Into the Bastards!: First tank battle

Into the Bastards! - First Tank Battle, retraces the second battle of Villers-Bretonneux on 24 and 25 April 1918. The game allows players to simulate the last German attempt to take Amiens, as part of the Michael Offensive. This bitter battle takes its place in history above all because it saw the first tank action between the two belligerents. However this historical detail should not obscure all other facts which mark out this battle, where successive attacks and counter-attacks succeeded each other: massive commitment of German tanks A7V, employment in the two camps of elite troops, attack at night,...

April 1918 - The German Michael offensive, launched in Picardy, is peaking. Reaching the gates of Amiens, the Kaiser's troops threaten to definitively breakthrough the Allied Lines. On 24 April, the Germans captured the last defensive bastion in front of Amiens, the village of Villers-Bretonneux, during a battle that featured the first engagement between tanks. But that same night, Australian soldiers entered the line and prepared to repulse the enemy in an intense night attack. Their objective was as simple and terrible as their war cry: "Into the Bastards!"

Into the Bastards! is a low complexity game recreating this battle, from the initial German offensive to the Australian counter-attack. Each player has elite troops at his command, represented at battalion scale: the German Guard Division, the french Moroccan Division, an Australian Brigade, and, of course, British and German tanks.

Game Scale: Game Turn: 2 - 3 hours Hex: 219 yards / 200 meters Units: Battalion

Game Inventory: One 17 x 22" full color map One dual-side printed countersheet (160 1/2" counters) One 6-page Into the Bastards! rulebook

Solitaire Playability: Medium Complexity Level: Medium Players: 2 or more Playing Time: