Full Scenario Gameplay - Tank Clash Eastern Front | Ameba Games
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Transcript
Hi everybody, I'm Zilch Blitz, and welcome. If you looking for an accessible war game that can be used to introduce younger players to war games, as well as providing enough depth and challenge for experienced war gamers, then Tank Clash: Eastern Front might be something you're interested in. In this video, we're going to take a look at some gameplay from the new Hold the Line mission in this series. Now, this game is coming to crowdfunding in August of 2026. Links are down below in the video description if you'd like to check it out. So, here is Tank Clash: Eastern Front all set up to begin its new Hold the Line mission, which is a new type of gameplay in this version of the game. This wasn't in the prequel, Tank Clash: Western Front. So, I wanted to show this new type of gameplay. Two quick things before we start. This is a prototype, so some things might change between this version of the game and the final version of the game. And if you haven't seen the overview video that I posted a few days ago, I'll put a link to that in the top right corner, so you can check that out. Watching that first might help this make a little bit more sense as we go forward. But, I will be explaining everything, and let's jump right in and get started. What are we looking at? Well, we've got our game map here separated by the game box. I'll explain that. Right hand side here is the Soviet side of the battlefield. Left side is the German side of the battlefield. The Hold the Line mission is a new type of gameplay. And in this gameplay, the Germans are trying to exit their tanks, any one of their tanks off the right side of the board. The Russians with their tanks here are trying to prevent that from happening.
The Germans win if they exit one tank. The Russians win if they prevent that from happening. And there is a 10-turn limit to this game. So, the onus of action is on the the German forces. There is a sense of urgency. They need to move, move, move. Now, you might be wondering why the game box is sitting in the middle here. When you set up the game, you put the game box in the middle between two players. Each player sets up, and then you remove the game box, push the maps together, and then you're all set to go. Now, let's talk a little bit about strategy before we start out here. The I put as the Germans with the the burden of time, I've put the Germans I've loaded them up here right on the eastern edge of their starting area because I want them to get across this bridge as quickly as they can. We can see the river here preventing the forces from moving across here and try to race through it try to break through. So, we need to go fast as the Germans. As the Russians, I've played this scenario a couple of times before recording this one and both times as the Russians I went all in on defending this bridge.
And I thought, well, if we can bottleneck the Germans here, we could win the battle. And two times that I played the Russians won the battle, but I made two very big tactical mistakes. One with how smoke is used in the game and the other with how the bridge actually functions, the bridge hexes actually function in gameplay. So, I'm going to correct those mistakes as we play now and see if this strategy might still work. So, as that as the Russians, I've got their long-range Nashorn hidden up here in these damaged woods which is going to give it a concealment status. That means it should be able to fire down on anything that's approaching the bridge here. Got a medium tank right up in the front should be able to fire a nice fire line down crossing the bridge. And then we parked our big bad IS-2, our strongest tank with three armor and a leader is in there right on top of the bridge. It's like come get some come get some. For the Germans here, likewise you got their long-range Nashorn here providing covering fire as they approach the bridge. The Tiger II is ready to go forward and lumber across the bridge.
And then this Stug III, the support uh assault gun is ready to provide supporting fire and reinforce their attack as they go forward. With all that said, we are ready to begin now. We're going to start with the German turn and in this video I'm going to show all types of gameplay. Not sure if I'll show the entire scenario, but I want to make sure we see all of the new stuff. So, we're going to see how events work, we'll see how morale works, the tactics cards, smoke and mines, and And how the gameplay works in the the hold the mission hold the line mission here. And we are all set to get started. Turn one starts here, turn 10 is over here. Germans go first and then if it's a little symbol here, nothing special happens. If it's an R, it's a reinforcement tank. An E is an event and we will alternate turns as we go through. Germans are up first and nothing special happens on turn one.
