Tank Squad Command tanks with friends at Kursk

Each battle is a mission with its own objectives: take a position, hold it, knock out the guns covering it. You do not just drive one tank. You give orders to the rest of your squad, call in infantry, artillery and air support when it is available, and decide when to push and when to pull back. Every loss matters, because whatever you break or lose now has to be replaced before the campaign's final battle. Plan the approach before the first shot: send scouts ahead, keep your armour angled, and try not to drive straight into an ambush. When the plan falls apart anyway, improvising with what is left of your squad is where the fun starts.

Between battles, the work moves to the depot. Tanks come home damaged, so you repair the parts that took the hits: engine, fuel system, gearbox, tracks and wheels, inside and out. You refill the fuel, restock the main gun and machine gun ammo, and work together with your co-op partners to get vehicles back in fighting shape faster. Squads need managing too: replace crews and vehicles you lost, create new squads, and fill them from your pool by hand or automatically. If the paperwork is not your idea of fun, you can automate it for some resources, or skip it entirely in single mission mode.

Not every wreck stays a wreck. After a battle you can haul damaged enemy tanks back to the repair station, fix them up and add them to your own force, which is a very satisfying way to end up fielding hardware you were never issued. On top of that, every vehicle can be made yours: apply camouflage patterns, change the side numbers, pick the emblems. And when you just want to fool around, take a tank to the proving grounds and have some fun with every vehicle in the game, no objectives attached.

This is a game built for a lobby. Up to four players can run a campaign together, each commanding their own tank, or squeeze into one vehicle in multi-crew mode: one of you drives, one loads, one commands, and the whole thing only works if you actually talk to each other over the tank radio. Expect the plan to survive contact with your friends for about ninety seconds. Someone gets the squad stuck, someone else rams a friendly tank, and the mission limps home sideways. That mess is the point: coordinating orders, repairs and rescues with people you can laugh at is what makes the chaos worth it.