Zvezda’s Art of Tactic game system is a rules framework for tactical wargaming. In it, both sides issue orders at the start of the turn for a force of plastic models on a hex map, and then resolve those orders simultaneously. The system is now used in several settings to create separate games – World War II (in “Barbarossa 1941”), feudal Japan (“Samurai Battles”), and most recently an alternate-1990s battle over oil between the forces of the United States and Soviet Union (“Hot War”).
Zvezda’s Tank Combat offers a light historical wargame experience using a boiled-down version of the Art of Tactic game in a WW2 setting.
The flagship Art of Tactic WW2 game, “Barbarossa 1941”, features a variety of unit types including infantry, artillery, aircraft, and so on. I reviewed that game HERE. But in Tank Combat, the fighting units consist exclusively of (SPOILER ALERT!) tanks; there are only three of those per side, and the game’s simple scenarios last around six turns each. By keeping the scale small and the units similar, Tank Combat employs the primary elements of the Art of Tactic game system – the turn sequence, writing and resolving orders, a small set of unit capabilities, and the mechanics of combat and movement — while avoiding much of the complexity in the full game.
Here I review this small game, and ultimately answer three questions that should help you decide whether to buy a copy for yourself:
Is this a good stand-alone game?
Is this a good introduction to Art of Tactic, and especially Barbarossa 1941?
Is this a good purchase as simple “reinforcement” units for Barbarossa 1941?
I’ve broken the review into the following sections:
…..1. Price
…..2. Components
…..3. Rules
…..4. Units
…..5. Scenarios
…..6. Gameplay
…..7. Conclusions
1. Price
The game is appropriately inexpensive; here in Canada it costs about $30, around a third of the cost of Barbarossa ($80). That seems like the right price for what you’re getting. Significantly, since most units for Barbarossa cost about $5 each when bought separately, the game costs exactly what you’d pay if you bought just the six tanks that come with it.
(Full disclosure: My copy was free. After I wrote my Barbarossa review, linked above, Zvezda’s U.S. rep was kind enough to send me a copy of Tank Combat to evaluate. But there were no conditions and these are my real opinions.)
I know I’ve seen the game in local stores — it’s available, but Art of Tactic remains for the moment a bit of a specialty interest, so you may need to ask your store to order it from you from the distributor.
2. Components
The components match the excellent quality of the main Barbarossa game. You get the six tanks (three German, three Soviet), a unique laminated unit card for each tank, game boards, markers, dice, and (new for Tank Combat) plastic clips to hold the boards together.
The game comes with a trimmed-down rulebook that stays focused on the needs of this smaller game, and a scenario book with a handful of scenarios involving the tanks that come in the box. There are also two new Player Aid sheets, again focused on just the rules pertinent to Tank Combat which makes the whole thing easier to digest and use.
The models that come with Tank Combat are real scale military models (Zvezda is primarily a plastic model company after all). As with Barbarossa, these come unassembled and unpainted, with their components still attached to sprues. You’ll have to clip the components from the sprues and assemble them before you can play (they snap together, so glue is optional). This was a hurdle for some people who tried Barbarossa, as there were many units, many pieces, and many were small and fiddly; but the good news is that tanks were always the simplest components to assemble, and that’s all you’ve got in Tank Combat. There’s no fiddling with individual soldiers’ arms and packs under a magnifying glass in this set! (And this strikes me as just one of many smart moves by Zvezda in devising Tank Combat as a low-threshold introductory game for the system)
3. Rules
I discussed the full rules for Barbarossa in my review for that game, HERE and the basics of what I described there still hold true for Tank Combat. But for Tank Combat, Zvezda has trimmed the rulebook way down, discarding almost everything that’s not directly relevant to this game’s smaller forces and scenarios. They’re the same rules; there’s just fewer of them. As a result, new players only need to contend with the following concepts:
- Units and unit cards (Unit Type & Size, Fortitude, Defense, Firepower/Range/Accuracy, Ammunition)
- The turn sequence
- “Rules of Engagement” (Mechanics of Line of Sight, Combat and Movement, Fortitude and Suppression)
- Orders (Defend, Suppression Fire, Open Fire, Assault, Ambush, Special Orders, Movement)
- Unit Abilities
- Supply Depots
- Terrain
(Even here the Supply Depot rules aren’t really required; scenarios are short, and none include any Supply Depots. So any tank that runs out of ammunition is simply useless for anything but achieving objectives by occupying a hex or exiting the board. But including the Supply rules does allow players to devise their own scenarios later that might feature larger forces and supply depots, without investing in the full game.)
