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.

TANKS The Modern Age: Let's Start A War ! The First Game

The first match of TANKS The Modern Age between me and my mate Olli. We decided do do a 100 point match, using all tanks I have at this moment. We both had 68 points in tanks, leaving 32 points for crews and upgrades.

We talked about what to do with missiles since now we got no feedback from the official Facebook group. But it is only logical if they can not be blocked. There are some other small rules changes we made, but that were the same changes we do for the ww2 version of this game.
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Update:
We got an response from their official Facebook group. They state:

"the target would get normal defense rolls. the missiles 

rules don't say anything about ignoring defense dice."

Hm, seems I was wrong with my interpretation of missiles rules.

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The dice decided that Olli had the initiative advantage for the first round.

The attacker, this time it was the Soviet army, was played by Olli. It contained the two T-64 from the starterbox, a T-72 and a 2S1 howitzer, which is a custom unit, you can find its card in this post.

They were pretty good equipped and ready to fight. Since there was only one T-64 card in the starterbox, I went to the local copyshop and made a copy of the T-64 card which I already had.

The US troops had the role of the defender and were played by me. I had 4 tanks to dispose, two M1 Abrams, an M60 from the Plastic Soldier Company, I took a closer look at it in this post, and also I had a custom artillery unit, the M109, you can find its card in this post.

I almost got the full crew of Alpha 66, but also the other crewmembers and extras were a nice addition to the strong Abrams tanks.

The use of modified tradingcard hulls made the handling of the cards a lot easier.

The pictures were made at the end of each round. The initiative counter should lie on my site of the table on some of the pictures, but we forgot about it.

Round 0:

The fight is ready to begin. After we placed the scenery, we deployed our tanks and were ready to start the first round.

Round 1:

Nothing big happens, the US artillery got its first shot but misses almost completely. Except for one M1 Abrams and one T-64, no other tanks had the opportunity to fire.

Round 2:

First blood. The Soviet artillery was crushed by its American counterpart. It is getting warmer since the opponents get closer, more shots were fired.

Round 3:

The Soviets bring their tanks in position to rush a fast counterstrike but the Americans hold their ground. No casualities in this round.

Round 4:

The first kill for the Soviet tank platoon. The M60 got wrecked by the T-72. Now it is 3 versus 3.

Round 5:

It is getting hot. Both T-64 got destroyed, but Alpha 66 and his brave crew got also destroyed. This had a drop on the morale of the Americans since not only a heavy hitter is gone but also its valuable equipment.

Round 6:

The last remaining Soviet tank tried to rush and to destroy the remaining Abrams tank, the M109 would be an easy target. But the dice decided that the battle would went on for another round.

Round 7:

In a desperate attempt the T-72 held position and tried another time to score a close range hit but missed with all its dice, just as its opponent, the M1 Abrams. But the American artillery scored a fatal hit on the last Soviet tank and blew it away.

A first victory for the Americans in this new war. But US intelligence warns that the next attack may be be supported by heavy helicopters.

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This game made fun, just as its predecessor, the rules are easy to understand, if you played ww2 TANKS then there are not much new rule elements. The use of artillery, even when they are custom units, has a big advantage, the US M109 destroyed two tanks.
Now since we played a first game, it is time to finish the 1:100 helicopters I already started, pick up the heli expansions at the Tactica to get their cards and then it is time for a revanche.
Will the Soviets dominate next time?

But before we will do that, we have planned to play a TANKS fun game of a ww2 tank platoon versus a ww3 tank platoon, just to see if the games are compatible. A coin will decide which ruleset we will use for that.

Rügen'46: Beer and Pretzels

The weekend after my birthday we had a little sit-in and played a first game of "Rügen 46" with some of the minis I showed in previous posts. I set up the simplest rules possible and it was a big fun for all of us.

The game was divided in three parts.

First all players had to escape from a dungeon, followed by a little race, after that we had to search for an artefact in the heavily zombie-infested ruins of Sassnitz.

As usual I forgot to make pictures, the credits for all pictures go to my mate Olli.

