T-34 Tank expansion For "TANKS"

A closer look at the 1:100 T-34 expansion pack for the "TANKS" strategy game by Galeforce 9. As usual, this box contains a 15mm model and some upgrade cards for the game.

As usual this expansion contains one 1:100/15mm modelkit made by Battlefront Miniatures and some cards to use for the game. But with no further words, first let us take a look at the plastic which comes with this expansion:

This kit comes in two green sprues, the first of them contains the main parts for the turrets and the hull.
There are virtually no mouldlines, and any possible ejectormarks will not be seen when this kit is built. Also, there are no sinkholes and only a minimal amount of flash needs to be removed.
All turret hatches can be build opened or closed, but there are no crewfigures included to put them in.

The second sprue contains the tracks and a lot of smaller parts, but only a bunch of them will be used, the leftovers will disappear in the bitsbox. This sprue is at least also included in the BFM SU-76 kit.

The roadwheel detail is good, just as the general grade of detail, the tracks are acceptable for its scale.

Beside the modelkit some upgrade cards for the game are included in this expansion. First we have  the cards for the unit itself:

The T-34/76 has a initiative of only 4 with an attack of 4, the T-34/85  has an initiative of 6 paired with 5 attack dice. Both tanks have a armour of 1 and 5 hitpoints, even when they may not be the best tanks in the game, they are solid units. Both T-34 have the "Fast" ability what makes them very flexible.

Also included are the following 5 upgrade cards:

First we have the cards for crewmembers, two Soviet-exclusive and a global usable crewmember come with this:

The Soviet driver "Mariya Oktyabrskaya" gives for 4 points an additional armour point when it has any speed token. The busted tracks critical hit gets automatically repaired when drawn.

This is a pretty useful card, since you almost move each round, then you would have 2 instead of 1 armourpoints. Or use her with an heavy tank, then you would have 3 when you have moved.

"Vasiliy Storozhenko", the Soviet tankcommander of this box, adds 2 additional initiative points to his tank, and, (best combine with "Coordinated Fire") Add the start of each game phase you may add an additional initiative point for each tank in close range. This is a good card, you could push your initative very much depending on that you keep your tanks closely together.

The "Agressive Loader" for only 1 point adds an additional initiative point for the shooting phase. If your tank has room for a gunner left, and you could spend a point,  just take it, since this is useful for every unit.

The last 2 cards are for equipment upgrades:

All all other nations, the Soviet have with the "Arrowhead Shot" their own special ammunition upgrade. Equipped for 1 point, this card grants you an additional attack die on close range when discarded. Even when this can only be used buy T34 and SU-76, it can be an useful upgrade if it fits in your playstyle.

"Liquid Courage" is a global upgrade for 1 point, which is at least also included in the starterbox of the game. When equipped, you can reroll failed repair rolls for critical damage that affects your crew.

This cards usefulness depends on the dice and what critical damages you draw. I remember a game, where a Panther of my mate Olli could neither shoot or move for 3 rounds because of failed repair rolls, a little "Liquid Courage" could have repaired that damage earlier.

Following the simple instructions on the inlet of the box, this tank was built pretty fast and nothing special happened while building the T-34, my finished model can be seen on the picture below:

This is a good expansion pack for the game, the T-34 was the maintank of the Red Army and should find a place in every players collection.

Combining its "Fast" ability with the Soviet "Coordinated Fire" ability, you could build up a lot of pressure on you opponent. The Soviet heroic commander supports this playstyle too, and the other upgrades given in this box can be useful in the right situation.
As usual, there are neither decals nor any figures included, a shared thing among all "TANKS" expansions, you will have to rely on your bitbox if you want to use them.

Ending this post with some comparing pictures. The Plastic Soldier Company T-34,  the Zvezda T-34, and this tank show some differences in their dimensions, just take a look for yourself:

Zvezda 1:100 T-34/76 Mod. 1940

A closer look at the T-34/76 (Mod.1940) modelkit produced by Russian manufacturer Zvezda for their "Art of Tactic"  strategy game. This tanks comes in 1:100 scale as all Zvezda "Hot War - Battle for Oil" and "Art Of Tactic" tank kits, what makes it suitable for being used with any game which supports the T-34/76.

