KV-2 Custom Unit Card For "TANKS"

After the SU-76 and the BM-13 custom expansions for "TANKS" now comes the third new custom unit for the game. This time it is the Soviet heavy KV-2 tank. This was not playtested yet, but feel free to use it for your future "TANKS" games, it should work as supposed.

Also included is a new doctrine for Germany, "Beutepanzer" offers the choice to use foreign tanks for German platoons. You can only use global upgrades on that tank, this enlarges the range of tanks to choose from if you are playing the German forces.

The minis on the picture are the dismounted Soviet tank crewmen from the "Flames Of War" range, when the plane expansion is finally done, I may add another rules expansion.

While I was playing with a friend and one of his tanks was destroyed, he mentioned if he could save his crewmembers to another tank. What an interesting idea.

Today I did not reach the copyshop in time, but the KV-2 card was made in the same session as the SU-76 and the BM-13 cards were made. Since the printouts of these cards are ok, I think this new card should also be good enough for games.

You can find the new cards in my googledrive at

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15Y-7nXBeclLKGVn2Uwa5sUxWNWVC_K1I/view?usp=sharing

At the moment the 3Dprinter is printing the second of two Semovente 75/18. I had written about it in the last post but I decided against combining the M41/14 with printed parts. Instead, I will use the Semovente structures to build two new hybrids.

I think I will dedicate tomorrows post to some finished and w.i.p. 28mm figures.

The First Custom Units For WW2 "TANKS"

Here they are, the first two custom units for ww2 "TANKS". Both of them are Soviet artillery units, and I decided to publish them together in one file. Next to the new units I also created a new crewmember and a new ammocard.

The "Guards Artillerist" will fit next to the other (official) Guards crewmen, and I think he will serve his duty pretty well.

The new ammocard "Rain Of Fire" was influenced by a card of "TANKS The Modern Age", it gives the Katyusha a devastating ground attack.

You can download this expansion (PDF) from my googledrive at

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11R3ZrSEnL9aYxZosBn0B_24uLPFH-8FP/view

Just to give you a small preview, what will come next, in the next posts I am going to take a closer look at the SU-76s by Zvezda and the Plastic Soldier Company, and they will be compared in a third post. There is also the Katyusha left, which also will get a closer look, and in another post you will see, which modification were done on it.

And it seems, that in the next week I will turn the focus to some cold war stuff, reviews, battlereports, finished models, custom units, all that crap, stay tuned for that.

The next custom units will show up at the weekend, the KV-2 on which I took a closer look in the past (this post), and a first German custom unit, who would not like to use a Panzerkampfwagen VI or VIII (reviews coming soon) in the game.
And maybe I will add an addition to the rules containing all model abilities since not all of them are included in the rulebook (update: Done and can be found here).

Closing this post with a classic from my youth, in the clip you can see some BM-13 in action.

Zvezda 1:100 Ju-87 B2 Stuka

A closer look at the 1:144 JU-87 B2 Stuka modelkit made by the Russian producer Zvezda. This kit belongs to Zvezdas range of 1:144 plane expansions for their "Art Of Tactic" wargame. I think Zvezda gave up this game since its official homepage is dead. Or at least was when I looked the last time. Since half of the internet fails today, I could not check it.

By now I own 3 kits from this range, and when my mate Olli got this kit, I used the opportunity to look at it. So let us take a look at the content of this box:

The kit comes in a single grey plastic sprue. The material is softer than the green plastic what is used for other Zvezda kits. In future reviews we will see, that the grey stuff generally is softer than its green counterpart.

Only 8 parts will be needed to build this plane, and the quality of the kit is ok, but the grade of detail is very basic and could be way better. There are no sinkholes and only minimal flash can be found. The body has to be cleaned because it has a major mouldline all arround, but the other parts are ok.

The clear part for the cockpit comes as a solid piece, what was already known before from other Zvezda kits. There is no room for pilot and gunner figures or torsos and the rear AA machine gun is missing completely. Slightly disappointing but what was I expecting to see?
Maybe I really should try to vacform some canopies.

The second sprue in this box contains 2 parts to build a stand for the plane. It is included in every "Art Of Tactic" plane expansion. It seems solid and not too bad and would be a decent model stand.