It was pretty cool, that the rules were understood by all players which made the game a big fun. After crawling through the dungeon, for the race all players got a GAZ 67 jeep, which I 3D printed from this file.

The GAZ 67 jeeps that I printed for the game got a coat of green, then they got some wash and drybrushing. For the final look all jeeps got a red star decal from the sparebook.
Last but not least all cars got a flag with different motives plus matching counters to tell which car belongs to which player.

I made a first try using Vallejo pigments which I got some years ago. I was satisfied with the results, but after I sealed the models with a coat of Revell Aquacolor matte clear, it seems that some of the pigments rinsed away.

But I think that they still look well for some improvised game pieces.

Finally, all players arrived at the ruins of Sassnitz where each got his actual mission and a squad of troopers for reinforcement. The mission was to find a key under one of the red tokens which were scattered arround the gamefield. For each token collected the player had to draw a card which decided if there was the key or some other useful/useless stuff.

When the key was found the player had to reach a chest in one of the ruins which contained the artifact. But it got very late and we decided to end the game in a draw.

Even when we did not finish the game it was a great fun. Sitting with friends and playing a game is a great thing. The two days before the game I had to do some nightshifts to finish all figures and other stuff but remembering the evening and looking at the pictures, it was worth it

In one of the next posts I will try to recapitulate the rules we used, a pc crash deleted most of my gamefiles that I will have to improvise, but they were pretty simple so that will be no issue.
Followed by a post where I will show all figures that were used, be ready for Karl Heinz von Diskowitz and his comrades.

You do not know anything about this "Rügen46" thing. Just read this post, it may help.

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When you think it is getting bad it still may get badder(worse) and suddenly some months went by without posting. What does not mean that I stopped this blog. But some personal shit was more important than compiling my modelling experiences. This post was started in July but personal issues and struggles kept my from finishing it. Not to mention the promotion at work which means total different work schedules leading to less spare time.

But I will continue this blog, I can not say in which frequenzy, but there a some plans for the future.

First of all I will unbox the new "TANKS The modern age" starterbox and some units for the game from Battlefront miniatures. I am excited for this new version of TANKS which will include helicopters. It should arrive after Christmas, so be prepared for this weekends closer look at it with all its strengths and flaws.

And you will see how I will build up a German force for the game with 3D printed miniatures.

Remember this ? It will be continued, we learned from the first game and will start another 2v2 or maybe even 3v3 TANKS game in the near future.

And then we are still working on our inofficial TANKS extensions. The first will feature some new gamemodes while the second extension is featuring planes and bailed out tank crewmen. It will contain some custom unit-, equipment-, crew- and herocards, custom markers, and custom rules for using planes and AAunits in TANKS.
While the basic rules are done there is still some work to do.
Fun fact: I downloaded the rules for the new TANKS game from Beasts Of War and some of the heli rules resemble the rules my mate Olli and I wrote in the late summer.

Finally there is one last thing to say,

I wish all of you a merry fucking Christmas.

CIVIL WAR !!! This Years First TANKS Game

Olli and I finally found some time for our first game this year. As usual we played with our house rules, but this will be a topic for another post. We played 100 points each side with no special rules. The hills you see on the pictures count as woods.

Sorry to say but my cameras batteries went empty and the pics from the mobile were not the best quality. I hope Olli has made better pictures with his mobile. If he has I will add them

This year's first game of tanks was fought by two opposing German tank platoons. My mate Olli played the attacking forces (Tiger, Panther, Panzer IV, StuG) while I was playing the defending troops with two Panthers and two Panzer IV.

In the first round nothing much happened but in the second round all tanks had the opportunity to fire. Only 3 of the 8 firing tanks scored a hit, but the StuG was almost knocked out.

The third round was the same as the second round, many shots were fired but only some of them hit with minor damage.

 

Round four started with the first of my Panthers being destroyed by the enemy Panther and Tiger tanks, with three frackin' critical hits. My other Panther managed to get out of the Panther's and Tiger's sights and to destroy the enemy's StuG (three critical hits, too) but got a critical hit which set his motor on fire.

