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.

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.

Plastic Soldier Company 1:100 Leopard 1

A closer look at the Plastic Soldier Company 15mm Leopard 1 tank kit. As I wrote in the previous post, the PSC offers a growing range of 15 and 20mm tanks and other vehicles for ww2 and cold war wargames.

This is the third of their (at least for now) available 3 post-ww2 tanks. I already showed the US M-60 and the Soviet T-55 in other posts. Their official homepage lists more stuff coming soon, Brueckenkopf.de has some pictures of new modern stuff, you can find them here.

After that small introduction let us take a look at the model kit, which comes from the stash of my mate Olli:
 

The Leopard 1 comes in one sprue of the usual gray plastic which the PSC normally uses. As I wrote in the previous post, this stuff feels minimal softer than the styrene other companies use.

I saw that sprue only for a moment, but I do not remember any flaws with it. I think there were some mouldlines to remove but this is the case with almost any other model kit. The pictures show no flash and possible sinkholes should not be seen when it is constructed.

Except for the simplified tracks, the detail in general is good.

A very nice feature is the choice to have the driver and both turret hatches opened or closed, this is very nice because the PSC offers 3 tank crew figures with this kit for this. And that is not all, the kit offers the choice, either to build the German A3 or A4 version or you can also choose the Canadian C1 variant of this tank.

In general I would recommend this kit, even when I did not build it for myself, the general impression is fine. The choice of opened or closed hatches and the addition of 3 commander figures is a big plus.

My mate olli got a single sprue of this tank in which neither an instruction (can easily be found on the web) nor decals were included, I can not say if decals are included in the big box.
The overall price for this kit, as for most single PSC kits, is arround 5 Euros for a single tank and 20 to 25 Euros for a pack of 5.

If I remember correctly, my mate Olli had no issues building this kit while a past roguish Montagsmaler session, I think his w.i.p. tank looks fine, the basecoat is Revell Aquacolor Bronze Green, but do not ask which other colors he used.

Tomorrow I will take the opportunity to compare this thing to the Battlefront Miniatures Leopard 1 modelkit, as long I have some of his tanks here. Then we will see what differences there are and which of both kits I would prefer. Maybe I will add a picture of my modified Zvezda Abrams, my modifications got better than I tought they would get.

15mm 3D Printed Gepard and some updated posts

As I mentioned in a previous post, I think the more choices for platoonbuilding in "TANKS The Modern Age" you have, the more flexible you can create your platoonlist.

The choices for AntiAir units are limited (*) to (as I call them) support units with no armour and low hitpoints. Using  the "Camouflage Net" upgrade, combined with "Scout" or "Hammerhead" abilities may give some basic defense, with no speedpoints this are at least 3 dice to defend and missiles will not be affected by their special rules.

But all in all, the available AA units are very weak.

(*): There is at least one exception, but I will keep this for a future post.

This is the reason why my mate Olli mentioned that it would be nice to have armoured AA units. Said and done, I headed to Thingiverse and after a quick search I found this German Gepard AA tank.

I think the hull took 4 hours and the turret parts were printed in 2 hours.

The turret came in 5 parts, of which you can see only 4. The parts were roughly cleaned on the picture above, but I still had to remove the launcher tubes attached to the guns. As I understood, these were equipped in the beginning of the 21st century and would not fit in our late 80ies/early 90ies game setting. And without, this tank would look better.

In the background you can see the AMX-30 Roland turret, another custom unit which still has to be created as also the Gepards unit card. We still have to figure out the values and costs for these units since it may get too easy to make them over- or underpowered.

When we have found some good schemes for point costs and etc, heavy AA units for the other nations will follow too, or at least the British and Soviet forces may get some. I still have not found this type of unit for the US troops, but at least I will make the HMMWV Avanger available as option.

Both turrets side by side. The Gepard turret still needs some filling and sanding but it is remarkable in its shape. The Roland turret is ready to get painted, but this will have to wait until its comrades will have arrived at the homefront.

I magnetized the tankhull and turret using a screw and a magnet. I glued the magnet in the opening for the turret and turned a screw in the bottom of the turret. This way you can simply adjust the point where both parts meet.

