Introduction
Tank Duel is a great game, and some of the best parts come from the narrative that builds during each game. The heroic crew who comes through in spite of the odds. The rush of scoring a hit. The drama of watching your last APCR round bounce off a KV-1’s armor and wondering what to do next. But the narrative from each game leads you to wonder about the bigger story.
What did your crushing victory (or defeat) mean in the larger scheme of things? What did the heroic crew do in the next game? Could you reverse your crushing defeat in the next game? Each game is a blip on an otherwise blank screen. These rules fill in the blank parts of the screen and give a better understanding of what your victory or defeat means within the context of a campaign in the European theater of World War II.
The Tank Duel campaign system attempts to fill in some of the blank spots. It is a toolkit of options that can be used in different ways.
On the simple side, players can use information from the campaigns to play a standard game of Tank Duel using tanks from the time of a campaign to create more balanced and interesting games.
When used to its fullest extent, you get a feel for what it would be like to command a mixed battle group from the units available at the time of the campaign and lead them against their opponent in a series of Tank Duel games that roughly model the historical situation, including terrain and weather. The battle groups will move between objectives and receive reinforcements at the end of each strategic game turn to replace losses. The results of earlier games will influence later decisions in the campaign and may lead to battlefield promotions (improved tank crew quality).
All campaigns support solitaire play through an expanded version of the Robata. The rest of this article gives a taste of what playing through the campaign system could be like for players.
Setting Up a Campaign
Andy and Dan decide to play the Barbarossa campaign from the Eastern Front book set in 1941. Andy will be the Germans while Dan leads the Soviet defense. They also agree that:
- Weather and skirmish rules will be used but not infantry (some games may require the use of infantry)
- There will be 2 tanks on a side for each game
- There will be 3 battles in the campaign. Normally each game is a battle, but the skirmish rule allows short games to not count against that limit.
Andy selects his starting force first because he is playing the attackers. Because the Germans were transitioning their mix of tanks at the start of the invasion, he can’t have very many of any given type except the armored car and the PzKpfw III Ausf G, which is the standard tank for this campaign.
The Sd Kfz 232 8-Rad armored car is tiny and maneuverable (Move 9) but the gun lacks punch and the armor is negligible. On the other hand, it is accurate and could be used against the Soviet AT guns and flank shots against the lighter Soviet tanks. How many PzKpfw III Ausf H should he get? It is both marginally better armored and marginally more expensive than the PzKpfw III Ausf G, which is the standard tank for the campaign.
Should he buy some anti-tank guns? The 50 mm would be excellent against the Soviet lighter tanks but useless against the Soviet heavy tanks. An 88mm would be great against the Soviet heavy tanks, but can he justify the cost when it is likely to be used infrequently, if at all?
After a lot of soul-searching, Andy buys the following tanks, all crews are seasoned:
- 4 x PzKpfw III Ausf G, they cannot defeat the Soviet heavy tanks but are great against anything else
- 2 x PzKpfw III Ausf H, (5 VP) it’s better front armor should be immune to anything smaller than a T-34
- 2 x PzKpfw IV Ausf E, (10 VP) thin armor but it has HEAT rounds
Andy tells Dan that he bought 2 heavy tanks and spent 30 VP.
Dan now has some difficult choices. His light tanks are very weak and his heavy tanks cost lots of VP and start Green but they can dominate battlefield. Spending extra VP to upgrade a crew is attractive but will cost him VP he can ill afford to give the Germans. He doubts Andy bought an 88mm anti-tank gun, but if he did, it can easily destroy the heavy tanks which he spent so many VP on.
The base Soviet AT gun during this campaign is the 45mm, which is good against most German tanks and can be fired frequently because it only needs 2 OI’s. He can use the T-26 M39’s to spot targets and feed OI’s to the anti-tank guns.
Eventually, Dan settles on the following force, costing 40 VP:
- 5 x T-26 M39
- 1 x T-34/76 M40 (20 VP)
- 1 x KV-1 M40 (Green crew, 20 VP)
- 1 x 45mm anti-tank gun
Dan is already losing by 10 VP. He would have liked to have spent fewer VP but decided that having an extra heavy tank was a better idea.
