Marder Tank Expansion for TANKS The Modern Age

A closer look at the Marder tank expansion for "TANKS The Modern Age" from Galeforce 9. This expansion, which my mate Olli got for his Bundeswehr troops, offers one plastic Marder kit and some crew and equipment cards for the game.

The Marder kit is the same kit which you can buy for "Team Yankee" from Battlefront Models.

The kit included made a good impression when I had it in my hands, no visible ejectormarks or sinkholes, almost no flash and minimal mouldlines. But take a look for yourself:

As you can see, it is a nicely casted kit. But the interesting part are the cards of this expansion, so let us see which cards were included:

First there is the card for the Marder itself, which has a high Initiative of 8 but has no armour and only 3 hitpoints. His rapid fire ability with 5 dice is only effective against other unarmoured vehicles and tanks, but with Milan missiles it has a 4 dice attack against all units from the game. Equipped with a Milan launcher this thing is a nice addition to your Bundeswehr troops for only 13 points. 

 

Beside the unitcard you find 3 crew and 2 equipmentcards in the box. There is only one card which can be used for all nations, the rest of them can only be used by the German Forces.

The heroic German crewmember, Carl Hauff, offers beside the initiative boost the feature that his tank could move after an unsuccessful attack, and this happens more often than you may think.

The only for Marders usable Milan rocket gives the Marder some extra punch, his standard attack of 2 is pretty worthless, and the rapid fire ability does not work on armoured vehicles.

"Duck Hunter", usable for all nations, is a nice addition, it gives the vehicle which carries this upgrade some antiair abilities.

The two remaining cards "Lone Wolf" and the "Platoon Coordinator" are also some nice additions, but they will show if they are worth their costs, I think I will see them when Olli has his Bundeswehr battlegroup finished. 

All in all a nice addition to the German forces, I am looking forward to play a first game against the Marder and the rest of his comrades, then we will see its strenghts and weaknesses.

Tomorrow I will upload the next batch of pictures from this years Tactica, in the following posts after that I will take some closer looks at more "TANKS The Modern Age" expansions.

Tactica 2019 Pictures (1)

Pictures of the Hamburg Tactica 2019. I knew that some of the pictures I made were bad, but that more than the half of the 150 pictures I took were messed up, was a bad surprise for me. At least the picture of my Sith initiation was alright.

Seems that I should get a besser camera for the next Tactica or maybe use my mobile, here are the "best" pictures I made:

AGGRO, the 70ies football skirmish rules, was there just like last year. This time with a new demotable. You can find the AGGRO group at www.facebook.com/groups/AggroSkirmish. Seems that version 2.0 will come this year.

This reminds me, that I have to finish my Aggro minis which I picked up at last years Tactica.

The custom cards in the last picture may be available soon, but I have no further details about that.

The Perry brothers were also at the Tactica just like in the last years. It was pretty fascinating seeing Michael Perry at sculpting, he is a true artist.

Brother Vinnie was there to sell his minis. Did you know that he is sculpting the minis by himself ? As I wrote last year, seeing the minis with my own eyes is a big difference compared to pictures which can be found in the web.

This may be not safe for work.

A pretty nice Star Trek gaming table. A Klingon raiding party storms some kind of habitat. On the last picture you can see Dr. Crusher, Geordie LaForge and a generic redshirt, we know who of them will not get out alive.

The last picture of this post shows the miniatures which are available from the Wargames Illustrated magazine. They offer a fine selection of fictional characters from movies and historical personalities.

The next post will be a closer look at one of the "TANKS The Modern Age" expansions I got from the Tactica, more Tactica pictures will come after that.

Then I will upload pictures of the WW2 Kampfgruppe gametable, some Star Wars stuff, a big 40k table, some more Star Wars stuff and other pictures.

Goin' Down South (once again) Tactica 2019 In Hamburg

We just came home from this years Tactica in Hamburg. It was our second visit of this convention, just like last year it made a lot of fun, many nice people to meet, great gaming tables and a chilling mood.

You may know that I am not the best photographer but in the next days I will upload my pictures of the Hamburg Tactica 2019. But at the moment I am exhausted, today was a long day.

Update:
Not exhausted enough not to make some pictures of the minis I bought today, seems like some more closer looks are coming soon. And no, this will not become the ww3modelzone rather it would become the www2modelzone.

Beside some plastic for "TANKS The Modern Age" which I preordered at Frontline Games (great service guys), I got the "Team Yankee" Hammerfall starterbox and some small tools.

And I had the chance to get some of the miniatures which were made for hte Tactica only.

The first mini is this years Tactica exclusive miniature, a figure of the German ww2 submarine commander Carl Emmermann, which was almost sold out when we arrived at 11am. Next in line is last years Tactica miniature of the German explorer Heinrich Barth. On the third position is the German emperor Wilhelm the first, the Tactica 2016s miniature.

Pretty nice minis which are worth their own posts.

Revell 1:100 AH-64A Apache

A closer look at the AH-64A Apache attack helicopter by Revell, made in 1:100 scale. I got it from my local model supplier as most of my 1:100 helicopter kits.

This kit appeared 1990 for the first time, this version is the 2016 reissue. And there exists a quickbuild 1:100 Apache, also produced by Revell, but I can not say if this kit is the base for it.

The two sprues of the kit are produced very well with no visible ejectormarkings or sinkholes. The amount of flash is almost zero. Also there should be almost no mouldlines to remove when it will be build.

If I had not two already started helicopters and a big pile of other started stuff, I would already have built i, but this kit must wait.

The clear plastic sprue contains the canopy, it is pretty thin and does not distort the view too much when you look through it.