The decalsheet seems like it is printed in the same good quality than the other Zvezda decal sheets I know. This one contains some generic numbers and Balkenkreuze. I had no time to test them at the moment, but there should be no issues with them.
If you want to use decal setting and/or decal softing solution there is the chance that it may damage them, I had this issue with the decals from Zvezdas Hawker Hurricane.

This is a pretty basic kit, with some grade of detail, but most details are missing. The missing supports of the rearwings could easiely be scratchbuilt, adding the AA gun would take some more efford since you would have to drill into the clearpart.
Adding these tho things already would improve its look.

For a simple gamepiece this thing is ok, but if you want something more, you should get something better. Eduard offers various versions of the Stuka in 1:144 scale. Or you may find the Revell "Micro Wings" Stuka which I built some time ago.

According to my mate Olli, this was built without any issues, and after he built this plane, we compared it to the Revell Ju-87:

Just take a look for yourself, you will see a lot of differences between these two. The Revell model was shown in a previous post, and while its overall detail is mediocre, it beats the Zvezda JU-87.

Both planes were made for the planes expansion, and by now I finally have all special abilies created and wanted to show them up to you, even when it takes some more weeks to finish this.

I copy/pasted this part of the rought draft of the rules, I think I should not have to explain them, just read for yourself:

The new Special Abilitiy for all tanks:

AA Gun

This model gets 3 attack dice against air units.

New Special Abilities for planes:

Plane

This model can only shoot targets entirely in front of it.

Constant Movement

This model has to move in every phase of the round.

Dogfighter (x)

This model gets (x) additional attack dice when attacking other planes.

New Special Abilities for air defense vehicles:

AA fire (x)

This Model has (x) Attack dice when shooting at planes.

Penetrator Rounds (x)

This Model gets (x) attack dice when attacking Models with with 0 Basearmour.

(the name of this may be changed)

Does not look bad or does it? Another thing I made some thoughts about were the AA guns for the British and the American forces and I decided, that both vehicles I made up could be choosen from either the USA or the UK.

Then one of these two doctrines, both costing 0 points, must be chosen to mark the country for which the model stands:

In British Service

The player may choose to keep one of their die results and re-roll the rest when Shooting while Stationary with this model.

In US Service

Treat this Model as making one less Move than shown on its Speed token when calculating its target's Defence dice.

Sounds pretty simple, and it is. This way each nation has at least 2 different AA guns to choose from. Since I may add the Ostwind, I also may add the Canadian Skink tank to choose, playable like the Italians in "TANKS", what can be seen, when I take a closer look at the Italian expansions for "TANKS".
Actually, I could do this in the next post, but first it is time again to show some some built models in the next post.

Update:
I uploaded the video of this post to my youtube channel.

First Planes Playtest for TANKS

Finally I had the chance to make a first playtest of my custom (work in progress) planes expansion for TANKS by Galeforce 9. After I wrote the last post, I had a friend for visit and invited him to a small game of TANKS.

Luckily he has some experiences with the modern variant of TANKS, having been part of the battle at the Easter front.

I built 2 small platoons and set up an improvised playfield in my hobbyroom, made from a blanket and some pieces of styrofoam. Not the prettiest battlefield, but it is ok for this quick test. We decided against any crew or equipment cards to keep it simple.

My friend played the attacking forces. The German platoon included one Panther (A) and two Panzer IV, all made by the Plastic Soldier Company.

As new custom units he had a Ju 87 in 1:144 scale and a 3D printed SdKfz 7/1 for air defense. I think I did not show the halftrack in any post, the only thing I added after printing were some figures from the bitsbox.

The defending British platoon was played by me and included a Sherman Firefly from an old "Flames Of War" starterbox, and the Comet and Achilles tanks from the game expansions.

My new additional units were a Hawker Tempest in 1:144 scale and an 3D printed M17 halftrack for air defense.

A look at the battlefield before the game started. It looks pretty simply but I may build some snow covered scenery pieces (and wash the blanket) because I like this winter look.

By the way, today I won an ebay auction, when the thing arrives, a new battlefield for "TANKS The Modern Age" will be build soon, maybe usable for ww2 TANKS too.