Since the US and German tanks have the same NATO colorschemes, I want something different for the new platoon. I have planned to paint the French tanks in a (probably, but I do not care) historic inaccurate multiscale camouflage pattern with desert colors, using a set of 3 stencils which I downloaded from Thingiverse and printed on our Anet A8.

I hope this will work as proposed, especially the big turret of the AMX AUF1 artillery tank would look nice in this digital camouflage pattern. Unluckily, I took a picture of the only stencil which will need some cleanup.

Today Olli started to paint the Flakpanzer Gepard as you can see on the first picture of the post. There is still some color and the sealing varnish to do, but at distance this thing already looks very good.

A custom unit card for this tanks will follow soon.

(update: I forgot to add a picture of the unpainted tank, this was done as you can see below)

Some words on the blog update:

I made some better pictures and replaced some of the old in the "TANKS The Modern Age" stuff, which got a closer look  in some previous posts.

At the moment the starterbox and the expansions for the PAH, Marder, Abrams and T-72 got some new pictures. Tomorrow I will exchange some pictures from the closer looks at the BMP-1/2, M163/M901, Hind and Cobra expansions for the game.

And I will take the oppurtunity to make new pictures for the earlier "Faces Of War" postings, the quality of the actual pictures is simply bad.

I may split the earlier posts and preserve the leftover pictures for future posts, following the parole quality not quantity.

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.

3D Printed 15mm Raketenjagdpanzer Jaguar 1

While browsing through the net I found this very great collection of 3D printable cold war vehicles at Thingiverse and thought, maybe I could try to print one or two of them, just to check how good our cheap little Anet A8 would handle them.

Since this is a very low-end printer, I would not be surprised if the finished print would look crappy. But as you may have guessed this time the things went fine. I choosed this little thing, the Raketenjagdpanzer Jaguar 1, for a first try.

The piece directly from the printer. It took 3 1/2 hours to print and weights only 12 grams. I did not calculate the energy cost but the material cost for the Jaguar 1 is arround 25 cent which is not much, compared to the 20 Euro we paid for the whole filamentspool of 1000 gram.

I would like to know how many modelbuilders are using 3D printing technology since it is effordable for almost everyone. I think our A8 costed 250 Euro, including all extra parts, the printer itself was at 150 Euro, and this was 1 1/2 years ago. Nowadays you should get better models for this price.

But as I wrote before in previous posts, even this low-class 3D printer makes so many things possible. Maybe one day you will see the glorious troops of NOD defeating their foes in a game of TANKS.

After a cleanup the Jaguar is ready to get some paint. The quality and the grade of detail is good. I had nothing more to do then to remove the residue. A rought check of the measurements shows that the models height and width are in scale but its hull is 3 mm too short.

But I do not care about this, it would only be seen with another 1:100 Jaguar, e.g. from Battlefront, in direct comparison, that is why I definitively will print more vehicles from this collection.

As you have seen on the first picture of this posting, the tank has already got its paintjob. More pictures of finished Raketenjagdpanzers Jaguar 1 will follow when my mate Olli has painted his model.

Maybe I already made and uploaded a new custom unit for "TANKS The Modern Age" inspired from this, we will see in the later evening ;) when I will be compiling some future posts, but do not ask what I will be posting later, I am still unsure about it.

Marder Tank Expansion for TANKS The Modern Age

A closer look at the Marder tank expansion for "TANKS The Modern Age" from Galeforce 9. This expansion, which my mate Olli got for his Bundeswehr troops, offers one plastic Marder kit and some crew and equipment cards for the game.

The Marder kit is the same kit which you can buy for "Team Yankee" from Battlefront Models.

The kit included made a good impression when I had it in my hands, no visible ejectormarks or sinkholes, almost no flash and minimal mouldlines. But take a look for yourself:

As you can see, it is a nicely casted kit. But the interesting part are the cards of this expansion, so let us see which cards were included:

First there is the card for the Marder itself, which has a high Initiative of 8 but has no armour and only 3 hitpoints. His rapid fire ability with 5 dice is only effective against other unarmoured vehicles and tanks, but with Milan missiles it has a 4 dice attack against all units from the game. Equipped with a Milan launcher this thing is a nice addition to your Bundeswehr troops for only 13 points. 

