Leopard 1 Tank Expansion for TANKS The Modern Age

A closer look at the 1:100 Leopard 1 tank expansion for "TANKS The Modern Age" from Galeforce 9. This expansion contains a modelkit and some upgrade cards for the game. The kit itself originates from the "Team Yankee" wargame made by Battlefront Miniatures.

Some time ago, my mate Olli got this expansion for his Bundeswehr platoon, and he allowed me to review and build it. But with no further words left, first let us take a look at the modelkit which comes with this expansion:

The kit came in 2 green sprues containing all parts to build the Leopard 1 tank. All kits were nicely casted, and neither me nor Olli found any errors. No flash or miscasted parts were found, neither sinkholes nor visible ejectromarks (when built) were on the parts.

Even the amount of mouldlines was very minimal.

The kit give you the choice of either the wield or the casted turret, both with opened or closed commanders hatches. Also you can build the Canadian Leopard version, but that does not count for this expanion. Two turrets will mean, that one complete turret would disappear in the bitsbox (or not).

After we have seen the plastic kit from this box, let us take a look at the card for the Leopard 1:

The Leopard 1 has a high initiative of 8, paired with 1 armourpoint and a total of 6 hitpoints, this a solid unit. The attack of 4 is ok, the Stabilizer ability would let you reroll a single attack dice.

For its price this is a nice addition to each Bundeswehr platoon, costing only 15 points means, that you could take either 2 leopard 1 (+2 points for upgrades) or a single Leopard 2 for the some points.

Next let us see, which upgrade cards are included in this expansion, starting with the German heroic crewcards, which are "flip over" cards, what means, that they only work from the moment they are revealed:

(by the way, the official FAQ for ww2 "TANKS" is pretty helpful for this game too)

The driver "Dietrich Manheim" adds 2 initiative points for the movement phase. When revealed directly after shooting, the tank may do a single move in any direction without adding a speed token. When I saw that card the first time, I had to think of the "Cautious" abilitiy from ww2 "TANKS".

For 5 points this driver can be useful.

"Jürgen Schmidt" can be added as gunner to your tank. This gunner is one of the most powerful crewcards I have seen in both "TANKS" games. Not only he grants you 2 additional initiative points for the attack phase when the card gets flipped after its attack.

After that attack you may do an unmodified D4 attack to the same target, what means that you could destroy a heavy tank in a single round with some lucky dice.

Next are 3 global upgrade cards, the "Suberb Commander" adds 1 initiative for the cost of 2 points, more initiative is always useful, but there are better upgrades for the same cost.

"Manpads" adds a single D5 missile attack when discarded. For 2 points this is a useful upgrade, giving the ability to attack helicopters.

(Even when every tank at least has a D3 basic attack versus helis.)

The last card from this expansion is "Willie Pete" for 2 points. In ww2 "TANKS" this is called "Smoke Rounds", and that is what it is. When this gets discarded, you do not shoot any tank. Instead of that you define a target, that gets -3 attack and counts in cover for that round.

This is a good card to weaken heavy tanks like the Leopard 2 or the M1A1 Abrams for at least one round.

Just think of an enemy platoon, where each tank has equipped "Willie Petes" ;)

The kit itself was easy to build, and the result looks like this:

There are 2 minor changes made, I used the machine guns from the BFM Leopard 2 kit instead of the included gun, and I added a scratchbuild target sight (?) on the wielded turret which will get a 3D printed hull. And I added a Bundeswehr commander mini from my bitsbox.

The third tank expansion for Bundeswehr platoons is a good one. Not only you would get a solid battle tank (and a good model of it) for your platton, you also get a bunch of very useful upgrades for your tanks. As usual, the only minus is the missing of any decalsheet or crewmember, but this is a known thing with these expansions.

Since the choice of available Bundeswehr expansions is very limited (only 4), get at least one of them if you play German forces in "TANKS The Modern Age".

"Dietrich Manheim", "Jürgen Schmidt" and the ammo cards included did well when my mate Olli and I had a small game on my workbench (tanks only), ending with the defeat of my French forces. There are no pictures from that battle but I will get a revanche in the next days, which will get a small battlereport then.

By the way, I think, I found some "official (??)" custom cards for "TANKS" in this blog.