Let's get into it. One quick thing as we start out, these are checkpoints. The scenario comes with the suggested location for these. To be honest, they're not going to matter too much for the Germans here and it's not going to really matter too much for the Russians either. So I've moved these around a little bit just to experiment with some different starting locations from the suggested ones. However, you do get a morale card if you capture an opponent's checkpoint. So that is something that might benefit the Germans as they race towards the eastern edge. We shouldn't see the Russians breaking across the river onto the western side of the map, but we shall see. So the Germans have three attack tactically oriented tactical cards. Artillery support, air support, and infantry support. We are not going to hold onto these. We're going to use them fast and try to destroy the Russians as much as we can. Let's and you use these at the start of a turn and each one has their own little explanation of how you execute them. For this one, we're going to use the artillery support, which is basically attack and you remove an armor token in this pattern. So if it's a center, you remove an entire token. If it's one of the spaces around it, I think it does one or perhaps two damage to a tank. But we're going to drop it right on the bridge here on the IS-2 and let's just take a look at what this tank entails here. So it's got the leader, which is your ace, which is going to improve their die rolls and then has three armor tokens. To defeat this tank, we have to wipe out all three armor tokens. By dropping the artillery right on the bridge on this tank, it knocks off one of the armor tokens.
So the IS-2 is punished already and it's weakened already. Now, there are a couple of things to note here. I All of a sudden, I'm like, "Well, this is a mistake that I made with the Soviets here because we shouldn't have put the bridge so that tank so close to the front lines, but I wasn't expecting the Germans to be here." Uh now, the artillery card is gone. That's out of play. It's out of the battle. It's done. Now, the Germans go to their actions and they are in good luck. The Tiger II here, if we take a look at his information card, the Tiger II on the right-hand side, it has a firepower of three. Firepower is how many dice you roll? How many dice you roll? It's It's also your range. And notice the Nashorn, which is just off to the left, has a firepower four and a range of four. And indeed, in unfortunate news for the Soviets, by playing so aggressively here, both the Tiger and the Nashorn, 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3, are in range. So, let's not waste any time as the Germans. These silly Russians here being too aggressive with their defense. We're going to open fire with the Tiger II. Now, we use this chart to determine how hits work.
Basically, high is good. Fives and six are going to remove an entire armor token. Threes and fours are going to use some damage to the token to the tank and then the other ones either could retreat it or do nothing at all. We're going to roll three dice for the Tiger II opening up and it takes its highest die roll. Three three one. Additionally, the Tiger I has the German ace in here, which add ones to adds one to the die roll. So, if we look at this, we get 3 3 1. We can add one. We get 4 4 2. The highest die roll here says place two damage tokens on the defending tank. One damage token, two damage tokens. And how this works, basically, is each one of these armor tokens is worth three of these light damage tokens. So, this has basically 2/3 of the way to losing another one of these armor tokens. But, the tiger has opened up now. Not quite what they were hoping for. Would have been nice to get rid of the entire level of armor. That's our first German action. Second German action, the Nashorn eyes the tiger. It's got perfect line of sight right to the tiger. It's going to open fire.
Oh, there we go. 6 6 5 1. The Nashorn is dialed in. With a six, we get a critical hit, which is remove one armor token from the defending tank. The second armor token now is gone. This tank that IS-2 is down to only 1/3 of its last armor token, and it's only the first turn. This Soviet strategy not working out very well. In addition, if you roll a six as your attacking roll, you get a morale card. So, I'm drawing the top morale card off the deck and we'll take a look at it here. Deflect is a card you can play that the attacker has to re-roll a hit. Interesting. So, we will take this one and hold on to it for the Germans in their defensive part of the turn. And with that, the German turn is over. The Russians are up. Now, the Russians' tactical cards are all defensively oriented. We are going to play the reef repair token, and we're going to play it on the IS-2, which adds an armor token back into the tank.
Take that, Germans. So, that card is out of play. We're going to keep our smoke and our mines for the future, and we will add this token back into our IS-2, bringing our crew a good bit of relief here. Time for some Soviet payback here. This SU-100 that's hiding in these shattered woods here can fire out with full firepower. It has a range of four and a firepower of four, just like the Nashorn. 1 2 3 4. It's going to open up on the Nashorn, and let's let this payback start. Fire. Oh, 554 and a five is, if we look at it here, remove one armor token from the defending tank. The Nashorn only has its thinly Nashorn only has one armor token thinly armored. Boom, it is gone. And the Soviets have started to give the Germans a much harder time. So, that's excellent shooting by the SU-100.
