Tactical Armor

I went through a phase - 1975 to 1985 - when I believed that the only good wargame was a tactical armor wargame. And the "industry" (as we liked to call it) did not disappoint me; tactical armor games seemed to spawn faster than rabbits and the devotee was positively spoiled for choice. Among the tactical wargames I owned were PANZERBLITZ, PANZER LEADER, PANZER LEADER '40, TOBRUK, KAMPFPANZER, TANK!, DESERT WAR, MECHWAR '77, PANZER '44, PANZER, PANZER BATTLES, RED STAR/WHITE STAR, MECH WAR 2, OCTOBER WAR, TACFORCE, ROMMEL'S PANZERS, HELLTANK, OGRE, GEV, ARMOR, 88, SQUAD LEADER, CROSS OF IRON, CRESCENDO OF DOOM, ARAB-ISRAELI WARS, FIREFIGHT, CITYFIGHT, ASSAULT, MBT, COBRA, IDF...

One thing becomes obvious from this list: without the word panzer, we would have been in bad shape. Imagine a world were the French word char was more popular than the German word panzer. We'd have CHARBLITZ, ROMMEL'S CHARS, CHAR BATTLES...

My favorite, in terms of system, was OCTOBER WAR. The one I played the most FTF ("face to face") was PANZERBLITZ. But when it came to solitaire play, MECHWAR '77 and ARAB-ISRAELI WARS were my favorites, and I played the former to a frazzle of its former self (in the end I lost so many M60A1 platoons that I almost couldn't play it any more).

Yet despite my interest in such tankie nonsense, almost none of the gaming cliques I ran with were into what Donald Sutherland called "ahmah". My gaming cliques were strictly interested in DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, which was okay, because I loved that too, but I always found it a little odd that I'd play D&D all weekend and solitaire monster scenarios of ARAB-ISRAELI WARS all week.

Life seemed easier back then...