Long Range Gaming Group

 

Kelly’s Anti-Heroes: What a Tanker with Meng Toon Tanks

In the closing days of WW2, some of the last reserves of Nazi gold were being held in the bank of Wesminzer, in a small town in Germany. However, an Allied air raid had gone wrong, destroying the bank and scattering the gold around town (the RAF did not realise that V1s were also being stored there!). The gold had been guarded by Hans Doune, in his Tiger II, who now wondered what to do? But before he could organise anything, it seemed that rogue elements of the German, US and Soviet armoured forces were closing-in on the town, intent to take the scattered gold for themselves!

This was a ‘free for all’ battle, with every tank for itself. No national sides. The ‘gold’ was represented by 8 Red Poker Chips, randomly distributed around the battlefield and could be collected by the tank being adjacent to the chip at the end of the player’s turn. To even things up (the German tanks are worth so much more than the Allied tanks), each Allied tank received one Tanker Deck card and the German tanks were deemed low on fuel. So at the start of the game they had with 2 Black Poker chips. If a double is rolled when moving, one Black ‘fuel’ chip was surrendered and if the player had no Black Poker chips, then the tank is out of fuel and immobilised. 6 more Black “fuel” chips were randomly distributed around town and could also be collected, if the tank is adjacent to a chit at the end of a player turn. The King Tiger also started in the centre of town, with the expectation that everyone would gang-up on it.

However, game one was over quite pretty quickly, as the players squabbled with their nearest neighbours, around the edge of the table and the King Tiger snarled and dished out 88mm presents all round! The highlight was Simon’s Panther and Greg’s T34 playing ring-a-roses around a house! Game two saw people realising that there had to be a little bit of team work, in order to oust the King Tiger and once this was worn down, the widespread tank killing resumed, with Greg in the M5 Stuart dashing through the mayhem, grabbing bullion chips. However, Tony in the Panther was waiting, smashed the tiny M5, pocketed the M5’s loot, along with his own and dashed off the table to win!