Playing the Campaign
A campaign game generally has a field of 5 objectives that are fought over by the players with them advancing their between games. The campaign game also usually has two rear areas where the sides receive reinforcements. But the Barbarossa campaign states that the front line starts in objective 3 when only there are only 3 battles and that Soviet reinforcements start in Objective 5.
Andy places his entire force in objective 2. Per the campaign rules, Dan must split his units between objectives 3, 4, and 5. He places the KV-1 M40 in objective 3 along with 2 T-26 M39’s, and the 45mm anti-tank gun. He places the T-34 M40 in objective 4 with another T-26 M39. Objective 5 contains 2 T-26 M39’s.
Andy starts with 40 VP and Dan starts with 30. The situation looks like this at the beginning of the campaign:
Strategic Round 1
Per the campaign rules, Dan must perform a Hold strategic action in the first round to simulate the shock of the campaign. So Andy selects a Flank action, which avoid the river crossing scenario in Objective 3 (Bug River) and brings in his heavy tanks, giving Dan 30 VP. This also sets Andy up for a potential envelopment which is the sudden death scenario for the campaign.
This action forces Dan to either spend a lot of VP to bring his heavy tanks into the game or give Andy an easy win. Since the campaign is only 3 battles long, Andy had expected Dan to pay through the nose and confront his flank attack with his heavy tank. If he wins this game by even a slim margin, it will make the rest of the campaign easier for the Germans. A defeat in the first game will likely make the sudden death victory condition impossible.
Dan had expected this choice and commits his heavy tanks to defending against the flank attack, spending 20 VP. The score is now 60/60.
Because Andy avoided the standard scenario for the objective, he flips a card and reveals a target number of “5”, which means that the scenario is now “Capture Hill 818” Dan flips a card and reveals a target number of “3” which gets no terrain additions. The weather is automatically “No effect” for the first strategic round.
Andy starts the game with a PzKpfw III Ausf H and a PzKpfw IV Ausf E. He tells Dan that he is committing one heavy tank.
Dan commits the KV-1 M40, a T-26 M39, and the 45mm anti-tank gun as his initial force. He purchases cover to give Cover 20 for his anti-tank gun and the Germans receive another 5 VP.
The ensuing game saw Andy moving his PzKpfw IV to 400 m and put it behind a building. Then the T-26 dashed to 200m and tucked itself in behind some rubble while the KV-1 M40 with the Green crew worked its way forward more slowly. Andy looked at his next hand and realized that he could move the PzKpfw IV on the hill at 0 m and give it a Woods card for additional cover. He also has a Command card that could be used to go Hull Down or attempt to Conceal. He seriously considers the possibility but realizes that He’d be far to close to all of Dan’s units. If something went wrong (and it usually does), his tank would be easily picked off. But he still daydreamed about the possibility for a few seconds.
Dan moves his T-26 on top of the hill but had no cover card. The 45mm anti-tank gun gives Andy several bad moments with accurate shots but does no serious damage. The KV-1 continues moving forward while the PzKpfw III moves forward to 400 m and ducks into a Woods, going hull down. Dan starts firing at the PzKpfw III because it is an easier target and Andy becomes even more grateful he didn’t rush to the hill.
The next round, Andy gets a great set of cards and plots carefully. First the PzKpfw III fires at the T-26 on the hill and gets lucky, causing an explosion that killed everybody but the driver. Dan moved the KV-1 to 200 m.
Next he fires at the KV-1 with the PzKpfw IV while reloading the PzKpfw III Ausf H with APCR ammo. The HEAT round causes an explosion in the KV-1 that kills most of the crew. Andy names the PzKpfw IV “Jaeger” because it hunted big game and the PzKpfw III “Swatter” for killing the buzzing smaller tank.
The score is now 22 to 0 and Dan is forced to retreat because he cannot replace his losses, which gives Andy another 10 VP. This all happened before the second deck was exhausted so the game a Skirmish.
Andy moves 6 tanks (the campaign limit) from Objective 2 to Objective 3 while Dan retreats his surviving 2 units (a T-26 tank and the anti-tank gun) from Objective 3 to Objective 4 and moves the 2 units in Objective 5 to Objective 4. Two new units arrive in Objective 5 to replace Dan’s losses.
