Hellcat Tankers: A Solitaire Wargame

Hellcat Tankers requires you to manage the Crew of a single World War II M18 Hellcat Tank in and around the Battle of Arracourt in France, 1944. The Battle lasted for 12 days from 18 September to 29 September. The 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion was attached to the 4th Armoured Division. Fighting was intense. In one short period of time, fifteen German tanks of the 113th Panzer Brigade, mostly Panthers, were knocked out for the loss of just three Hellcats. At the end of the Battle, the Battalion has destroyed 39 German Tanks for the loss of just four Hellcats, with three more damaged.

In the game, on each day of the Battle your Crew and their Tank may or may not find themselves engaged in combat with the enemy, but you will certainly see plenty of action over the course of the full battle. Whilst this game is not a ‘narrative driven’ game as such, it has elements of those games and with a little imagination it will provide a memorable gameplay experience as stories unfold in your mind. There may be lucky escapes, notable bravery and manoeuvres to be proud of. There may also be times when your Crew simply needs to bail out and survive to face another day. Some events are randomly generated to help add to the story, but you will usually have at least some degree of control over the level of risk to take and how vulnerable you leave your Tank to these events.

The Hellcat was a quick and relatively powerful tank destroyer. However, its armour was poor. With this in mind, tactics often required crews to spot the enemy first, and use speed to surprise them and escape before any return fire came their way. Hit and run is the key tactic here.

How the game works
This is a solitaire wargame. You play the game, and the enemy is controlled by the game. You will need at least 6, but preferably a dozen or so, standard six-sided dice. It is highly recommended that the counters provided on the final page of the game are used to play this game. Simply stick them to card and cut them out. A video demonstrating how generally to do this can be found on the Mike Lambo Games YouTube channel.

How to learn the game
If you have played any of my games before then you will have some idea about how my games work, although the game system tends to vary quite a lot from game to game. And even if you haven’t played any of my games before, I’m sure you will find the rules easy to read and very comprehensive, with many examples of play. Whatever your experience of my games, I suggest you read the rules through once, and then watch my ‘Instructional Playthrough’ video on my Mike Lambo Games YouTube channel just to see how it should work. However you do it, I’m sure you’ll be out there in your Hellcat soon enough!

Rules, charts, suggested counters, and 12 full colour Battle maps included.

Players: 1
Complexity: 3/5
Time: Around 30-60 minutes per individual Battle