Though the rules are largely cut and pasted directly from the original Barbarossa rules document, there are some additional examples and illustrations and some tweaks to formatting.
4. Units
Tank Combat comes with three tanks per side: two light tanks, and one medium tank. The models are excellent as described in Components, and are identical to the matching unit model in the main Barbarossa game. All six tanks have different statistics, including those for range, accuracy, firepower, and armour; sometimes these variations are barely significant, but other times they’re a big deal.
Movement for all tanks is 3 hexes (2 for assault or move-and-fire). The table below shows the main characteristics of each tank. Other characteristics are the same for all tanks:
SOVIET TANKS
Pts/Type/Name Armour Range/Acc Firepower M/F Fortitude
[22] [L] T-26 2 2*/2/2/1/1 8/6 -2 9 (-1)
[28] [L] BT-5 3 2*/2/2/1/1 8/6 -1 9 (-1)
[38] [M] T-34 4 2*/2/2/2/1 12/11 -2 9 (-1)
GERMAN TANKS
Pts/Type/Name Armour Range/Acc Firepower M/F Fortitude
[25] [L] PzII 3 3*/3/2/2 7/5 -1 9 (-1)
[28] [L] Pz38t 3 2*/2/2/1/1 7/5 -2 9 (-1)
[36] [M] PzIV 4 2*/2/2/2/1 11/9 -1 9 (-1)
Armour is the number of hits that the tank can suffer each turn with no damage; more hits in the same turn start to inflict casualties. Units’ abilities degrade with the first and second casualty; a third casualty eliminates the unit.
Range and Accuracy are the number OR LESS the tank must roll to hit enemies at that range. The first number with asterisk (*) is for fights in the same hex (which can only be Assaults). Subsequent values are the to-hit numbers for each additional hex up to the maximum range (3 or 4 hexes, depending on the tank.)
The Firepower value is the number of dice the tank rolls against Light or Medium tanks, respectively, when at full strength. A damaged unit’s Firepower is reduced by one for each casualty it has suffered.
M/F is the Firepower penalty for using the Move and Fire order instead of firing while standing still. Most tanks lose 2 dice for this; some, just 1.
The last value is the Fortitude (read: Morale) level for each tank. Under some circumstances (like coming under some kinds of fire, or any time a casualty is suffered) units must roll 2d6 equal to or less than Fortitude; failure is very bad news, as it means losing the current turns’ order (if not already executed) AND the next turn’s order, leaving the tank dangerously vulnerable. The second number in brackets is the amount by which Fortitude drops with each casualty (here uniformly 1 per casualty; so you start out roling for 9 or less for a fresh unit, then 8 or less after one casualty, and when down to just one «wound» you need 7 or less to pass the test.)
The set of three tanks is designed to give both sides one tough, heavy hitter (the PzIV for the Germans; the T-34 for the Soviets) and two lighter, supporting tanks. The light tanks are well balanced against each other; so is each medium tank against is opposite number, though the T-34 has a slight edge. Each medium tank can probably take out an opposing light tank without suffering harm in return; but no tank is likely to take out its matching counterpart (light vs. light, medium vs. medium) in a single shot all by itself.
This means the game will come down to having the right tank in the right place against the right opponent; planning orders to shoot at the right time; and of course concentrating fire whenever possible. But you’re likely to have wounded tanks after a few turns rather than outright kills, and that makes for more variety and challenge.
5. Scenarios
Tank Combat comes with four scenarios which give players some variety in gameplay:
The Tutorial Scenario pits all six tanks against each other, starting in fairly close proximity so that players can immediately make decisions and start firing. It’s a simple game of killing the other tanks; players score victory points equal to the points cost of each enemy tank they destroy before the eighth turn, and the highest total wins.
Scenario 1, Tank Ambush, pits three German tanks against two Soviet tanks (the BT-5 and T-34), but with the Soviets on defense. The German player must secretly designate one tank that is carrying “Documents”; he wins if that tank exits the Soviet board edge. There is no turn limit; the game ends when the tank carrying the documents exits the board, or is destroyed.
Scenario 2, Tank Battle, pits all six tanks against each other again; they start at opposite board edges and well out of range, so there’s lots of room to unfold plans on the terrain-cluttered boards. The game ends after six turns and is won by the player who scored the most points in enemy tanks killed.