Having only sightblocking elements and no cover pieces, the game would have a touch of an arena fight. The first two rounds were pretty unspectacular but it seemed that at least the movement rules for the planes would work as supposed.

Would work as supposed in future games. Experiences from this first game showed that a special movement template and its own movement arrow is needed for games using these new rules. Wish I would have built them before, following some older drawings in my notebook.

The selfmade bases were impractical, I already replaced them with bases matching to the standard "Flames Of War" flyerbases.

That the halftracked AA vehicles would work was pretty clear from the start of the game, Actually the only new thing to them was that they got an ability known from ww3 TANKS.

Giving them "Rapid Fire" was an easy solution for their arnament, a thing I had issues with from the beginning.

I think, at this point I should state out that most of the rules were written before "TANKS The Modern Age" hit the market, and even when I took some elements from the TANKS followup, most of the planes rules were written at least one year ago.

While the battle on the ground went as usual, we started to attack with our planes. Not only the equipped weapons were used, we also made some theoretical dice throws to test several variants of bombs and other stuff.

And this also worked almost as supposed.

The planes landed some hits and the AA halftracks gave their best to shoot them down. Since there are no effects for planes in the critical hits cards, we found a simple solution for this. A conversion list will be included in the actual rules addon.

And I think that we have found some good equipment pieces for planes, even some pilots and doctrines will be available. I do not want to spoiler this stuff but after my mate Olli and I discussed the pointcosts for the new stuff, it seems that a big part of this project is already done.

The game took about 2 hours, ending with a victory for the German troops. I decided that when all enemies ground units are lost, the game is over, no matter if there are enemy planes left or not.

Having planes available adds some new tactics and advantages to the game, even when this was a very first test it made fun.

And I learned a lot of things that will have to be included in the rules to make this whole as easy to understand as possible.

 

At the moment I think I am going to create units (for this expansion) only for plane models which I have in my collection, what means, the first edition of the planes expansion for TANKS will include 5 to 6 planes and other units, that at least each nation will get one new type of AA unit and plane available. There will be different planetypes available, but I will keep this for a future post.

Maybe some readers will allow me to use pictures of their plane models for new cards.

But since the expansion is just a fun project, it takes some time. Some more playtests will have to happen, the final costs for all the new cards will have fo be found, and than I can start to write the actual expansion.

Maybe some more units may find their way in future revisions, once all the digital work is done, it will be no big issue to create new cards for them.

TANKS The Modern Age: Custom Unit #5

Tonight I bring you another custom unit for "TANKS The Modern Age", the Raketenjagdpanzer Jaguar 1. It is already the fifth custom unit card which I created with some help of my mate Olli, and there is at least one more which I will do.

The choices for Bundeswehr players are limited with only 4 available units, that is why I made this one. One additional choice is always welcome. Armed with 4 missiles this may be a threat to every unit on the battlefield but as usual, it is only a reskin of an existing unit. For this tank I used the US M901 TOW system as template.

The new Raketenjagdpanzer Jaguar 1 also gets a custom equipment card, which will be pretty useful when equipped.

The PDF file with the new units can be found in my Google drive at this link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12e0DQCNMjtVVSAVJ1ghTX1xYlQ-Ke6K8/view?usp=sharing

In the previous post you can see the model which will be used in the game, it was 3D printed. More informations where you can find nice models to print also can be found.

By the way, the French tank troops are on their way, and it will not only bring new closer looks at them, but also it seems that one of the kits offers the possibilty of making 2 kits from one box with some bitsrecycling methods, as I already did for the BMP and the M901/M163 expansions. Another try of magnetizing may be done too.

And after I did this, there may be a chance for a bigger expansion for the game. As a small hint I will only mention Frogfeet and Warthogs, a rough draft is already finished.

More on that soon.

TANKS The Modern Age: Custom Unit #4

After I took a closer look at the BTR-80 apc by Zvezda in the last posting, I made a custom unit card for it, as I did for the Zvezda M2 Bradley too. Once again a new custom unit card for "TANKS The Modern Age" was created.

This new unit is a reskin of the US LAV-25, with the same values, it offers a high initiative AA unit. Compared to the original tank, the values are not accurate, but I wanted to give the Soviet player a new unit as I did for the US forces before. I think you can not have enough choices to choose from.

