In the 1970’s and early 1980’s video and computer games were still very much in their infancy. Most Tank based games were simply a case of guiding a tiny, jerky pixel shape somewhere around a maze and then start firing full stops at another player whilst the TV made a noise like it was trying to regurgitate a live owl. The desperate attempts by the player to wrench the joysticks right and then left and manoeuvre the stuck Tank from the corner you’d managed to wedge it into were painful. There was only one way to successfully recreate the horror of 2nd World War Tank warfare in the minds of the 70/80’s child and that was via a board game. Milton Bradley came up with one of the best; Tank Command!
If like me you’d rather have a go driving real Tank you could look no further than a Tank Driving Days experience at armourgeddon. You’ll get a much more rounded experience than you would by playing Tank Command! And you won’t have to be under fire either. What was the attraction of this game? In part it was the advert. A young boy offer’s his Dad out and the only way to settle this is by pretending in their minds to be a General Montgomery lookalike versus an inscrutable Rommel opposite in a battlefield playing Tank Command. The board itself was a highly detailed long battlefield littered with 2D obstacles such as rivers, walls, destroyed tanks but, mercifully, no dead bodies. Along the side are small indicators and these are for you to move your tanks up and down locked in imaginary battle.
Each player gets 4 tanks. 5 of them look vaguely like Tigers (even the Allied ones) with the other three being a cross between a T34 and Panzer MkII. The Allies are the olive drab green ones and the German’s the black ones. They are attached to a bit of cut Perspex and then placed on the battlefield. The players sit at each end of the board with a delightfully detailed bunker and cannon covering the options. They can choose from any number from one to ten. The number you choose pushes back your opponent by that amount and then they push you back by there’s. The covers are flipped down and you both scream “FIRE!”
At the end of the board are some plugs that pop up through the board flipping the tank in the air. Once all your tanks are gone you have lost the battle and the German’s take Tobruk or something.
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