The kit comes in a single olivegreen sprue and is casted pretty sharp, with some detail like towrope and track spareparts moulded onto the hull. 

Neither flash nor sinkholes can be found and mouldlines were only recognized on the tracks. The plastic used for this kit feels different to the plastic of other Zvezda kits I already built, almost like "real" modelkit polystyrene, and it can be glued with normal modelglue like the Revell glue I use.

Maybe Zvezda changed their recipe for this stuff.

While the roadwheels are ok, the tracks show the same issues as with (almost) every Zvezda kit, simple detail on the outside and no detail on the inner side of the track.

The turret is casted in one piece, but is is ok, I have seen worse. The only thing which worried me was that there was no hull machine gun, there is emough room on the sprue for that part.

The instructions can be found on the back of the box, and after some cleanup and the use of some modellers cement (this can also be build without any glue) my w.i.p. T-34/76 looks like this:
(I am out of Red Stars at the moment, but I am going to order some decals from Skytrex, but that will be the topic of a future post)

This kit is ok for its price, but there is the usual issue with the grade of detail on the tracks, and the exclusion of any decals is annoying as so often with these kits. Also, there is no machine gun for the hull, what is bad, but this should be easyly built from scratch.

Compared to the 15mm BFM and PSC T-34s this kit is very simple, personally I prefer the BFM T-34 which will be seen in a post coming soon. For that I will take some comparing pictures of the 3 different T-34 I have.

On the other side, if you need some reinforcements for your ww2 Soviets and you want to save some money, or/and you are not willing to spend much time on constructing them, then these should be yours. There are some more T-34 made by Zvezda for "Art Of Tactic", while I still have to get them, they all seem as easy to build as this one.

While today we are at Soviet hardware, this will continue til the end of the week. As you may have noticed, this weekends "TANKS" expansion will be the T-34, for this Saturday I will have a Soviet plane to show to you.

Zvezdas SU-76 Versus The Plastic Soldier Companys SU-76

After we took a closer look at the Zvezda SU-76 and the Plastic Soldier Company SU-76 in previous posts, in this post I will compare both kits. I am no professional but this should be no hindrance for a simple comparison of these two models.
Both kits were primed with AK Interactive Russian primer on most pictures.

A frontal view on both tanks. The PCS tank looks wider but they have the same width. Both tanks have some tools and a steelrope moulded onto the hull, what can be seen better on the picture below. But at an overall level, the Zvezda kit seems finer. A plus for the PSC kit is the option to build the drivers hatch openend.

You can see that the Zvezda model is a little longer than the PSC SU-76. While the front part of both tanks roughly measures the same, the Zvezda kit is a bit longer since its crew compartment is bigger.

A look at the rear shows that the PSC model seems higher than the other tank, but this is not the case, I choosed a bad angle for this picture. While the general grade of detail is ok on both tanks, I prefer the kit on the left side.
On the PSC tank I lost the box part at the right side and replaced it with a tarp from the bitsbox.

 

Both models from both sides. You can see some differences on these models, but the overall look is pretty equal. The exhaust pipes of the Zvezda kits are finer, also this kit has a spotlight, what is missing on the PSC kit.

A look into the crew compartment of the Zvezda model. The amount of details is pretty nice, you can see some munition racks and the gun is made pretty fine including a gunsight. The crew compartment is much deeper as on the PSC kit, on the first picture of the post you can see, that the crewfigure is hard too see, since it is almost at floor level.

A look into the crew compartment of the Plastic Soldier Company model. The inner details are given but simplified and the gun is pretty basic with a low grade of detail. But for a wargaming model, this is still fine.

If I would have to build a SU-76 platoon, I think that I would take the Zvezda kit, and no, I did not get paid by them to write this. Its amount of details is higher than on the Plastic Soldier Company model. This does not mean, that the PSC model is a bad kit, it is a nice model for wargamers, but on a personal view, the Zvezda kit is the kit which I prefer. A quick pricecheck showed, that a 5 model box of PSC SU-76 is almost priced equal to 5 single Zvezda SU-76 kits.

But at the end it is your decisision which models you would use for any games. But I hope, that this post may be helpful.

By the way, finally I found out how to change the name of my Youtube channel, and I replaced the retarded former name with the name of this blog and added a nice header image.

