LAV Tank Expansion For TANKS The Modern Age And Magnetizing The LAV

A closer look at the LAV tank expansion for "TANKS The Modern Age". This game, made by Galeforce 9, is a new version of "TANKS", this time the conflict happens in the eighties of the 20th century in a fictional world war 3.

This game uses 1:100 modelkits from Battlefront Miniatures "Team Yankee" game, just as "TANKS" does with models from their "Flames Of War" range.

Beside the cards for the game, this plastic kit is included in the LAV expansion:

 

Sounds like I am repeating myself, everytime when I take a look at BM kits but once again, this is a kit without any flaws or issues. Neither sinkholes nor visible ejectormarkings can be found on the parts, also there is no flash and there is no mouldlining except for the roadwheels.

The kit comes in 2 sprues of green plastic. If you build the LAV AT version, you will need only the parts marked in the picture above from the second sprue. Also, you could build the LAV-M mortar version from this kit, but since it will not be used for the game I do not mention it in this post.

Seeing the amount of leftover bits, I redid my my little experiment from this post to build a M-163 VADS from them.

Or maybe 2, I reinforced my US troops with another M-901 and had all the bits from the pictured sprue twice. You can see my efford in the post below.

After a view on the plastic included in this expansion, let us take a look at the cards which are included. First there are 2 unitcards in this box:

The LAV-25 is a high initiative unit, but like all (as I call them) support units from the game it has no armour and only 3 hitpoints. Since it is wheeled, the LAV has 3 movement poins. Rapid fire 5 grants some advance against unarmoured vehicles and helicopters, but against all other units this tank is pretty useless with a base attack of only 2.

For 11 points this may be a good addition to your US platoon.

The second LAV version, the LAV-TOW, has with 5 points a lower initiative than the LAV-25. As all other light tanks it has no armour and only 3 hitpoints. Its strenght are the missiles, the vehicle has the ability to shoot 4 missiles each round, supported by its Fast and Hammerhead, instead of 1 this unit has 3 armour when in cover, abilities this thing can be a good support unit.

This unit may join your platoon for only 12 points.

This time 5 additional crew and equipment cards are included, 3 crewmembers and 2 equipment cards.

The US hero is tank commander "Joel Schrader" who pushes the initiative of all LAV and M-60 tanks of the platoon. It is one of those revealable cards, if you do so you will get 2 additional attack dice but lose 1 armourpoint for that round. For 6 points this is a good addition if you have more M-60 and LAVs in your platoon.

Next included are 2 drivers, the US only "Clever Mechanic" gives you 1 Initiative during the movement phase. Also he allows you to drop an equipment card to reroll up to 2 defence dice, not bad for only 2 points.

The "Daring Driver" allows you for 3 points to reroll a defence dice when not in cover.

The 2 leftover cards are for equipment/doctrines. "Spearhead" gives the vehicle which has it equipped to move before the game starts. This may be ok for 2 points, I still did not figure it out, its use may depent on the actual game setup.

The "Duck hunter" is a good addition, especially for tanks without AA abilities. For the cost of 2 points, tanks can do an unmodified  4 dice missile attack versus helicopter. Very nice.

Once again this is a nice addition for the game. I can not say much about its playability but in theory this thing seems nice. If you play versus helicopters, this is a good AA support unit for a releatively low cost.

Not only that I recycled the leftover VADS bits from this expansion, also I magnetized parts of the LAV tank to make it playable in both versions with a change the top part. Maybe this should have gotten its own post, but read on.

First of all, building this kit happened without any issues, made fun and did not take much time. Then I figured out how I would magnetize it and started with this process.
I glued magnets to both exchangable parts, then a blob of epoxy was deployed in the inner hull of the LAV. I pushed the screw with one of the topparts into the epoxy and when it was hardened I only had to take the part off again and could exchange it with the other magnetized top part. Since I used a magnet/screw combination I saved one magnet and did not have to care about the polarity.

Blogupdate

I blocked a specific IP of a network bot or stuff like this, I hope this will not show any negative effects for other visitors of this blog. For now I will test it for a week, to see if I can reduce access for that kinky bot. For this I used the script from http://freehostedscripts.net/blockip/

In the next weeks I have plenty of time for my hobby, this is what I planned beside some spontanous projects. Some older previews of "TANKS The Modern Age" expansions will be updated to fit in the scheme of the actual style, some pictures have to be redone and some additions for the cards have to be made and I would like to add some links.

Next is that I want to build an index page with all built kits from this blog ordered by name or scale of something like that. This will help to find specific models in this blog.

Finally. I will redo one of our battlefields for a more urban look, I have already started to plan the new layout, but removing the actual flock and sand will take some time because waterproof carpenters glue was used.

AND...

I will start to work on the next set of custom unit cards for the game. This time a new US and a new Soviet unit are planned, but I still have to wait for the kits to arrive, to build and to paint them, that I can use a picture of that model on the new card. They will not be completely new, they will only be reskins, what I already did for the French artillery unit. And since the German forces are also limited with only 4 units availabe, Olli and I should take a look on this topic.

I tried a new set of fonts, the new cards will be better readable and the cards that are finished at the moment will get redone this month and then be available as PDF. And it is unclear, if I should get the French units for the game, maybe I drop them of as a birthday present for a friend, after I took a closer look at them, we will see.