Fast-Playing WW2 Tank Dueling | Tank Clash Eastern Front Overview | Ameba Games

0:00 Hi Freddy, I'm Silverlight's and welcome. Today we're going to do an overview of Tank Clash Eastern Front, the sequel to Tank Clash Western Front designed by Ming and published by Amoeba Games. This is a beginner-friendly tank combat game with a surprising amount of depth and flexibility. This game will also be coming to crowdfunding in August 2026. I'll put a link to that campaign down below if you'd like to check it out. So we've got Tank Clash Eastern Front spread out in front of us set up for the new hold the line type of game that's included in this edition. And as the name implies, Tank Clash Eastern Front is World War II combat, Germans versus Russians. Now this is also fully compatible with Tank Clash Western Front, which I've placed here. And you can combine the games, so you can have big four-player games with this. Also, there's a lot of new features in Eastern Front that we'll be talking about as we go through this video, and all of those features are backwards compatible with Tank Clash Western Front. So a little bit of big picture stuff. This is a one-to-two player game. The solo mode is in development. It's not available for testing at this moment in time. And this is a late edition pre-production copy, so there might be a few things that change between what we're seeing here in the final version. Gameplay is about an hour or less depends on the scenario and how long it goes, but it's definitely a quick-playing game that's not going to not going to drag on for several hours.

1:16 Turn length and historical length are abstract, but units in this game are individual tanks. So it's fair to assume that an individual turn is in the range of several minutes. And the entire length of a battle, the historical length of a battle is less than an hour or so to match the actual time scale. So here's the Tank Clash Eastern Front game map set up for the new hold the line mission. Now this is 22 inches by 8 inches on the height here. But notice that all of these are geomorphic tiles. Now they don't fit together in infinite possibilities, but there are a lot of different maps that you can play with and explore as you play into this game. Now, simple things. This is a a game as we can see. It's also turn-based. And there are cards that we're going to take a look at that influence how the turns play out, but the core essence of the game is very straightforward alternating turns. On on your turn, you have two actions, move and a fire move and a fire. Now, you can do those in any combination. For example, you could move two tanks twice. You could fire two different tanks twice. You could move one tank and fire that tank. You could fire a tank and then it move it. The only limitation to your actions in a turn are is that you cannot fire the same tank twice or move the same tank twice. So, other than that, that's essentially the core gameplay. So, turns go pretty quickly as you alternate back and forth. Now, there are three types of gameplay in Tank Clash: Eastern Front.

2:41 In the original game, there were two. One type of gameplay is your top secret missions. This is where you draw one of these top secret missions at the beginning of the game. You keep it hidden from your opponent, and that's how you win the game is to accomplish that particular mission. The second type of gameplay that was also in the original game is by victory points. Certain destroying elements and taking these different checkpoints and objectives on the map gets you different victory points, and the the player with the most victory points wins. However, one of the cool features about this new version of the game is that they have added an entire new type of gameplay experience to this. And this is the Hold the Line. And basically, we have the German forces over here on the left, Russian forces over here on the right. This is a 10-turn scenario, and the Germans are going to get replacement tanks early in the scenario. So, in the beginning, the Russians are going to be outnumbered. Later, the Russians are going to get some replacement tanks towards the end, but the German player wins by essentially breaking through the Russian line and exiting one of their tanks off the right side of the map here. The Russians win by preventing the Germans to for doing that. So, this is a different type of gameplay experience that's included in Tank Clash: Eastern Front that is also backwards compatible with Tank Clash: Western Front. Some other features that are good to know about the game, terrain of course also plays a factor. So, we have some obstructions here like buildings and these deep forests, deep woods that block line of sight. Then we have these damaged forests here that disrupt line of sight. You can fire through them, but it reduces your effectiveness. Lastly,

4:13 as we can see there are checkpoints and bases. The base is generally the last one on the map and checkpoints that can be some of the objectives in the secret mission game and can also be worth points in the victory point game. And they have different roles in gameplay as to where you can bring in units and reinforcements as well. Let's take a quick look at the tank units and we'll talk more in detail about how combat works when we look at the unit information cards. But I want to talk about how they display on the map here. So, each tank has a different level of armor. We can see this Tiger tank here has level three armor and this Nashorn here is a very thinly armored tank. It only has one level of armor. So, although this game looks very simple, I think one of the things that you experience as you play around with it more, there's a surprising amount of depth here and there's a lot of subtlety and depth to the damage system. Now, when you fire, you roll dice to determine whether you hit your opponent, but those hits can do different damage.

