December 1, 2019

Leopard 2 Tank Expansion
for
TANKS The Modern Age

A closer look at the Leopard 2 tank expansion for "TANKS The Modern Age" from Galeforce 9. This expansion includes some cards for the game and a 1:100 modelkit, produced by Battlefront Miniatures for their "Team Yankee" game.

My mate Olli ordered this to complete his German Platoon, and eventually I took the opportunity to take a look at this it:

The modelkit comes in a single green sprue, and as far as I remember there were no issues with it. Neither sinkholes nor ejectormarks were found. The turret and hull details are good, some tools are moulded onto the hull. The tracks are (even when simplyfied) well made.
There is the choice of an opened or closed commander hatch. Also, there are 2 machineguns included, in case that you break one, you would have a spare piece.

After we have seen the plastic kit from this game expansion, let us take a look at the game material that is included. This time you will get 6 upgrade cards beside the unitcard.
Let us take a look at the cards and start with the card for the Leopard itself:

The Leopard 2 is one of the best tanks in the game. With 2 armourpoints and a total of 9 hitponts it can take some hits. Its initiative of 8 is higher than average. With 5 attackpoints and the "Advanced Stabilizer" this thing is a threat to every enemy tank. To use it you will have to spend 32 points, that is more than twice that the Leopard 1 costs.

After a quick look at the unitcard, now let us see which other cards are included in this expansion:

First we have 3 crewmember cards, all exclusively usable for German Tanks platoons.

The commander "Ernst Müller" adds 2 more initiative points for your tank. The price of 7 points may seem pretty high, but this cards also grants the abilitiy to add an additional attack dice against tanks with a lower initiative. This is pretty nice, a Leopard 2 with this comander would have an initiative of 10, what is very high.

Next there is "Klaus Katelaan", who not only adds an additional attack dice, when his tanks scores a critical hit, the defender draws 2 cards and you would have to decide, which of the 2 cards would be used for that critical hit. This upgrade costs 7 points, if you put it in a Marder you would have a nice AA unit.

The third crewcard is the "Homeland Defender", for 2 points he adds an additional initiative point for the movement phase. When that tank gots destroyed, you gain an additional attack die for your "Final Fury" attack.

The remaining 2 cards included in this box are global upgrade cards. 

"Adaptive" gives your tanks 2 more initiative points when you have three or more crewmember aboard your tank. If you are using lots of crewmembers in your tanks, this card is a must-have for only 1 point.

The "Liquid Courage" card could be known from the ww2 version of the game. It lets you reroll failed repairs for damage which is affecting your crew. This could be useful and costs as most generic equipment upgrades only 1 point.


According to my mate Olli, the kit was easy to build and took not much time to build, the result looks like this, but please note that no crewfigures are included, that guy came from the bitsbox. And I think, that the machine gun may came from the Leopard 1.


This expansion should be owned by everyone who commands a German platoon for "TANKS The Modern Age". Not only that you get (one of) the most powerful unit(s) in the game, which would not need any special crews to be a threat.
The kit is well made, the only negative point is the absence of any decals or crewfigures, but except for that this box has everything included to give your platton mor firepower.

Next Tuesday (22:30) we will take a closer look at a Zvezda model kit, a German expansion for their "Art Of Tactic" strategy game.

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