And this brings up the big minuspoint of this and the three more Revell 1:100 helicopter kits I own, there are no crewfigures. There is a nice cockpit clearpart but no crew that could be seen through it. Even when there are alternatives, I think this sucks.

The last missing bit are the decals. As usual they come in good quality but offer only one version to build from, an Apache of the 3/227th Aviation Regiment, stationed in Hanau, Germany 1988. This would fit pretty well in the "TANKS The Modern Age" scenario.

All in all a nice kit. As written, the only negative point for me is the absence of crewmembers. I am no aviation expert, but after a quick websearch I think this kit is accurate. Or at least accurate enough for me.

I think I may create a custom card to use it as a proxy unit for the US Cobra helicopter, it will get its own post, when it is ready. At the moment I am working on ways to optimize my custom cards, but this goes on pretty slow.

Reaper Bones UFO WWW2 Style

(picture taken from the official product page)

It is getting weird. Last year at the Hamburg Tactica I bought an UFO from the Bones range of Reaper Miniatures. Reaper offers with their Bones sortiment a big range of miniatures for pretty low prices. The reason for this is that the miniatures are made from PVC. This means that the figures as also their details may be pretty soft.

The UFO was stashed away until I suddenly knew what I would do with it some weeks ago. With some modifications it would look like...
The first thing I did was to build 3 gunstations from plastic pearls and plastic rods, and they look ok for a spontanous project. I did not use the landing gear that was included and added a clear plastic rod for a flying base.
This thing was built and painted on a single afternoon.

When all glue was dried I went on with the paintjob, as you can see on the picture above I gave it a two color camouflage with hard edges on the upper side while the lower part was painted in turquoise, all done with Revell Aquacolor paints.
The decals were taken from the scrapbook as usual, I think the crosses came from a Zvezda kit while the yellow pieces came from the Meng Tiger I or II.

The flight stand is not final, also left to do is to build a base for this thing and then its ready for usage. You may already know for what I will use it, this will be totally ridicuolus, but you will have to wait for more infos and eventually some new custom cards until I write a post about it in 2 or 3 weeks.

In the meantime we are working for the weekend, and maybe the Montagsmalers will meet once more this week to continue their roguish projects. I hope I will find some time this week for one or two more posts, so many things to take a closer look at, but if I do not, you may stay ready for next week, I will try to make lots of pictures at the tactica just like last year.

TANKS The Modern Age: The War Goes On

Today me and my mate Olli continued our "TANKS The Modern Age" campaign. For this second battle we changed sides, he went on with the US forces while I commanded a Soviet tank platoon. Since no reinforcements had arrived, we used platoons as in our first game.

The Soviets were advancing to the outskirts of the Bavarian town of Auerbach where the Americans waited for the enemy in defense position.

The Russians rushed forward while the Americans secured their positions at the border of Auerbach. Whose fate was it to win the battle ?

First blood was scored by the Americans, the brave crew of Alpha 66 destroyed one of the enemys T-64. But this did not stop the Soviet strike, in the next round the first M1 Abrams was destroyed.

The battle went on with heavy losses for the Americans, and finally, the only unit which was left for them was their artillery unit, more informations about this custom unit can be found in this post.
But in "TANKS The Modern Age" artillery units are very fragile without any armourpoints and only 3 lifepoints, so this unit was destroyed like it was made of glass.

While the victorious Soviet troops celebrated their victory over the Western aggressor, a mighty thunderstorm arrised. After a series of strange explosions a bright flash appeared and a whole tank platoon had suddenly disappeared.

Could it be that the USA continued their experiments on timetravelling after the tragic incidents in Philadelphia 1943?

The next match will be another civil war. The brave forces of Mother Russia are attacked by an unknown enemy with highly advanced machinery.

Rubicon Models 28mm T-34/85

In the previous post I showed my 3d printed/Rubicon hybrid T-34, in this post I show my first finished T-34 from Rubicon Models. It is the T-34/85 in 1:56 scale, a perfect addition to any 28mm Soviet Army.

Building this thing was pretty simple thanks to the well made instructions included and the general quality of this kits parts.

The paints I used were the same as I used for the first 28mm T-34, except for the wash I used on this kit, this time it was Dark Brown Modelwash from Vallejo, mixed up with some Armypainter black wash and a few drops of water. While it still was wet, I removed some of it with a wet brush.

The white stripe was painted with Revell Aquacolor matte white. I masked its shape with tape, and added it with a paintbrush. When it was dry I added some damage with the cuttermesser.

The decals on the tank came from its box, they and the stripe got a coat of thinned GW Gryphonne Sepia wash before the kit was sealed with glossy varnish.

As next step I had another try with Vallejo pigments. I used a mix of Green Earth, Light Slate Grey and water, which I applied generously with an old brush.

When the pigments were dried, I brushed all of them I did not want on the kit away with an old toothbrush. The remaining pigments were fixed with spiritus, then the model got its final coat of matte varnish, as usual I used Revell Aquacolor matte varnish mixed with water on a 1:1 ratio.

By the way, the base green I used on both tanks can be seen on the right of the picture below. Properly thinned it works well with the airbrush.

A comparison shot of both tanks does not show their small size differences on a first view. A closer inspection shows the difference, but I think it is tolerable.

A new entry for the box. As usual I have no idea what I will do with the finished models, but until I find a proper use they will be stashed away in a box like all finished kits, except for this one. Maybe it is time to get a display case for my finished stuff.

The last picture is pretty bad, even for me, but it shows the first 4 steps of the paint process: primer, basecoat, drybrushing, wash. The first hull shown is not from this tank.
You can see pretty well, that I added some metallic look with a pencil to the engine grills, I like the look and all parts which are overdone can be cleaned by the careful use of an eraser.