World of Tanks: The Miniatures Game Review

By Doc Wohlrab

You want to play do you? No, not that one that involves a gamepad or mouse and keyboard, the other one. Yeah, this one! That’s what I and four others did one afternoon. World of Tanks: The Miniatures Game is done by games and is a reworking of a previous couple of games they did, called Tanks. In those previous games, you played either WWII-era vehicles or Cold War-era vehicles in one on one or small groups. Those games were less crunchy than their cousins . Because I had played those previously I was interested in picking up WoT:TMG and seeing what was different and whether or not I was going to enjoy it.

Once I got my hands on the starter box, I gave it an open-up to see what all came with the game. The starter box contains four preassembled tanks: a T-34, a Sherman, a Cromwell, and a Panzer IV. The models are of the same quality as the plastic kits one finds in Flames of War. This is a departure in that the models that came in either of the previous versions were unassembled and unpainted.

The ones in WoT are primed. In addition, there are various cardboard pieces representing damage, movement, range tools, objectives, terrain, and numbers to keep track of what vehicle is what. Also included are cards representing crew or tank upgrades, information cards for the vehicles, dice, and of course the rule/scenario book. All of the materials are of good quality and easy to punch out where needed.

But how does the game feel, how does it play? I am glad you asked that because bottom line upfront, it was a lot of fun to play even if there were a few questions on why the design team chose to do things in various ways. As I said previously, I and four others decided to give the game a try one afternoon. In addition to the four tanks in the starter set, I had picked up the StuG III blister pack and that was the tank destroyer.

I chose to play. One note of caution about opening blister packs, don’t cut into them. I made that mistake and accidentally cut the information card that came in the pack, though I managed to fix that with clear tape.

It took us about fifteen or twenty minutes to go through the rules for the basic gameplay, though we did misread a few that we had to go back and double-check. For example, I misread how to play the StuG and was limiting what I could shoot at in a way that was wrong. That said, there wasn’t a steep learning curve to this game, and we were merrily scooting tanks across the table and shooting at one another in quick time.

Like World of Tanks on the computer, players are not limited to choosing sides in the miniatures game based on historical reality. This is how we had a Cromwell working together with a Panzer IV and a StuG III to defeat a Sherman at one point. Instead, players can mix and match how they see fit which turned out for the best for those of us choosing German tanks in this go around. The game can be done in one versus one on up with players controlling one tank or up to a platoon of tanks.

There is a credit system in the rules for buying tanks and their crew and component upgrades. For our playthrough, we chose to forgo the upgrades and played with the stock tanks. We also chose the free for all scenario where every player was out to win against every other, which given the odd number we were playing with worked best. The game itself took about an hour to complete, but that was also because we were still learning the game and had to double-check rules on occasion.

In terms of complexity, this game just is not all that complex (which is good!) Because it is streamlined for move and shoot, turns moved quickly despite having three phases. The game has a move, shoot, and command phase. Move and shoot are self-explanatory, while the command phase is where one assesses damage to their vehicle, repairs what critical hits can be repaired, and assesses if victory conditions have been met.

Players determine who has initiative based on what is on their tank information card. Initiative can also be affected by upgrades to the tank or crew. In addition to initiative players also roll to see who has advantage. Advantaged players automatically win ties on initiative rolls.

Even with five players playing we never felt that the game was unwieldy or moved too slow. The initiative system is the one major flaw we all felt in this game. In essence, because the Cromwell had the highest initiative based on his card, he had that advantage all game. Now it is possible we played this wrong, but from how we read the rules it appears that initiative is only determined by the tank card and any upgrade cards.

How did our battle royale turn out you might ask? The Cromwell won, but only by the proverbial skin of his teeth. His tank was down to its last hit point and won out in a point-blank shoot-out with the Sherman player. Alas my poor StuG, which hung in till almost the very end, got caught in the open and destroyed by the Sherman player (my dad).

We had a good mixture of players from veteran miniatures players to a novice and each of us enjoyed this game. Is it right for a veteran historical wargamer? Yes, as a relaxing quick-paced game to play when one doesn’t feel like digging out everything for a more complex game. World of Tanks: The Miniatures Game is a fun fast-paced game that allowed us to jump right into killing other tanks without us ever getting bogged down in a rulebook, so yes, I would recommend it.