Played two games yesterday and these are my initial thoughts. Let me first say that I am a Lardy fan so that may colour my view.
The rules themselves are presented in a nice glossy magazine type booklet with lots of illustrations to help explain the rules and colour photos to wet your appetite for the period.
Once the game is set up you throw a dice and the highest scoring gets to go first, because there was twelve of us we didn't do this we chucked twelve tokens in a bag and you went when your token was drawn.
When it's your turn you throw 6x d6 and depending what you roll that will tell you what you are able to do.
1 is for movement
2 is for acquiring a target (you must acquire before aiming)
3 is for aiming (you must aim before you can shoot)
4 is for, you guessed it shooting
5 is for reloading
6 is a wild dice that can be turned into any of the above.
There are other rules pertaining to the above sequence but I won't go into them here (buy the book
)
In a nutshell that is the actual rules sequence and I think these are probably the easiest Lardy rules I've played.
Again because there was so many of us plus the fact that we were learning as we went along there was a fair bit of downtime between our activations. This won't be the case when I play next time and there's like four players, I imagine things will go a lot faster.
Also if you were unlucky enough to lose your tank early on in the game you are sat there twiddling your thumbs, there are other things you can do while waiting I for instance admired the lovely vehicles and scenery, read the rule book and became an instant lawyer, and then eventually gave some well needed advice on what to do to other players wether they wanted it or not
.
Seriously though I don't see this as being much of an issue in smaller games.
I enjoyed playing the games it's a very social type of game and your character tends to show through in the way you handle your tank (bold, brash, cautious or in my case plain stupid
)
If you want a game you can play two or three times in an evening and don't want to leave at the end of the night with a headache these rules will work for you.
The game itself is not an attempt at simulating to the last rivet a tank action but is a fast and flowing game that has you making decisions as you go and with a smile on your face.
There is a campaign system that allows you to progress from rookie to Ace and also allows you to get extra attributes that may or may not help you and your crew to survive, and it's perfectly possible to keep your crew intact and go through tanks like a hot knife through butter, so it's one of those games where you can have fun naming your crew and even your tank.
If any of the above appeals to you go get the rules you will not be disappointed.
I myself am looking forward to when Sergeant Ivor Smallpiece once again climbs into the turret of his (third?) Cromwell and yells at his gunner "Tank Action"
.