5:03 They could, for example, completely remove one armor level to a tank, but they can also do partial damage to an armor level. One or perhaps two hits on an armor level. When a tank receives a third hit to a particular armor level, that whole armor level is lost. So, it's this tank here, this Tiger tank, for example, is much more than a straight level three tank. Each one of these levels has subtleties to it. So, it can take quite a pounding before it finally gets knocked out of action. Lastly, each player has a tank ace which provides some combat bonuses in combat as well. So, let's look at cards now and I think cards in particular is what moves this game from a very simple war game that I would define as maybe limited to uh introducing kids to war gaming to a game that actually has a good bit of nuance and depth to it that would give a challenge to more experienced war gamers looking for something that is a lighter and faster game. So, cards. There are a number of different types of cards in the game and the first one we're looking here are tactical cards. There are three different types of offensive tactical cards or attack cards and then three different types of defense cards. Now, in this hold the line mission, the Germans are going to get all the offensive cards. Artillery support, infantry support, and air support. And these are basically extra attacks, different types of attacks, ways that you can destroy your enemy as you're trying to move forward and attack.

6:25 However, in the hold the line mission, the Russians have these three defense cards, which allow them to deny and defy and and mess up the the German attack. Now, these cards, of course, show up in other types of gameplay, too, but in the hold the line mission, they're particularly important cuz the Germans have the offensive ones and the Russians have the defensive ones. Now, in particular to note, new to Tank Front Tank Clash Eastern Front is this smoke uh tactical card, which allows the Russian player to play or whoever has the smoke card to play these smoke tokens, which interrupt line of sight and mess up your opponent's attacks. Also new to Tank Clash Eastern Front are these mines cards. The mine cards allow you to play these tokens out. This is the minefield possible type of token that gets dropped down on the map and on the other side of it is either no mine or a mine. And if your opponent you know where they are cuz you're placing them as the defensive player, but if your opponent runs over them and they hit the mine, it damages their tank. Repair is also a defensive card that, of course, allows you to uh fix up some of your tanks that are damaged. Another type of cards in Tank Clash Eastern Front are these morale cards. These morale cards allow you at a more subtle You can play them as you're attacking and as you're defending. And the game lists a chart as to when you can play each one of these in the sequence of play, whether it's before an attack or after an attack, after you roll the dice, before you roll the dice, etc. So, these add a lot of subtlety in to to gameplay as well. Now, these morale cards you earn as the game goes through as well. So, if you roll a six in a tank attack, which represents a

7:57 particularly good attack, you get a morale card. Also, if you capture an enemy checkpoint, you get a morale card, too. So, knowing when and how to use these is a big part of gameplay. The last type of card for us to look at is the event card. Now, this deck of event cards, and there's a good amount of them that come with the game, is new to Tank Clash Eastern Front. And basically, it also alters the sequence of play a little bit. You draw one of these event cards at the beginning of your turn. Now, they I believe they're all positive, and you can either use that card immediately. You can't hold them and save them. You can use the card immediately, or you have the option, if you don't want to use the event card, to use any one of these things that are on the boost card, which is plus one to movement, plus one to range, or plus one die to one of your attacks in that turn. So, I really like event cards in games, and I think this adds just another level level of subtlety and nuance to gameplay in Tank Clash Eastern Front. Let's talk about the different types of tanks you get with Tank Clash Eastern Front. Each side has three different types of tanks. We can see the Russians T-34, SU-100, IS-2, the Germans Stug III, Nashorn, and the Tiger II. Now, there are five tank counters provided in the game for each side. So, the most you're going to see in any one scenario is five tanks on either side going against each other.

