If you like your wargames historically based then you'll like this. IMO the best in the series so far and especially good as it covers a subject that most games usually ignore; the blitzkrieg years 1939-40, You can run campaigns for all the important combatants too, the Germans, Poles, British, French and even the Italians in the S. of France. There's a tremendous variety of historical unit types to play with ranging from tankettes, tanks, SP guns, personnel carriers, flamethrower tanks, trucks, artillery, AA guns, armoured cars, AT guns, mortars, hmg's, infantry etc.
Think Steel Panthers and you won't be far off. You can zoom in quite close to see your forces and the scenery, though far from spectacular, compliments the battles and allows various tactics to be used. Each campaign is made up of several engagements and there are 3 difficulty levels.

A Qualified "Yes" ... for a turn based tactical wargame with no unit morale factors & no strategic factors

...Pros ...

1. Buy on sale for at least 50% off during the May anniversary of the Invasion of France Sale or wait til Holiday Sale

2. Great to fight with & fight against the excellent French Somua's, Char B's & the excellent British Matilda

3. German's have to use terrain & flanking tactics to over come stronger armour & numbers of Allied tanks

4. Weaker shorter range German tank guns usually means close in flank knife fights & combined arms

5, Devastating anti-tank gun ambushes just like the Germans used in France & Afrika, a combined arms must for wins

6. Suicidal frontal attacks especially into pak fronts does not work in Framce 40 just like it did not work in Kursk 43

7. Unit graphics, music, & sound ... excellent & polished

... Cons ...

1. Main disappointment: historic like but no really historic scenarios

2. 2nd dissappointment: no historic modelling of Allied Paralysis with no Armour & Stuka Panic (no morale factors)

3. Easy mode should be historic model since charging straight into the enemy was really the early Russian model

4. Attacking Maginot Fortresses ? ... yes , I know part of the German army did tie down & contain part of the French

5. Attacking the Maginot ... really deadly, easily byassed, do we really need another World War 1 Verdun lesson ???

6. Attacking the Maginot ... intresting combnied arms apprpoach marred by needless attrition of good men & units


Conclusion: OK fun but buying on sale removes some of the bitterness of what this wargame needs to be a great one ...
One can only hope better for the future ...


Improvements: Hexwar's Civil War 1861 is far better with the implementaion of real historical scenarios using real historic leaders, units, weapons,and most importantly morale - not all units stood like the Stonewall Jackson's "foot calvary" Brigade

1. Who would not like to have a Rommel Leader Unit who like the real one went across the Meuse River in a raft under fire with the assault engineers ... or a Guderian at the head of his panzer column ... or a hard charger like de Gaulle ...

2. Who would not like to fight the historical tank battle scenarios of :
* Battle of Hannut
* Battle of Gembloux
* Battle of Stonne
* Battle of Montcornet
* Battle of Arras

3. What if the small Belgium Tank Core with the excellent Belgium Armored Car Recon units deployed in the 1940 Ardennes ??? Great rear guard hypothetical battles ensue allowing Meuse River redeploymennts ... why leave the Flemish area of Belgiun uncontested to the Germans ??? Let the British & French armor advance to conquer the plains of Belgium ...

4. Finally, perhaps one day Hexwar games will come with a scenario editor / builder like the Steam game: "Tank On Tank Digital - West Front & East Front"


"The Panzer Kampfwagon III must have a 50mm gun to be a tank killer" Guderian

Oppurtunities Lost,
DuneWarrior

This is exactly the same as the iPad version.. same your money and buy that one.
iPad version = Cheaper, better interface, and it is full screen.
This is just a poor remake of that same game on a incomplete screen and using mice does this game an in-justice.

Not amazing, but good for the price and fun. A good tactical strategy game with a decent amount of realism in unit composition and stats.

After playing thorugh 1 of the 9 "campaigns" and the tutorial, AND Panzer Corp as well, I can safely say that Tank Battle is very much like a budget version of Panzer Corp / Panzer General, with simplified mechanics. The result is charming. Grognards should look elsewhere for their fix, but for those of us looking for quick battles and don't want to mess with deployment, upgrade, prestige spending, overpowered units, and so on, the Tank Battle series is a perfectly good "Lite" version of Panzer Corp.

