From: Pietro Cremona Subject: Tank Leader Ted Kim's list of West End Games reminded me that I re-played with a friend a couple of scenarios of TANK LEADER (Western Front) just a few weeks ago. We enjoyed the game and we wondered why this game never get enough coverage in the specialized press : for this reason I would like to ask the other consimmers what they think of the TANK LEADER Series. For those unfamiliar with it, or for those who played it many years ago, I only remind that this is a pretty standard game, in its mechanics, with the very interesting feature of PLAYING CARDS to decide who goes first. Those cards are a sort of "orders" and have different "rankings" : the first player play a covered card and announce its "rank" (from A, the best, to E) : his opponent may "rise" the rank playing another card and so on untill one of them "pass" or both play the highest rank card (if this arrives the scenario states who goes first). When this "order phase" stops the cards are revealed one by one : each card has "orders" for a single "group" (platoon, division, etc.) of that player, who may then move or fire with this "group" or ... do nothing (sometimes is better to react to the opponent moves, more often is better to act first). As there are "Command" cards that may be used for many different "groups" (at player's choice) you may also pass first and play the same group after with his lower rank orders. We found this system very interesting, as you must "bluff" or "bet" in order to be first in certain phases of the game, or "pass" when you wish that your opponent must "use" certain orders and then throw everything against him at the last minute. We did not pay too much attention to the mechanics of the game (they are really standard) nor to the play balance of the scenarios : we concentrated in the card system to see if it worked well or not, and we were quite satisfied with it (it add tension and "fog of war" to the game, IOHO), and now we wonder if the game is worth many hours of play in all its scenarios and different boxes. ANY COMMENTS ON THIS GAME FROM OTHER EXPERT PLAYERS ? Thanks to all for your answers. Ciao Pietro --------------------------------------- Pietro Cremona - "Old Hand" Wargamer C.P.136 - Cesena Centro (Forli)- Italy e-mail : asterix@kjws.com phone : ++ 39.(0)547.335121 --------------------------------------- From: Markus Stumptner To: Multiple recipients of list CONSIM-L >We enjoyed the game and we wondered why this game never get enough coverage >in the specialized press : for this reason I would like to ask the other >consimmers what they think of the TANK LEADER Series. I found them excellent and very effective in portraying their topic. The games were actually covered quite well at the time; I recall very positive reviews in the Wargamer and elsewhere and scenarios being published in one of the English gaming magazines. There was one stupid review in F&M (apparently the reviewer wanted a Tobruk-like armor system). The lack of overwhelming success seems to be due to two factors - many people don't really want to play this command thingie that forces them to use different approaches for the two sides - they want to wade in and kill tanks, and above all, 90% of wargamers, when hearing the words 'tactical armor game' say, "yeah, that's Panzerblitz, innit?" and look no further. The rules in the series had some slight flaws initially and were improved over time (the worst problem was the ability in EFTL to hide weak units underneath monster tanks and thus make them invulnerable - removed in the second game), and in general one should use the later rules. Desert Steel, the last one, importantly removed the ability of units to "gang up" on non-vehicles, making infantry more survivable (it also introduced a rule though that makes units that move first stay suppressed for an additional turn, which we ignore). There are balance problems with some of the scenarios (that can often be fixed by fixing particular terrain attributes or reinforcement dates), but on the whole this is a superb product. Personally, I haven't touched my copy of Panzerblitz since I got EFTL. Markus