9:15 And that makes sense. Both the size of the maps and the way that damage works in the game, it can take a while to beat down an opponent's tank. So, you're not going to see 20 versus 20 tank battles in this game. If we take a look at each one of these individual tanks, we can see that they are unique. For example, the T-34 here has a firepower of two. And what does that mean? Well, when you attack an enemy, you're going to roll that number of dice equal to your firepower. And again, this could be modified from events, from morale cards, from other things, too. Higher numbers are better. So, when you roll, say for example, if we were talking with a T-34, we roll two dice, we get a six and a four, we're going to take the six. You then look on the damage chart. The higher die roll does the most damage to the enemy tank, and a one is a complete miss and ineffective. Now, we've talked about armor before, too. We can see here that the T-34 has an armor level of two. That was how many of these armor tokos tokens are on the tank at the beginning of the battle, and how long it's going to take basically to wear that tank down and knock it out. And speed, of course, here a ten is a speed of three for the T-34, which is how many spaces it can move in a particular turn. Keep in mind that different things like morale and events and other things can impact these various features. The other thing to note is that although these are different tanks, the sides are symmetrical, right? We can see that the Tiger II has the same characteristics of the IS-2. So, both sides, in a sense, although you can set up asymmetrical battles by the types of tanks you

10:46 deploy, both sides have symmetrical forces in the game. Let's take a look at the rulebook, and I think looking at this will help us flesh out a little bit better understanding of what this game is about. First thing to note, this is a 40-page rulebook, okay? So, again, it gets at that idea that there is a good amount of depth and thought and detail and refinement in this game. This is much more than a game designed for kids, which would be, you know, a snap decision you could make by looking at the components, the colorful art, the playful art. It's a very engaging type of uh art style, but it doesn't necessarily resonate with a historical game's usual art style. But, I would hesitate to dismiss the game under that because when you start looking at the rules, you see there is a lot of meat on them. Now, the first good half of the rulebook here walks through in very extensive detail the different types of combat systems, how to use the cards, and then as we get to the back half of the mission, we have the new hold the line type of gameplay.

11:47 And so there are several pages here that talk about the hold the line gameplay. Now, I mentioned solo mode, but let's talk first about overall complexity then. If I were to give this game a complexity rating on the wargame scale, I'm actually going to give it a two and a half. There is it it's a quick game to learn, it's not hard to learn, but there is more you know, there is a fair amount of detail here that will take a little bit of time to go into. I'd say you're probably looking at a half an hour to maybe 45 minutes or so to learn how to play the game. Now, speaking to solo mode, this basically gives some instructions on what's going to be the final solo mode in the game and how it's going to be built into gameplay, but it's not available yet. So I can't really comment on how the solo mode will work in the game, but it will have a bot logic and then some different prioritizations that the enemy will use.

12:36 So it's going to be much more than I think a toss on a fairly evolved system. So I mentioned that you won't see 20 versus 20 tank battles in the game, but I kind of lied because you can, if you combine this game with Tank Clash Western Front or I suppose bought two tank front Tank Clash Eastern Front games, you could do that too. You can make a four-player game and this section of the rulebook details how that works with the map set up over here and how it would play out and some special victory points in order to determine how the four-player game wins. Then there are also some supplemental rules here. Do you have some bridges, for example, that can be used in gameplay as an optional gameplay element. Um it gives you some modifiers for the four-player game, and then it also notes with some detail here as to changes in Tank Clash Eastern Front and then the designer notes. All in all, this is a very thorough rulebook and I did find it very easy to digest. I just have I think one lingering question after going through the whole thing. So, there we have it, an overview of Tank Clash: Eastern Front. I thoroughly enjoyed Tank Clash: Western Front and I enjoyed it much more than I thought I was going to. I I don't mean that as a dig at the game. I just looked at the art style and the types of tanks and thought, "Oh, this is aimed at a little bit of a younger and a simpler audience." But, then once I started playing it, I realized, "Oh, there is a lot of good depth here." I mean, it is definitely lighter fare and there are some, you know, it's not modeling itself to be a historical simulation of tank versus tank combat. This is designed as a quick game you can play in an hour or less that's going to give you some

14:07 interesting decisions. And I think that happens especially when you start to build in the the tactical cards, the morale cards, and then in this game, the event cards. Now, one of the questions you might be asking is if you have Tank Clash: Western Front, should you get Tank Clash: Eastern Front? I mean, there's obviously a good amount of overlap between the two games, but there's a lot of new stuff in here. For example, we have the new Hold the Line mission, new terrain types, the smoke and the mine defensive cards, the event cards, and then of course, the solo mode that's being built into this game as well. So, this is very much more than just a rehash of Tank Clash: Western Front. Very much looking forward to digging in and playing this. I'm going to create a gameplay example video. I'll put a link to that as soon as it's ready. Thanks for watching, everybody.