Scenario 3, Assault, again uses all six tanks but two Soviet light tanks hold a forward village, with the T-34 lagging a bit behind. The game is won by whoever holds the village after the sixth turn. (This looks like a tough one for the Germans, as the Soviet light tanks start in the village and the T-34 isn’t that far back and can be in the village on Turn 1. But…)
All in all, a good mix of situations in which to try out these small forces.
6. Gameplay
As you can see from “Units”, Tank Combat provides players with units that are similar enough, and have a simple enough set of options available to them, that even novice wargamers will figure out the rules quickly. And in “Scenarios” you can see that they’ll use those units in similar situations but with varying objectives.
Each turn you write an order for each unit on the back of its unit card using erasable marker. All of the orders available to a unit are displayed as icons on the back of its card, so you know exactly what options you can choose from. All of the unit’s in-game statistics are shown on the front of the same unit card, and there you mark casualties and mark off ammunition usage.
By stripping out all of the other considerations that add further depth (at the cost of matching complexity) to the full Barbarossa game, Tank Combat boils the Art of Tactic experience down to its barest essentials:
- understanding your objective
- planning some tactics to achieve it
- then committing to orders at the start of each turn
- and then using a respectable combat system to play out the results.
Plus, with just a handful of units and a six-turn limit for most scenarios, you’ll finish your first game in an hour and play subsequent games in half that time.
The strength of the game is the strength of the Art of Tactic system in general; it requires that players commit themselves to orders for all of their units at the start of the turn, anticipating what their opponent will do and taking the best course of action to accomplish their objectives.
Sometimes the “best” order is obvious and there isn’t much guesswork (“I’m in the cover of a village and you must approach me… think I’ll defend”) but then again sometimes choosing otherwise can catch the opponent by surprise and set up an even better situation on the following turn (“Ha! I pulled back further into the village! Now you have to close right next to me before you can fire and this tank will have the advantage at that range.”)
The inclusion of a morale system means that the game isn’t entirely about bludgeoning each other until someone’s “hit points” give out. The tanks have high morale (9 all around), but still… rolling two dice often enough against this number (then 8 after one casualty, and 7 after two) and you’re bound to fail some Fortitude tests. Failing a test renders you inert until the end of the following turn. This means that even a light tank can neutralize a medium tank by forcing a morale test, rather than depending solely on the unlikely event of outright destroying it by inflicting casualties.
There’s lots of room for surprise turns of fortune and exploiting, or recovering from, unexpected setbacks.
7. Conclusions
As I mentioned at the start of the review, there are a few ways to approach evaluating this game. So let’s get back to the questions I posed at the start:
Is this a good stand-alone game?
It’s not bad for novice wargamers. (The box says ages 10+ but I really have no idea.)
At first the gameplay is simple; you can just charge tanks at each other and blast away and see who rolls more 1s and 2s. But soon players will start to experiment on a small scale with laying defensive traps, entering Ambush, and concentrating forces and fire. The need to set orders at the start of the turn opens the opportunity for bluffing and surprising your opponent, and so the game can become a battle of wits rather than just a contest of unit statistics.
Novices will learn to think through tactical puzzles of attack and defense, and how to play to the strengths of their own units and exploit the weaknesses of the enemy’s.
That said, though, there are only three units on each side. Even younger players will exhaust the possibilities after a short while, and will probably want to expand the game to larger maps and with a wider variety of units. Which leads us to…
Is this a good introduction to Art of Tactic, and especially Barbarossa 1941?
Absolutely, and this is probably the game’s greatest strength.
I’ve mentioned throughout this review the way that the game streamlines the Barbarossa system by eliminating whole swathes of rules: infantry, artillery, and air power are completely absent. Even supply hardly plays a part, since these short games will tend to be over before units consume all 10 points of their ammunition.
Sticking to tanks also means that you’ve eliminated those rock-paper-scissors situations you sometimes seen in Barbarossa, where one side’s trimphant tanks end up roaming the battlefield, completely immune to the hapless opposing infantry who have lost all their AT weapons.
Sticking to tanks even makes unit assembly a breeze compared to Barbarossa, helping to further lower the bar to getting started with the system.
If you want to teach new players the principles of the Art of Tactic system – writing orders, the kinds of orders available, the combat system, movement on the map, terrain’s role in line of sight and offering protective cover, and so on… then Tank Combat is a great way to get them started.