Now, we're going to have our IS-2 here still parked on the bridge. It's going to open up at the tiger. Now, the IS-2 is going to get three dice. We're going to add one to the die roll. [clears throat] We get a Oh, 334. Adding one is a five. So, the five is the highest die roll there and that is a 334 is also a successful hit. Hmm. Now, as the Germans, we do have this deflect card. Attacker has to reroll a hit. The only hit, these are heavy damage at fours adding one. This is the only hit. So, let's actually burn this card. As the Germans, we're going to discard it and make the Soviets reroll to see if they can actually get that hit. They get a two. So, that results in a three. So, with that now being a three Well, two. We end up with a 442. So, the highest die roll becomes this three, which is a four, which is going to put two damage tokens on it. So, we did save a full armor hit there on the Tiger II, which I think is a good play for the Germans there. And with that, the first turn is now over. Soviets have acted, they're fired twice, Germans acted. We go to turn two. Now, as the Germans going to turn two, you'll notice there's an R here. R is a reinforcement, which means they get a new medium tank added to the battle. And the rules for deployment for your reinforcements are it can go on a checkpoint or adjacent to your furthest back tank. And both of
these are equidistant. So, so we're actually going to put it right up here adjacent then to our Tiger II to make a rush for the bridge once we destroy this because I think as the Germans we can destroy this because not only do we have a reinforcement tank, we can play our air support. Bringing in the Stukas, we can do this. Now, this has a damage pattern like the artillery, the gray hex pattern there destroys an armor token, and we will do that to the Soviet tank here. Now, it's it's perilously close. It's been taking a beating. We're going to knock off another one with our Stuka attack. Means that it's down to a sliver of defensive capacity here, 1/3 of its last armor token, which is good because now with that air support, now this card is expended, it's out of the battle. For the first German action, let's have the Tiger II finish off the IS-2. It's going to end its life here. Gets three dice. It just needs to hit on one sliver, and the Soviets have no morale cards, so they don't have any way to do Ah, we get the six. That's a full armor token. With only one armor token left, ah boom, up goes the IS-2, and the Germans have broken through now, and they are on their way to the other side of the map.
And the target the Soviet ace is gone, too. That's the first German action. Second German action, it is time to move. Now, the StuG IIIs have a movement of two, so let's go go go. One, two up here. Got to get them forward. It's going to be a little bit painful cuz the Russians are going to open fire, but it is Oh, wait, no. Let's actually Let's send our Tiger II up. One, two, three. It's going to get it right onto the bridge when it's moving. A Tiger II with a movement of three. So, let's do that cuz then we can prevent the Russians from plugging that bridge up again. Now, the mistake I was making in the earlier version here, I was playing this was the only exit hex off of the bridge, but the rules state that you can actually exit off of the bridge at any one of these three hexes. So, that will prevent the Russians really from blocking the bridge by positioning one tank here, which can make a big difference cuz there's no zones of control in this game. So, Germans are done. Now, it's time for the Russians. Let's mess up the German world here by playing some mines. Now, the way the mines work, the the Soviets get four mines and they all have this top face here. Two of them are mines and two of them are these empty spaces here. So, we are going to place Let's We're going to place random I'm going to do this randomly to be fair cuz we definitely want to block this here, but what we're going to do is we're going to save one of the empty ones for behind it. So, to be fair, I'm going to play two full ones. I'm going to flip these over to hide them and I'm going to
put them down here randomly so we the Germans won't know which way to come off the the bridge there. So, cuz it could be the middle one, could be the edge one, who knows where it is. I'm not looking and I'm going to play one mine here, one mine here, and then one mine here, and then we actually kind of know the dummy one is back here, but we'll put it there to make the Germans think. And that expands the mine cards there for the Russians. Now, the Russians aren't done yet though because they have two really good shots at this Tiger tank that's on the bridge here and that will be a good thing to do, I think. We got to blow this Tiger up cuz it's got a clear pathway now to the other side. However, the Nashorn is particularly deadly. Not the Nashorn, the SU-100. Keep making that mistake. The Nashorn the SU-100 is completely deadly here.