Zvezda 1:100 SU-76M Self-Propelled Gun

A closer look at the 1:100 Soviet SU-76M self-propelled gun model kit. This kit is produced by the Russian manufacturer Zvezda for their "Art Of Tactic" wargame range. But as all 1:00 Zvezda model kits, this model could be used for any 15mm world war 2 wargame.

After we too a closer look at the Plastic Soldier Company SU-76 model kit in a previous post, today let us see, what Zvezda has to offer with its SU-76 kit:

The kit comes in two green sprues made in the same plastic as all other Soviet units for Zvezdas ww2 and ww3 wargames. The casting is without any flaws, there is virtually no flash to remove. The absence of any sinkholes and visible ejectormarks is a very nice feature, and the only mouldlines you would have to remove can be found on the tracks, the barrel and some smaller parts.

The tracks on this kit are made well, it seems that the newer Zvezad 1:100 tank kits do not lack as much track detail as their first released kits.

What was most surprising, is the grade of detail of the crew compartment, as you can see on the picture below. Please note that the gunsight was not installed on the picture.

As usual, this kit can be built without the use of glue, but the plastic takes normal modelglue well and binds fast

With the SU-76 Zvezda offers a nice modelkit with a good amount of details. I could not find any negative points on the kit itself, but the addition of decals and crewmembers would have been nice.

But for its low price and the quality of the kit, I only can recommend this kit as an addition for your Soviet ww2 army.

This kit was built pretty fast and I had no issues with this, but you should carefully read the included instruction leaflet, since the construction of Zvezda 1:100 kits sometimes can be a little, ahm, special (?).

The picture shows, how it looks, when this thing is built and painted:

In one of the next posts, the Zvezda SU-76 will be compared to the Plastic Soldier Company SU-76, which of them would I rather recommend ?

Plastic Soldier Company 1:100 SU-76 Self-Propelled Gun

A closer look at the 1:100 Soviet SU-76 self-propelled gun made by the British Plastic Soldier Company.  The PSC offers a growing range of ww2 and cold war tanks and miniatures in 15 and 20mm scale which are a nice alternative to "official" miniatures for "Flames Of War" and other wargames.

I already built some PSC 15mm tank models (here or here), and all of them result in nice models. Will the Plastic Soldier Company keep up with its standards?

Let us take a  look at the plastic to find out:

The kit comes in a gray(grey) plastic sprue, which is casted pretty sharp, with a fair amount of detail. No sinkholes, that can be seen when it is built, can be found on the sprue, except for one big sinkhole on the side of the crew compartment, which will be covered partly by the exhausts (update: almost unseen, when the kit is built).
A big ejectormark can be found inside of the crew compartment, but I do not think it will be seen when the tank is built (update: It will not be seen).
There is some flash, especially on the smaller parts, which should be removed.

You can choose between the early and the late version of the SU-76, and also you can choose to have the drivers hatch opened or closed.
Six crewmembers can be found in this kit, what is pretty nice. One half of them comes in Summer clothing, the rest is equipped with Winter gear, you can see them on the picture below:

I bought a single sprue of this kit without instruction leaflet, but you can find it on the web and the building instructions are clear and easy to understand as all of the PSC are. It is (almost) possible to build this kit without instructions but you better should have them.

This is a nice kit from the Plastic Soldier Company, for its scale it is ok, and it is a good alternative to the SU-76 resinmodel from Battlefront Miniatures. There are some simplified parts, but the impression of the kit is is good.
The addition of crewfigures is always welcome, and getting 6 of them means that you can at least equip one other tank with crew figures. The price for a single kit of the PSC SU-76 is a little higher than the price of the Zvezda SU-76, while you get a 5 kit box for about 20 Euros.

In one of the next posts you will see, which of the two SU-76 I would prefer for building a platoon of them, for now you will only get a picture of the built and painted model, building this kit was a pretty easy thing and did not take much time.

