Gale Force Nine has announced a new alternate history WW2 wargame, Clash of Steel, which brings the forces of the USA, Soviets, Britain, and Germany back into the fight in 1948. The wargame will focus on tank-on-tank battles between the major belligerents, and uses the firm’s highly detailed 15mm scale plastic miniatures to depict massed armor engagements.
According to the Clash of Steel website, players will be able to field “entire tank companies” from each of the four nations. Gale Force Nine has revealed two starter sets for the new WW2 game so far, American vs Soviet and German vs British, containing 21 and 17 tanks respectively.
As well as rules, tokens, dice, and unit stats, the box sets contain these miniatures:
American vs Soviet
- American M18 Hellcat x 2
- American T28 x 2
- American T 29 x 3
- Soviet IS 3 x 3
- Soviet ISU 130 x 5
- Soviet T54-1 x 6
German vs British
- British Centurion x 4
- British Comet x 3
- British Tortoise x 2
- German Maus x 1
- German Panzer IV 70 x 3
- German Tiger I x 2
- German Tiger II x 2
This promises to be a real treat for tread heads. The tanks of 1948 include evolutions of late-war stalwarts from WW2, plus production variants of experimental vehicles that never saw a full deployment.
If you have an existing collection from GF9’s main WW2 miniature wargame Flames of War, you should be able to proxy in your current collection. Though we’ve yet to meet a tank collector who turns down an excuse to buy more tiny tanks.
The game will feature “dynamic, mission based gameplay”, with objectives generated using mission cards contained in the starter sets. That seems a little bit ahistorical, which isn’t strictly a bad thing; it’s a game style that gamers who got their start in wargaming with Warhammer 40k rather than Bolt Action will be familiar with.
This isn’t Gale Force Nine’s first dalliance with alternate history. The firm already makes Team Yankee, a WW3 game set in the 1980s, which imagines the Cold War going hot.
It seems that tank battles in and around WW2 are a popular theme for wargames at the moment: Warlord Games recently announced Achtung, Panzer!, a 28mm tank duelling wargame, which should be on sale soon.
Love big armies of small miniatures but aren’t fussed about the time period? Check out our Legions Imperialis review for the latest epic-scale wargame from Games Workshop, and make sure you check out the Warpath Kickstarter from Mantic Games!