Range of four, it rolls four dice. And then the Soviet the Russians have no cards or anything. Oh, another six. So, the six means that the Russians get a morale card. Oh, sorry, I forgot the German should have gotten a morale card on their last turn when they rolled a six on that attack. So, they are going to get this uh morale card here. And the Soviets get this one here, add a dice to your attack. That's good, and you can use these right away. We might use this on the next turn. The Germans get added damage token to any tank for sabotage. So, we'll save that for when one just needs to get wiped out with one additional token hit here. Okay. So, the hit on the Nashorn we get uh one hit on the Tiger S2 here. It's pretty much gone now, right? So, it's down to its last one, and that's 2/3 of the way there. So, the Tiger II is on its last limping treads here. And with that, I think we can possibly finish it off here with this T-34. Now, the T-34 only has two attack dice. Let's make sure we kill Actually, I think our chances are pretty good here. We're not going to use our morale card. So, let's save that. T-34 opens fire. Oh, another six. It gets another morale card. Now, you can only have a maximum of three in these in your hand. Restore one armor token.
That's going to be good to have. We could have used that for the IS-2 there. But, it gets a full hit on the Tiger II. It's down to its last armor token. This tank, too, goes up in flames, leaving a flaming hulk on the bridge. The bridge is open. Casualties on both sides now. The two heavy tanks have been knocked out. And that ends the Russians' second turn. As we go to turn three, you'll notice there's an E here, which means we draw an event card for the Germans. The Germans really need something to to change the nature of the battle here. Let's see what we get. We get back up arrives. Ooh, take one extra action. This can be very helpful for the Germans, for sure. Uh let's actually use this. So, we're going to get three actions this turn, which will be very, very helpful because we have a problem to solve. One of the problems up here is this SU-100. It's in this shattered far forest. And you might have been wondering, "Well, why didn't we as the Germans fire and try to take this tank out?" When you're in a shattered forest or a forest like that, you have a concealed status, which means that although you can fire out at full range and firepower, enemy tanks have to be within a range of two to fire at you.
So, we have to get a range a tank at a range of two in order to be able to fire. And the other thing we're going to do as the Germans here in their start of turn three is we're going to play their last tactical card, which is infantry support. It adds a die roll to their attack. So, we're going to have an extra dice on our attack, and that burns all of the tactical cards for the Germans. So, let's see if we can knock out this SU-100, and that will break open the doorway to the east. We can start flooding our StuG III assault guns across. With our movement, we're going to go 1 2 3 right onto the bridge. With our second action, we are going to fire at SU-100. Now, it's thinly armored. It only has an one armor token, and we get three shots at it. Oh, seriously.
Wow. Oh, but wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay. So, we get to add two We hit it with two tokens here like that, and it's got two damages to it. However, the Germans have a sabotage card. Add a damage token to any any enemy tank. Can be played at any time. Sabotage. Some partisans come out of Well, I guess maybe there probably wouldn't be German partisans here, but uh someone sneaks over and puts another hand grenade in the treads, and that blows up the last armor token, and that one is gone. So, the Germans take very effective use of their morale card to wipe out the SU-100. And now, we have one extra action. 1 2 3 with our second StuG three. We are flooding across the battlefield here heading to the east.
Only one Russian tank left to defend. Russian turn three, they get an event card as well. See what they draw. Sharpshooter. Add two to an attack range. Okay, we can work with that. Actually, no, we're not going to add two to the attack range. We don't really need that. Um so, instead of what we're going to do is if you don't like the default event, you can use any one of these things on the boost card instead. So, it says discard the event card and choose one of these boosts for one tank in this turn. Plus one move it, plus one range, plus one die to an attack. We are going to add a die roll to our attack instead of using the plus one to the range. So, we'll discard that card. We're going to add a dice roll to our attack. And let's see if we can take out this StuG three. So, rather than having two dice on our attack for the medium tank, we get three with our T-34. We get a five, which is exactly what we wanted. It knocks out armor token, and that tank is down to one token left. Now, things are a little bit dire here, and we made a very tactical mistake here for the Russians because by placing the minefield here, they can't go through the building, and these half hexes that you can see just up there are actually out of play.