The VP score favors Andy 117 to 60 but Dan has brought in reinforcements including a T-34 with a Seasoned Crew. Andy has done well and is in a good position but knows that the fortunes of war are very fickle.
Strategic Round 2
Andy now has 6 units in objective 3 facing Dan’s 6 units in objective 4. Dan only has one T-34 to Andy’s 4 heavy tanks (counting the two PzKpfw III Ausf H’s as heavy tanks). Andy decides to stay with the plan and does another Flank, trying to avoid fighting for the town of Grodno which sits in Objective 4 and fulfilling the requirements for an envelopment if he wins. Meanwhile Dan orders an attack on Objective 3. The result is a “Probe/Flank” and Dan must first tell Andy how he intends to defend against his Flank attack. As Andy feared, he is using standard units and concentrating his entire force on the attack. Andy must decide which units will take part in the Flank attack and which units will defend against the potential Probe attack. Andy holds back the PzKpfw IV Ausf E and a PzKpfw III Ausf G while committing a PzKpfw III Ausf H and a PzKpfw III Ausf G to the Flank attack. The remaining tanks can reinforce either attack. He breathes a sigh of relief when the target number on the card draw is a “5.” This cancels Dan’s Probe and allows Andy’s Flank attack to continue.
The random scenario turns out to be “Secure the Town,” anyway as Amy’s units unluckily run into Soviet defenders in a town adjacent to Grodno. This is a difficult scenario for the attacker, but Andy does not want to give up his comfortable cushion of victory points so he only sends medium tanks to the game. Because Dan did not send any of his own units to the Flank attack, he relies on the standard units to defend the town. He automatically has 2 T-26 M39’s and a 45mm anti-tank gun. Andy is concerned because the 45mm gun on all of Dan’s units is effective against the thin armor of his PzKpfw III Ausf G. He wishes that he had bought an Armored Car.
The game is very close with a cliffhanger ending. Dan had managed to work a T-26 to -400 M and was about to fire at one of Andy’s tanks when time ran out. Andy had killed only one Soviet tank and a tank commander for 16 VP while Dan killed the tank commander of the PzKpfw III Ausf G and forced the crew to abandon the tank. The single T-26 he killed had required several follow-up shots from the PzKpfw III Ausf H, which Andy names “Closer.”
Most importantly, Andy managed to secure 2 of the 3 building/rubble cards that represent the town, meaning that he had completed the requirements for the encirclement.
The VP score is now 138 to 98 in Andy’s favor but he can only move 5 units into Objective 4 while Dan has 8 units in Objective 5.
Strategic Round 3
Because of the Envelopment sudden death victory condition, the scenario this time is automatically Breakout of the Pocket with Dan assuming the role of the attacker. Now Andy wishes he had purchased an anti-tank gun. Stopping Dan is going to be difficult because his tanks are either tiny or well armored and fast.
Dan announces his units first and chooses a T-34 M40 with a Seasoned crew and the T-26 M39. This was what Andy had expected and feared, he starts with the classic duo of “Jaeger” and “Swatter.”
Dan had suffered through two difficult games and now it was Andy’s turn. Dan continually got good hands of cards and moved his tanks quickly, ducking behind cover. Andy managed to kill a crewmen on two different tanks that got off the map and scored a catastrophic hit on a T-26 but Dan got the rest of his tanks off the map, winning easily with a final score of 50 to 15. The only saving grace for Andy was that the crew of “Jaeger” got its fourth XP and became Elite.
The VP score is now 158 to 148 and Dan is beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Andy is forced to retreat and, after strategic movement, Andy has 6 units in objective 3 and Dan has 4 units in objective 4.
Strategic Round 4
This Strategic Round occurs because the game in the first Strategic Round was a skirmish. Andy cannot see a reason to do another Flank attack, he needs a solid win and this is no time to get fancy. So he performs an Attack action and breathes a sigh of relief when Dan reveals that he did a Hold action. This results in an Assault. The scenario is “Merging Forces” with no terrain changes but the weather is “Haze.” The first part of his plan has succeeded, now for the game.