In round five and six I managed to get my surviving Panther out of all enemies line of sights while my two Panzer IV attacked Olli's Panzer IV. In theory this should have been a garantied kill but the whole game I had bad luck with the dice that I did not get the enemy's tank destroyed.

At the end of the sixth round another try to repair the burning motor of my remaining Panther failed with the result that it got destroyed.

In the seventh and in the eight and final round all attackers went on my two Panzer IV and both got destroyed.

Germany wins.

The game made a lot of fun even when it was unclear in which order the tanks should be moved in the command phase (thanks to their Blitzkrieg special ability) because both sides had this ability. Our solution was to use the same order which we had in the movement phase.

We also changed the rules for hits on the rear of the tanks but as I wrote before, this will be posted seperately.

The next time we play will be a playtest of our first rules addon for Tanks. It will include Planes and their weaponry and mobile anti air weapons. At the moment we are still struggling with the stats for the new vehicles especially the point costs.

When this is done I will make the rules and new cards for the new vehicles available in pdf that you can downoad it, print the new cards, find and build the new models and have fun with integrating these new toys in your game.

TANKS By Galeforce 9: Bad Pictures Of A Forgotten Battle

There is much work here at the moment plus one of my mates is moving and I was helping out.

But while I was browsing my pictures on my mobile, I found pictures of a game of Tanks I played with a friend.

I can not remember the whole battle, but I remember it was a nice game (that I lost). The attackers platoon consisted of 4 T34/76 and a SU76, while my defending tank platoon had 2 Sherman Firefly, a Comet and one Cromwell.

My mate Olli and I are still working on our "secret project" but this will take some weeks until we can present it here. Meanwhile I traded my old Playstation with some games for a better compressor with 2 good airguns, I can't wait for this to arrive.

TANKS by Galeforce 9: The First Game On The New Battlefield

Yesterday we played our first 2 vs 2 match of TANKS by Galeforce 9 with 150 points each player. We did not add any custom or official addon rules except for minefields and destroyable scenery:

"When a V1 rocket gets hit it eplodes giving everything in 3 inch range one critical hit.

And we use dice (the purple dice) instead of the game's normal movement markers."

After the dice decided which team was the attacker/defender and the scenery and troops was placed the table looked like this:

The battlefield in its glory

The attacking platoons

The attackers were played by the Padawan and me. Our british platoon, played by teammate, had 3 Comets, 1 Sherman V, 1 Sherman Firefly and 1 Crusader. The second platoon was played by me and had 4 Sherman 76mm and a Pershing.

The defenders ready to beginn

The defenders had 2 platoons of German tanks. The first platoon was played by Mr.Burnz and had 2 Panther, two Panzer IV and 1 Tiger (early). My Mate Olli played the other platoon that consisted 2 Panthers, 1 Panzer IV, 1 StuG 3 and 1 Tiger (early).

First blood

It felt like 80 hours until the first shots were fired but from this points the game gained more speed. It was still some kind of chaos moving and shooting 20+ tanks with some of them having a higher initiative for shooting then for moving.

The defenders crossing the river

The German tanks started to push over the river, 2 of them were already destroyed while their opponents still and no losses. As their opponensts we decided to rush into the enemy but my teammate had to leave us soon that I had to play his tank platoon to finish the game.

The first Comet is gone

The game continued and the Panthers were demonstrating their strenght easily destroying a Comet tank. One the left side you can see the lucky Crusader tank who survived a hit by the Tiger in the side over near distance with losing only one hitpoint.

The game went on but it was too late that we decided to end it. The winning side was the side with the most destroyed enemy's points and that victory went to the Padawan and me. The picture below shows the battlefield after the last round.

The battlefield after finishing the match

The game was great fun, even when it sometimes got a little chaotic, but there are still some improvements to make to smooth the gameplay but those things are already on the workbench.

And we should build something to store the decks ingame, we had to use an ironing board and a clothes drying rack for our cards.