They're not allowed to play on them in this version in this game. So, in order to get out, we have to go through the mines. But, uh you know, we have this restore one armor token card that we can play at any time. So, we if worse to worse, if this is a mine, I mean, it's a 2/3 chance it is, we'll see what happens. But, we're going to start to back up cuz we want to get out of range of these tanks a little bit. So, we're going to go over the minefield. We'll see what it is. Oh, they got so lucky. They can save that overhaul card. So, that's one. And let's go two, three. We're going to make the Germans go over the mines or around them and stuff. And that will end the second action for the Russian turn. Let's go now to the German turn. German turn four is our they get their last StuG III replacement tank reinforcement tank comes into the battlefield. Now you can put it on one of these checkpoints or adjacent to the farthest back tank.
Yeah, we'll put it right here. Let's just get it right. We got a line of StuG IIIs coming against one Russian tank. And the Germans are up. Now they don't have any morale cards, but they have two actions. And let's move forward now with this StuG III. Now in the previous time I mentioned that this uh we can avoid the minefield. We're going to go right at the Russians and see if we can just overwhelm them. One two and we can go three here and take control of the checkpoint. By taking control of the checkpoint, we flip it over. And we get a morale card for this. So the Germans are going to get a morale card here. Things twisting in the Axis favor here. Defender gets to attack instead. Ooh, we'll save that one for the next turn. That that could be huge. Now, that's our move. Let's now attack. We don't have any benefits or modifiers to our attack dice rolls. So we can roll two dice here. That's what we're going to get and we get a six and a five. So the six gets us another morale card as the Germans.
Reroll a dice for an attack. We don't need to on that one, but we'll save it for future attacks. And it does a damage to the tank, which is good, but Russians are not going to be denied. They're immediately going to play this overhaul card, which can be played at any time to restore one armor token to the tank. So they lose the armor token and they get the hammers out and they put it back on. And that's the end of the German turn. Now we go to Russian turn four. There is nothing special about Russian turn four. Let's burn through this one here, which is add a dice to your attack. We're going to play a morale card. We're going to start by trying to blow away this Stug III. It's only got one armor token left, so we could finish it off with this attack. We would be remiss here to not use this ambush card, which is defender gets to attack instead. So, we're going to burn this right up. The Germans get a free attack. Now, what I don't know is does that mean it negates the attacker's attack? I better check that. Yeah, so I checked the frequently asked questions and the defender gets to attack and then the attacker gets to attack. So, it's not instead, it's gets a free attack before the attacker attacks. So, our Stug III is going to fire at the T-34.
Oh, it is rolling a six. It gets another morale card. They're piling them up here. Add two hexagons to movement. That is huge for the Germans here. Let's get and they get a six, so they damage T-34. The last Russian tank is getting beat up here, but they have used reinforce. Add a dice to your attack. The Russians are going to get a chance to attack back. They're going to get three dice. Let's see if we can finish off this Stug III. They get a six. They get a Wait a Wait, they're really dialing in the attacks now. Conceal, attacker subtracts one from highest dice roll. Hmm, interesting. Okay, but the one hit on the Stug III is all it needed. It blows it away and it is gone up in flames. Now, we can move as the Russian tank now, which we will do cuz we can retake this checkpoint, which I believe also means you get a morale card even though it's your own. Airdrop is move next to any any friendly tank. Oh, that's helpful if we had more than one tank that's not all the way beat up here, but we don't.
Now, we go to the Germans in turn five. It is a nothing special turn. We should be able to knock out this Russian tank. We have a lot of stuff to do, but we can play something I think that's going to be very, very helpful here. Add two hexagons to movement. Let's do that. One, two, three, four, five. We have flying by the Russians now to try to get out the other side, meaning if they don't knock us out, we're on our way to the eastern edge of the map here. And we get two dice rolls here for our attack. We're going to attack with our second action on the T-34. We can re-roll a dice for an attack. So, with two dice rolls, we can roll two.
