a game of What A Tanker. We chose that because after such a long time we just wanted to get together for a nice lunch some fun games, and the odd wine or three.
In organising the get together there were Emails going backwards and forwards. In one Steve happened to write “My plan for 2021 is to win at least one game and I am behind schedule”. So being a good mate I decided to set up a game that the odds were in his favour. I gave him a King Tiger and the rest of us took four T26B’s. The points were much the same but with 2 defence dice and four attack dice against the King Tigers twelve and twelve, we certainly had an uphill battle on our hands.
Our view was that we could not lose with the T26’s – either we helped a mate reach his 2021 goal, or we whooped his backside and had bragging rights like……forever!
The T26’s advance on the King Tiger
The King Tiger rather brazenly drives straight up the road.
Each turn the King Tiger had to roll two die to see if he ran out of gasoline. The tank would then splutter forward for one more turn and then come to a screaming halt and could then only turn its turret. Nope, never happened.
By turn four the first of the T26’s was in range and line of sight to open fire. We were not sure that this was going to be a good thing or not!
T26 opens fire on the Tiger
Amazingly Blake rolled box cars for his to hit die giving him an additional 2 dice for six attack dice in total. All hit, two being critical. This was to be our best chance of the game to grab the Tiger by the tail. All Steve had to do was to fail with nine of the twelve armour dice and the Tiger was KAPUT. You guessed it he saved all but one which was only some temporary damage!
Time and again the T26’s were able to out-maneuver the King Tiger but their shots just bounced of. Eventually the odds would come through for Herr Steve…….
The King Tiger must have been a green crew as time and again they missed!
With the King Tiger at point blank range the T26 has to finally succeed.
Ready Aim Fire…………..DING again.
Speeding forward the T26 just failed to get passed the the Tiger turret’s movement range.
AND THEN THERE WERE THREE
AND TWO
AND ONE
AND THEN FINALLY THERE WERE NONE
At least we made Steve work for it taking over ten turns to finally get all four of us.
Then the serious stuff began with Two Tiger 1’s taking on their natural predator the SU122 assault gun.
SU122 travel down the fileds on the right of the road.
Herr Steve’s Tiger (Downgraded from the KIng) attacking down the right flank.
That just has to be a significant obstacle.
You do not present your side armour to an ALPHA predator even if it is the same thickness as your front!
Or even worse your rear!
That is the beauty of What A Tanker some times you just don’t get the right combination of dice to do anything to get you out of trouble. With Herr Steve rolling only reload and acquire die he was unable to move or even rotate his turret with the obvious consequences. Even so, the SU122 may not have rolled any dice to fire, missing the opportunity without being able to do anything about it.
We then swapped sides with the same result. The SU122’s easily accounting for our Tigers.
As usual WAT provided an afternoon of great fun over three games.
Excellent stuff! 🙂 Actually nice to see T-26s getting an outing!
Thanks John. We prefer early war tank battles for WAT as this gives a better game, especially 1941 western desert. Playing with two large tanks with 10+ armour and attack die can have a tendency to drag on. Although we did have one classic example where the 2pdr of an early Churchill took out a Tiger 1 first shot of the game – just depends on your die rolling.
This game sounds like great fun! I might have to find a group and get building!
Thanks Eric. What a Tanker is a great fun game and only requires a few tanks per side. It has had some undue criticism because it only has tanks and no infantry, artillery, planes etc. This misses the point as it IS only a tank game and that’s the beauty of it. You can re-fight movies such as Kelly’s Heroes, Iron Fury, White Tiger, T34 and Fury very easily. Our re-fight of Fury with the 3 Sherman tanks versus a single Tiger 1 across an open filed worked out exactly as per the movie with the exception that Fury was the first to go!
As my blog shows, WaT is one of my faves. I really like the first scenario you shared – going to try that sometime (if ever I get my Aztec stuff all done – which will come!). I have to try to do a WaT virtually too. Great post!
Thanks. The scenario was deliberately unbalanced to achieve the contrived result but was fun to play even if I felt like I was taking a knife to a gun fight.