The idea is simple: you are on a small hex map, and you need to either attack or defend, depending on scenario. Often the scenario will have multiple victory objectives, as well as some optional ones. Like X% of unit must survive, Location Y must not fall, destroy Z% of enemy units, and so on.

As in typical wargames, each unit has different ratings against certain types of enemies. Tanks do a lot damage to infantry, while takes a lot of damage from anti-tank guns and other tanks. Infantry is needed to control objectives and is better in certain terrains. Artillery and air support are off-map and can be called upon if available. The attack mechanics are simplified, and there are no replacement and resupply. This makes is imperative to gather a "front" of units and try to surround enemy units so you can trap it and destroy it in place. Movement and sighting are very much simplified: units cannot see through or go through other units, not even friendly ones. The only exceptions are mortar teams which can fire at any enemy in sight range (which is often affected by terrain).

Which brings us to a problem. The tutorial is there, but it's a bit plain, and mechanics are not explained well. Graphics are blocky enough to be from the 90's. Scaling up the resolution did not help. Also, UI is a bit weird, or not very... friendly, as you don't get a pop-up on the combat probabilities or unit capabilities. You can hit help and pop up the whole table, but again, the screens look like they came out of DOS days.

But still, the scenarios are small, campaign are just a couple scenarios together, The scenarios are pretty short, only 10-20 turns. The graphics are adequate, and once you understand the mechanics you don't really need the help screens except to check up on the units. It doesn't measure up to Panzer Corp, but it's never meant to be.

The Tank Battle series heads back to 1939 and the shocking German attacks on Poland followed by the 1940 conquest of France by German and Italian forces. As a result, this edition contains the widest variety of armies and missions so far. Armament has also been reverted to early war effectiveness. But these are relatively unimportant compared to the new missions.

None of the missions really simulate historical situations, but they do give a feel for them. For instance, I finished the Polish missions which are all defensive in nature. Offensive missions in wargames don't require much more than challenging goals to be enjoyable. But when the roles are reversed, something more tends to be required. Facing the German Blitzkrieg, Tank Battles has solved the problem with a series of dynamic victory conditions that can be quite satisfying to accomplish.

One mission requires the Polish army to defend a crossroads until German reinforcements make the position hopeless. At that point, the goal changes to moving a captain (really just a named Polish infantry unit) to a victory point on the other side of a river. As you might notice, these are more suggestive than historical. The first time I attempted the mission, I used the special unit to defend the first victory point and lost it well before making the escape. For the second try, I started maneuvering the captain toward the goal immediately. Unfortunately, it stumbled upon enemy infantry in the forest and was reduced in strength before slipping across the river. Although my army was reduced to a single hit point of the special unit, I was able to win victory by reaching the goal. Each turn was touch and go as the Germans took shots at my hapless captain.

The more I play Tank Battle games, the more I admire their craft at mission design. It's not the most glamorous thing in the world, but short, challenging and balanced wargames are a pleasure to experience.

Good strategy game.
Oldschool design is awesome.
You can earn achievements.

Ever wanted to play the Italians against the French in 1940? Or the Polish campaign on either side? Well, you can. And it very much fun for such a low price,

Hexwar is a very good game developer who really cares about the games they develop and they listen to the people who buy their games for feedback. Tank Battle: Blitzkrieg is a pretty simple game to learn how to master and play. The game has a pretty good tuturial to learn how to play the game.

You get quite a few different scenarios to play in the game. Every scenario you play in is always has a different battle to play in and the battles are pretty fast pace to play through. I really like the feature in the game where you can setup the game to unlock all the scenarios right away so you play through any of them. Each scenario usually takes about 15 minutes to half hour to play through. I like these kind of games where you can just jump right in and play through each scenario in a short time period.

The game has a good zoom feature to zoom in on your units and the game also lets you adjust the game to fit your computer screen. I also like how the music in the game fits each battle you play.

If you like this game then I recommend you try playing Tank Battle: 1944 and Tank Battle: North Africa for the PC. They are very simliar to this game in gameplay. I really enjoy playing those games too. Keep up the good work Hexwar and keep making great games to play.

It was fun for a while, but the rng makes all the difference between winning and losing. If you can get it real cheap as part of a bundle, it might be worth a try (you may not get as frustrated with the rng as I did).

Another thing that I didn't care for was the fact that if you lose a mission, you have to replay it, rather than moving on in the campaign.