Andy starts the game with “Swatter” (which will be Elite if it survives the game), and “Closer.” Dan starts with a T-34 with a Seasoned crew, a T-26 M39, and a 45 mm anti-tank gun. He has two tanks and one anti-tank gun in reserve. Andy’s biggest concern was that the hazy weather conditions would force his units to get closer and take casualties he can ill afford.
The game went as Andy had predicted with “Closer” blowing up the T-26 and scoring 7 VP although Andy had a bad scare when Dan missed a shot at “Closer” (needed a 65 and got a 66). Dan brings in another T-26 which is destroyed by “Swatter” and Dan is unable to replace the tank, prematurely losing the scenario. Andy is now leading the campaign 190 VP (158 starting + 5 for cover for the anti-tank gun + 7 for the scenario VP + 10 for the premature end of the scenario + 10 to replace the Soviet tanks) to 163 VP (148 + 10 for the assault + 5 for Germans attacking in Objective 4). If Dan had landed that shot and it had penetrated the armor things could have been very different for Andy.
Andy is well satisfied, but so is Dan. When Andy asks why, Dan points out that this game ended so quickly it was a skirmish so there is still a battle left in the campaign which will be in objective 5 and all his units can participate while Andy can only bring in 5 units because of his limited strategic movement points. Furthermore, the objective 5 contains Minsk and the automatic scenario is “Streets of Steel” which reduces the German tank gun range advantage plus German tanks are much more expensive to replace. He figures that he has a decent chance of winning back those 30 VP. Andy realizes that he has outsmarted himself! Dan just smiles.
Strategic Round 5
Andy thinks hard, what would Guderian do in these circumstances? He could wait for his tanks back in objective 2 to catch up but that would take up to 2 Strategic Rounds and would only get his 2 PzKpfw III Ausf G, his least useful tank. It would also cede the initiative to Dan, who has proven to be a clever opponent.
He could launch another flank attack, which would keep the game out of the city. But he would need to commit 30 VP to have his heavy units in the game and what would he do if Dan spent 0 VP like last time? Worse, he could counterattack into objective 4. This probably wouldn’t work, but if it did, Andy’s best units would not be available.
Andy’s best bet is to an Attack action. This has the added advantage that he won’t have to spend any VP if Dan also attacks and the is a meeting engagement. Dan did a Hold action, which results in Andy spending 10 VP. When Andy asked Dan why he didn’t attack, Dan replied that he thought about it but decided that he liked the idea of forcing Andy to spend VP to come to him. Now he only needs 18 VP to win. Andy’s mood does not improve.
They flip a card for the weather, which turns out to be “No effect.” Andy had been afraid it would rain, just to make things even more challenging.
Andy decides to rely on quality instead of quantity, committing “Jaeger” and “Swatter” (both with Elite crews). He will be in deep trouble if he loses both of those tanks. Dan commits a T-34 M40 and a T-26 M39.
The game starts well for Andy when the German infantry hits the T-26 with an Anti-tank Rifle, penetrating the armor and starting a fire that could not be contained so the crew abandons it. Two VP for the Germans and Dan brings in another T-26.
The T-34 moves into the City Square and spots “Swatter,” firing in the next round. The 76mm shell batters its way through the armor and explodes causing a larger explosion. The commander was the only survivor, which nets the Soviets 14 VP. Andy grimly sends in “Closer.”
The rest of the game is a series of missed opportunities on both sides as they both dug in deeper into the rubble. “Jaeger” ran out of HEAT ammunition and was forced to concentrate fire on the T-26. At the end of the game the infantry for both sides was at 0 m, which meant no VP for either side.
The VP for the Germans end the scenario at 195 VP (190 start + 5 for VP during the game + 5 for the Soviet losses – 5 because the Soviet crew survived). The Soviets are at 212 VP (163 start + 10 because the Germans initiated the game + 5 for Germans attacking Objective 5 + 14 for game VP + 20 to replace the Germans losses).
Andy has one more Mulligan point at the end of the campaign so he gets to add 10 VP for a total of 205 to the Soviets 212 and Dan wins the campaign.
For those interested in trying out Tank Duel’s Campaign System (created by friend of GMT Paul O’Connor and officially approved by designer Mike Bertucelli), you can find all the files available to download for free on the Tank Duel game page. -Rachel
Author: Paul O'Connor
