Too Fat Lardies – What a Tanker!

The TooFatLardies have built a solid reputation for producing wargames that prioritise historical feel over rulebook complexity, with games like Chain of Command or Sharp Practice. With What a Tanker!, they returned to the Second World War back in 2018, publishing rules for tank combat with vehicles from various nations of that era. And while I didn’t have the chance to give that game a try at LARDwerp back in 2022, I finally had the chance to do so with Team Würfelkrieg last month, and I’d like to share my experience with the rules in this review.

To give you a brief orientation on the scale of the game: if you want a tabletop game that scratches the same itch as World of Tanks, putting you in the commander’s seat of a WWII tank without drowning you in charts and counters, you should keep reading.

As the release was a few years ago, the printed rules are a bit scarce (~30 GBP / 35 EUR), but no worries — you can still pick up the digital download in their store for 17 GBP.

What Is It About?

What a Tanker! is a tabletop wargame for two or more players set during the Second World War. Each player controls one or more tanks, with the goal of knocking out the opposing side’s vehicles, either through sustained damage or a catastrophic hit. The game covers the full span of the war from 1940 to 1945, with national tank lists for Germany, the USA, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan all included in the rulebook.

Those lists are substantial. On the German side alone, you’ll find everything from the early Panzer II and Panzer III variants of the Blitzkrieg years, through the mid-war workhorses like the Panzer IV F2-G and StuG III, right up to the heavy hitters of the late war: the Panther, the Tiger I, the Jagdpanther and the King Tiger. The Allies are equally well covered. British players can work their way from A13 Cruisers and Matilda IIs up through Cromwells and Sherman Fireflies to the Churchill Mk VII, while Americans progress from M3 Stuarts and Grants into the various Sherman variants and ultimately the M26 Pershing. Soviet players get a compelling path through T-34 variants, KV heavies and the fearsome IS-2. Each nation also has a career ladder that maps tank progression year by year, so there is a genuine sense of historical context to how forces develop over the course of the war.