As the 3 units I created before this one, you can find the PDF file with the new card at my google drive by following this link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YcvFV4eeOjZTdmv7-6RmBngo77FHWbvw/view?usp=sharing

For the moment that are all custom units that I created until now. To give you a litte foresight, there may follow a German artillery unit in the future, but for the German version of the M109 I will have to do some modifications to the barrel of the Zvezda M109 kit.

TANKS The Modern Age: Custom Unit #3

The Zvezda Bradley which I showed in the previous post offers a good base for another custom unit for "Tanks The Modern Age". 

The new unit card is based on the Soviet BMP-2 tank and offers the same values, also included is a weapon card for the TOW launcher, which can only be equipped by this vehicle. At the moment we did not find the time for a playtest, but this should work fine.

The PDF including the new cards is available from this link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dUV45YQemgKF8rwEUKqF1NzE-39w2DFF/view?usp=sharing

A good moment to mention, that the two previous made custom unit cards were redone and now published in PDF too.

The 4th and last custom unit, at least for this moment, will follow tomorrow.

TANKS The Modern Age: Custom Unit #2

Once again the Montagsmaler went rogue and met on a Saturday. I continued the work on my Galactica model and the Meng Tiger, my mate Olli gave some of his tanks a repaint. After that I finished the next custom unit card for "TANKS The Modern Age".

This time I wanted to create an artillery unit for the Soviet army, at the moment only French troops have access to artillery units. For the Soviet troops I took the 2S1 selfpropelled "Gvozdika" howitzer kit from Zvezdas "Hot War - Battle For Oil" range which offers some nice potential gaming pieces.  I took a closer look at this kit in this post.

The first custom unit I created for the game and additional informations can be found in this post. At the moment no further cards are planned, except for some custom platoon cards for the "classic" TANKS game.

Here are the new custom cards for "TANKS The Modern Age". At the moment I will offer them as uncompressed bitmap only, just rightclick and save them.

UPDATE:
A remade card is now available in PDF, just follow this link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hkFMz5MOns_h2MmKIn7JpWW1UpiiwDqg/view?usp=sharing

This is Version 1.0
The final version will be released as PDF file.

TANKS The Modern Age: Custom Unit #1

While I was browsing through the units of "TANKS The Modern Age", I noticed that the French army is the only one which can use artillery units. This brought up the idea to create a custom artillery unit, based on the values from the French unit, for the other armies of the game.

For the new custom unit I choosed a kit of Zvezdas "Hot War - Battle For Oil" range which offers some nice potential gaming pieces. The American side will get the M109 selfpropelled Howitzer, on which I took a closer look in this post. 

I found this template but decided against it and made my own template card from scratch. Of course I used a picture of the kit which I built. Even for an low experienced software user like me it was possible to do, using only MS Paint and Paint.net. The only problem was to find a fonttype which is readable at lower sizes.

The other minor problem was the scaling of the card. The template I created while I wrote this post was too big, because I mismatched the lenght of the card. But this was fixed.
The final card as seen on the picture is a little too small, but this happened because I forgot the autosizing of the printing software which my local copyshop uses. The card itself is in the right measurement.

The M109 with its comrades, I hope it will meet its expectations.

Now no more words, here are the new custom cards for "TANKS The Modern Age". At the moment I will offer them as uncompressed bitmap only, just rightclick and save them.

UPDATE:
A remade card is now available in PDF, just follow this link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XVljlYe99oMufFm9zYUMShzp3MgoXtnP/view?usp=sharing


This is Version 1.0
The final version will be released as PDF file.

There are 3 possible ways to print the cards, you can use your homeprinter if you own one. If you choose to print the files at home, you may setup a textdocument with the files and export it as PDF before.

The second method is to go to the local copyshop and let them get printed there, that is what I did.

The third method is to go to your local drugstore, it may offer to make prints from your digital photos. This was tried also, I have to change one or two things on the card, and then I can try to print them on glossy or matte photopaper.
On the second picture of the post, prints fom the copyshop (2,4) and photoprints (1,3) are shown, I prefer the photographs.

I never thought about the possibilities of photo printing services, this may get a seperate post in the future, maybe when I will design the next custom unit, this time the Soviets will get their artillery unit.