If you have a group of prospective Barbarossa players who are uncertain about diving into the full game, you can spend one evening playing a couple of games of Tank Combat, and then spend what remains of that evening introducing other elements of Barbarossa which you can try out in the next session.
Is this a good purchase as simple “reinforcement” units for Barbarossa 1941?
Yes, but with a caveat.
The tank models you get with this game are identical to those used in the main game, and so they can be used directly in Barbarossa without a hitch. And as I mentioned in «Cost», the whole Tank Combat game costs about what you’d pay for the six tanks alone; so if you wanted the tanks anyway, you can pick up Tank Combat and in addition to the tanks you’ll get for «free» some extra game boards, markers, dice, and some introductory rules and scenarios for your next set of new players.
BUT… curiously, some of the stats on the Tank Combat unit cards are slightly higher compared to the same tanks in the standard Barbarossa game.
This means that if you want to expand Tank Combat with more tanks bought separately, the extra tanks are going to be inferior to those that came in the game. Conversely, if you use these tanks as reinforcements in Barbarossa, you’ll have to treat them as “elite formations”. The point cost printed on each unit card is three points higher than the “standard” equivalent, but that’s not enough of an increase to account for the superior stats. Below I’ve copied the tank stat table from earlier in the review, followed by the “standard” values for the six tank types taken from the Barbarossa cards. You can see differences in value for armour, accuracy, and firepower, and even the move-and-fire penalty in one case:
TANK COMBAT TANKS **********************************************************
SOVIET TANKS
Pts/Type/Name Armour Range/Acc Firepower M/F Fortitude
[22] [L] T-26 2 2*/2/2/1/1 8/6 -2 9 (-1)
[28] [L] BT-5 3 2*/2/2/1/1 8/6 -1 9 (-1)
[38] [M] T-34 4 2*/2/2/2/1 12/11 -2 9 (-1)
GERMAN TANKS
Pts/Type/Name Armour Range/Acc Firepower M/F Fortitude
[25] [L] PzII 3 3*/3/2/2 7/5 -1 9 (-1)
[28] [L] Pz38t 3 2*/2/2/1/1 7/5 -2 9 (-1)
[36] [M] PzIV 4 2*/2/2/2/1 11/9 -2 9 (-1)
BARBAROSSA TANKS ***********************************************************
SOVIET TANKS Armour Range/Acc Firepower M/F Fortitude
[19] [L] T-26 1 2*/2/2/1/1 7/5 -2 9 (-1)
[25] [L] BT-5 2 2*/2/2/1/1 7/5 -2 9 (-1)
[35] [M] T-34 3 2*/2/2/1/1 11/10 -2 9 (-1)
GERMAN TANKS
Pts/Type/Name Armour Range/Acc Firepower M/F Fortitude
[22] [L] PzII 2 3*/2/2/1 7/4 -1 9 (-1)
[25] [L[ Pz38t 2 2*/2/2/1/1 6/4 -2 9 (-1)
[33] [M] PzIV 3 2*/2/2/2/1 10/8 -2 9 (-1)
So you can certainly use them, but they’ll stick out as oddly strong versions of their unit types, best explained as being “elite” as I described above. Truth is, that can actually be a strength if, like me, you already have all the basic tanks you need and these give you some new “hero” options for special scenarios or campaigns.
The units aside, you also get some new boards with different terrain configurations with Tank Combat. The boards in Tank Combat are only half the size of those in Barbarossa; but I checked and they’re exactly half the size, so two of them together can take the place of a single board from Barbarossa. This doesn’t change things when you’re playing existing Barbarossa scenarios with their preset maps, but the extra boards could prove handy when designing your own scenarios.
So… overall? I think Tank Combat is a good, inexpensive purchase for anyone who wants to test the waters of the Art of Tactic system, or teach it to others, before diving into the full Barbarossa experience. It’s easy to get onto the table with a few easy-to-assemble units, and some digestible, trimmed-down rules. Once you’ve played this, you really do have a sense of how the full game will play and you should have some idea where things are headed. The biggest risk is that seasoned players will find the game too light, and might not explore what else is available. And well, heck… this review is my attempt to keep that from happening!
I’ll post a battle report with Tank Combat in the coming week; together with what I’ve discussed, that should leave you with a full appreciation of the game, and able to decide whether the purchase is right for you.