Yeah. That'll do it. That's the end of the Russian tank. It blows it away. It's the last T-34. The Russians have no tanks left, but it is not hopeless yet for the Russians. You might be thinking, "Wow, this is battle over." But it is not. Now, the Germans also rolled a six on that attack, so they get another morale card, and they get add three hexagons to movement. That is huge. This This Let's take a look at the big picture here. So, their movement is three. 1 2 3. With adding three hexagons to the movement, 4 5, they are off, and they would win the battle here. We go to Russian turn six It's actually over, right? We go to Russian turn six. There is an event with this. It is an anti-tank gun. Take one extra attack action with one die. But the Russians don't have any tanks here. Now, in turn six, if we look at the turn marker here, on turn six, they would get a reinforcement. But for this one here, there really isn't anything they can do with that. They don't have any tanks to do. So, they just have to pass. We go to the Germans now for turn six. They're going to get an event card, which says crew fatigue, enemy loses one action next turn.
We will actually Well, we don't need to, right? Because we can play this transport card, add three hexagons to movement. The StuG III has a movement of three. 1 2 3. We're going to add three to movement. 1 2, and we are off the map. The Germans have won the battle. Well, so that is the first time that as the attacker I've won this battle here. Now, it did help exiting off the bridges right. When I was playing you could only exit off here, it was hard for the Germans to get across cuz the Russians could just plug this. But by having three exit hexes off the bridge, that makes the bridge a little bit of less of a bottleneck. Now, the one thing we didn't see here is the smoke. And the smoke drops down four smoke tokens that last for the whole German next turn. And the Germans can't shoot through those hexes. But there wasn't really a place where it made sense to drop that given all the way things were were playing out there. Uh so, uh Germans pick up the victory. I thought I'd toss up some impressions of gameplay with this. Uh things that I like. Well, this is very fast and fluid.
And I think that fast fluid nature of the game is the strength that makes it appropriate for a number of tasks. I could see the using using this as I mentioned earlier on to introduce younger wargamers to wargaming. Also, I think this would work really well to introduce uh someone who is inter- adult who's interested in wargaming to a hex encounter game that really doesn't have a lot of rules to bog you down. You could teach someone this and play them this quickly. And you're starting to get at elements of traditional wargames. Hex movement, range, firepower, armor, and stuff like that that show up in more complex games. So, as that introductory pathway, I think this the the game is really strong. Uh for experienced wargamers, if you're looking for something on a lighter fare that you could play before a more serious historical game or after a more his- serious historical game, you're looking for something that's not going to bog your brain down in rules or overly complex gameplay, uh this would also serve that purpose. So, I think for those three purposes this game works really well.
I also like the depth of the game. I mean, it's it's not a deep game, right? Let's be fair. But there's enough depth here with the tactics cards, with the event cards, with the morale cards that you're constantly thinking about what are the optimal ways to use those cards to create the most damage or the best benefit to you. Now, the third thing to mention is too, you know, I don't think you can analyze this game too heavily on the historical arc, right? Because some of the tanks, the positioning of tank, the armor of the tanks, the value of the tanks, the event called like the air drop card, that's probably the cheesiest card, right? Like a tank just appears here. The way reinforcements appear can be a little bit stunning, too, cuz they just pop right into the battle. I might be inclined, maybe a house rule, to have the reinforcements show up on your side of the map, but that doesn't really help the Germans in this hold the line one, because if their tanks tanks start way in the back, they'll never get up to the battlefield. So, I get why it's there, but it does create some things that, you know, if you're evaluating the game on historical terms, it it falls falls short. But, I don't think it's aiming for that, it's definitely aiming for a gameplay experience that's fun and fast with just enough challenge to be engaging for a wide range of gamers.
If you did like this video and want to learn more about the game, I'll put a link to the crowdfunding campaign down below. Thank you so much for watching. If you did like this video, I do have a video up of the previous version, a full gameplay of the other type of mission, which is from Tank Clash Western Front, and I'll put a link to that up here if you'd like to check that out as well. Thank you everybody for watching.