 

Beside the unitcard you find 3 crew and 2 equipmentcards in the box. There is only one card which can be used for all nations, the rest of them can only be used by the German Forces.

The heroic German crewmember, Carl Hauff, offers beside the initiative boost the feature that his tank could move after an unsuccessful attack, and this happens more often than you may think.

The only for Marders usable Milan rocket gives the Marder some extra punch, his standard attack of 2 is pretty worthless, and the rapid fire ability does not work on armoured vehicles.

"Duck Hunter", usable for all nations, is a nice addition, it gives the vehicle which carries this upgrade some antiair abilities.

The two remaining cards "Lone Wolf" and the "Platoon Coordinator" are also some nice additions, but they will show if they are worth their costs, I think I will see them when Olli has his Bundeswehr battlegroup finished. 

All in all a nice addition to the German forces, I am looking forward to play a first game against the Marder and the rest of his comrades, then we will see its strenghts and weaknesses.

Tomorrow I will upload the next batch of pictures from this years Tactica, in the following posts after that I will take some closer looks at more "TANKS The Modern Age" expansions.

Del Prado 1:72 Leopard 2 A5 color comparison

In my last post I wrote that the green color used on the Del Prado Leopard is too bright. Today I made some photos of real Bundeswehr equipment to show that this is true.
On the left side of the picture you can see the model, on the right you can see a Bundeswehr transporter. You can see, the colors that Del Prado used are not authentic, they are way brighter than the colors that are used on the real model.

By the way I got today my first two books about the Eastern front of WW2 at the monthly fleamarket. They include a lot of pictures and some informations, I did not have the time to check the text, I just watched the pictures in it.

When I have read them I will write something about the books. I bought the following books today:Guido Knopp "Der verdammte Krieg / Das Unternehmen Barbarossa"
ISBN 3-570-01229-8 for 3,5 Euro and
Laurence Rees "Hitlers Krieg im Osten"
ISBN 3-453-17289-2 for 4,5 Euro

But now I have to recover my strengh, today I had a lot efford. Maybe I will post later in the evening something more, but at the moment I just want to get off my wet clothes, eat something and just chill out a little.

Offtopic:I found out where Lost & Found Records got the covers of some their bootlegs they released in the early ninties, check out the following picture comparing my "Siege" CD (I own this great CD for almost 20 years now) with a picture from the G.Knopp book.

Del Prado 1:72 Leopard 2 A5

Yesterday I saw a tv commerical for a new 1:72 tank collection by Del Prado. I said to myself, let me check this out. Today I got it from the supermarket, it costs 3,99 Euro.

At the first look it looked well, except for the tank in a clear try I got a little magazine with some little general informations about tanks and some informations about the Leopard 2. And a lot of advertising for this collection.

The tank in a clear case. In the back there is a picture of a Leopard 2, on the back of the picture are some informations about this tank like the size, the lenght, the motor and some other.

The tank guided by some modern German Infantry made by Revell.

A front view of the Leopard 2 A5. I have no idea on whose manufacturers model this tank is based but I am not interested in post ww2 tanks, that I will not do any search for this.

The lower parts of the tanks are mode of plastic, the tracks are made from rubber and the upper parts are made of die-cast metal with plastic parts for the details. The level of detail is not as good as promised in the advertising, but I did not expect more. The quality of a Dragon or Revell kit is much better. And if you know the "Easy Model" models, they are a lot better (they base on Trumpeter kits).

The paintjob on this model is fairly good, but I think the green is too bright. At a gas station near my home are always some Bundeswehr trucks standing, tomorrow I will do a picture of them just to compare the colors of the camo scheme.

The next three announced models are the Tiger, the Elephant (Sd.Kfz 184) and the Jagdtiger, these kits will cost the regular price of 11,99 Euro, if you subscribe you will pay "only" 10,99, and you will get some goodies like a display case and a Sd.Kfz 9 Famo with a Sd.Ah. 116 tank trailer. That's the only positive I found so far.

My personal opinion is:
For the low price, this model is OK. It might be great for wargamers but if you want a good model of a Leo 2, you should buy a model kit and build it for yourself. Maybe I will subscribe to get the Famo + trailer but then I will quit the subscription.
For all other people who want to subscribe, I do not want to use the term rip-off, that's why I quit writing this post.