I almost forgot, I made an updated abilities list for ww2 "TANKS", you can find it in my dropbox at

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11av4DA2VkVau88BD_RGjKsQbWMKtpkz7/view?usp=sharing

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 KV-2

A closer look at the Soviet KV-2 1:100 model kit by Russian producer Zvezda. This model belongs to Zvezdas "Art Of Tactic" wargame. A a lot of tankmodels in 15mm scale are available for this game, but the level of detail and the general look of the models from that range, as also from their other wargame "Hot War  - Battle For Oil", is not always the best.

Let us take a look at the plastic to get a clue about this:

The kit comes in 2 green sprues with all parts included to build a KV-2 tank model. Basically I could copy-paste most segments from the closer look at the KV-1 Mod.1941 in the previous post, this kit is generally good but should have better tracks.

There are some mouldlines to remove but except for that, I see no issues with this kit. Building it may be tricky, but while I built this kit, everything went fine. I like the way how Zvezda solved the barrel, but the piece for the barrel tip was hard to clean from any residue.

As also for the KV-1, I only checked the dimensions of the hull, 67,8x33,5mm, and compared to Wikipedias data of 6,75 x 3,32 meters, the difference is minimal and this fits in scale.

Everything fine except for the tracks which are pretty basic and lack of greater detail.

By the way, this kit uses the same hull and track parts as the KV-1 Mod.1941 which I reviewed in the last post, and I would say, that the same 4 parts are used on the KV-1 Mod.1940 too, you may look for yourself in this review at Modellingmadness.com.

All in all, this is a nice kit, which was built pretty fast without issues. I painted it the same way than the KV-1, and for the two on the picture below, I had to take decals from the sparebook, since Zvezda does not include decals in their "Art Of Tactic" 1:100 tanks expansion.

You can see the result below, 2 KV-2 are finished out of the box and they look fine. I got them to have a chance against future custom units, since there are some big kitten on the way, but I still have to order decals for them.

Since the KV-2 will become a custom unit for "TANKS", you may expect its unitcard after the weekend.

Zvezda 1:100 KV-1 Mod. 1941 With F-32 Gun

A closer look at the Soviet KV-1 Mod. 1941 1:100 model kit by Russian producer Zvezda. This kit belongs to Zvezdas "Art Of Tactic" wargame, which features a lot of 1:100 tankmodels. The overall level of detail differs from kit to kit.

But no further words, let us take a look at the modelkit from this box:

This Zvezda kit comes in 2 green sprues, including all 6 parts to build the KV-1. You have the choice of 2 different guns, but only one of them is mentioned in the instructions. It seems that the other barrelpiece may come from the KV-1 Mod.1940 kit, but I can not say this for sure.

As in all other Zvezda 1:100 tank kits, also a flag (which can be attached to the tank) is on one of the sprues, but since this is for use in "Art Of Tactic" only, it will be unused.

The overall quality of this modelkit is good. The used plastic is pretty hard, just as the stuff they use for their newer 1:100 kits.

Neither sinkholes nor visible injectormarks can be seen, but the grade of detail could, while in general it is ok, be more distinct. I did find only minor mouldlines, except for the tracks, which will need some work. As usual, the tracks lack of detail, especially the inner side of them, what is sadly shared among all other 1:100 wargaming tank models of Zvezdas various wargames.

I only checked the dimensions of the hull, 67,8x33,5mm, compared to Wikipedias data of 6,75 x 3,32 meters, the difference is minimal and this fits in scale. And while I am at the lower parts of this model, this kit shares some parts with at least 1 other Zvezda kit.

This kit uses the same hull and track parts as the KV-2 which I reviewed in the next post, and I would say, that the same 4 parts are used on the KV-1 Mod.1940 too, you may look for yourself in this review at Modellingmadness.com.

The building instructions are on the back of the box and clear to understand. Actually, cleaning the parts took more time then building the tank. While glue would not be needed to built this tank, I used some Revell modelglue and the plastic took it without issues and binded very fast.

I added decals from the sparebook, since decals are not included in this box, and this is what I got as final result:

Building this kit went without issues as I wrote above. After it got primed with the Russian primer by AKinteractive (great stuff), I painted it by hand before it got its matte varnish seal, again via airbrush. May be I will make it dirtier, but it is already a nice proxie unit for "TANKS".

By the way, yesterday was another productive Montagsmaler session, somehow I managed to assemble my crude interpretation of a Soviet truck with a 3,7cm flak, but look for yourself: