How to Play

Up to eight tanks share a stretch of hilly ground. On your turn you swing the gun to a bearing, raise it to an elevation, set the power, allow for the wind, and fire. The ground gives way where the shells land.

A round ends when one tank is left standing, or once it has used up 10 turns for every tank that started. In that case the healthiest survivor takes it, and damage dealt settles a tie. A match is several rounds, and the host chooses how many.

Classic

One tank at a time, in turn, with time to watch. Local games can have a turn timer of 30, 45 or 60 seconds, or none.

You may drive a little first: you get 15 fuel at the start of each turn, a metre of flat ground costs 1, and none of it is kept.

Fast

Everybody plans at the same time, and nobody sees anybody else’s plan until the volley. You plan your drive (shown by an outline of your tank where it would stop) and your shot, then lock in. Locking in is final.

Then hulls turn, tanks drive and everything fires at once. If the clock runs out before you lock in, your tank stays where it is and repeats its last shot. Three of those in a row and a bot minds the seat until you ask for it back. A round lasts at most 20 volleys.

A Housewarming Gift, or any shot that leaves 1.0 metres of earth or more over a tank, buries it. A buried tank stays where it is, under the dirt. It cannot drive, aim or fire, and blasts and fire still hurt it as usual: dirt is no shield.

Less than a metre of cover and the tank is simply lifted onto the new surface, as it always was.

A buried tank loses its next turn (“Busy digging.”). The turn after, it comes up onto the surface (“Delivered to the surface.”) with a puff of earth and no fall damage, and plays as normal. In Fast Mode it sits out the next volley and comes up for the one after.

Blow the dirt away and it is free at once, and falls if the ground has gone. A round ending clears the lot. A tank buried twice before it has served its turn still loses only one.

Everyone begins with $1,500. After each round you are paid for what you did: $10 for each point of damage, $500 for a kill, $300 for surviving the round and $1,000 for winning it. Your rank adds a little on top.

The first weapon is free and never runs out. Everything else is sold in packs, and a weapon is picked by its place in the list: press its number, or Tab for the next one you own.

A Golden Parachute opens by itself whenever a fall would hurt, and is used up when it does. A tank without one takes fall damage, and the further it falls the worse it is. Snow softens the landing.

The wind arrow, top right, points the way the wind is blowing as the camera sees it, and the number under it says how hard. No weather allows more than 22. Wind pushes a shell all the way through its flight, and it drifts a little after every shot or volley.

Each round has its own weather, named with its forecast in the panel at the top. Mud and snow make driving cost more, fog shortens the aim line, snow softens a fall, and showers bring lightning, which is nobody’s fault. The six kinds are on the front page.

Climbing costs a good deal more than flat ground: the steeper, the dearer, and a slope steeper than 45 degrees cannot be driven at all. You cannot drive through another tank, or off the edge of the map.

The FUEL bar shows what is left, and the line under it says what that buys on the flat in today’s weather.

Touch (Android)

Left thumb: a stick that drives and turns the hull. Right thumb: an aim pad that turns and lifts the barrel as a finger drags across it, a power strip to drag up and down, and a big fire button. Small round buttons choose the weapon, switch on fine aim, show or hide the aim line and flip to the overview; a menu button sits at the top. A finger anywhere else orbits the camera, and two of them pinch to zoom.

Menus

With a gamepad, the left stick or d-pad moves the focus, south presses, east goes back and the right stick scrolls. On the keyboard Esc opens the menu during a game, with Settings and the in-game guide in it. F1 hides or shows the key list on the battle screen.