TANKS By Galeforce 9: Optimizing The Gameplay

When we played the last time a game of "TANKS", we had 20+ tanks on the table. All these tanks needed a card for themselves and some of them had equipment cards too. And these cards needed a lot of space that we had to use an ironing board and a makeshift table to lay them out. Several times one of us hit the table/ironing and mixed up the cards.

Now we found a way to optimize the gameplay a little more. On the first picture you see a standard 9 pocket page for trading or gamecards. I cut one row of it and changed it into a little organizer for the tanks. On the second page you see an equipped Persing tank with lots of spaces for crews, equipment, damage and other cards, placed in the 6 pocket page that is unfortunately hard too see.

I think it is a great idea, there won't be chaos anymore, all tanks and their equipment are protected against dirt and "falling damage" and it will not take too much space for the cards.

15mm US Forces For Tanks By Galeforce 9

My next finished platoon for Tanks by GF9. Four M4 Shermans with changeable turrets to play them as 75mm or 76mm version and one lonely M26 Pershing. Two of the M4 76mm earned their first hitmarks for destroying enemy tanks and surviving the battle.

As basecolor I used Revell Aquacolor Khakibraun then the tanks got some drybrushing with Revell Aquacolor Helloliv. After a wash with a 50/50 mix of GW Nuln Oil and War-Ter® I added some decals from the sparebook  (1/72 and 1/144 scale). Each of the Sherman hulls got an individual sign (Cross,Flower,Square,Arrow) to tell them apart while gaming. Sadly, the callsign decals got a little silverish because I forgot to add a glossy coat on that spot before applying them. For sealing I used Revell Aquacolor Clear/Matt as usual.

They still have no box, because I think I will add some more troops in the near future but more no this topic in two weeks (at least). But when the American tank force is finish I will get an old ammo box to store them properly.

I still have to finish the commanders of the tanks.

While this tank platoon is ready for some action I am still struggling with the decals for my British tank force. These fraking Battlefront decals keep sticking on the paper no matter how long I keep them in water and if I get them from the paper they are so §&$"$! thin that they tear apart so easy.

Even several layers of clearcoat and decals solution don not fix this problem.

I tried the 15mm decals from the Plastic Soldier Company and it was nice to work with them, no problems while I applied them. But in the PSC decal set are not all of the decals I need.

The next step is to order a third set of decals, this time from Skytrex or Dom's Decals, I hope this will be the last British decals I have to order to get the tank markings I want.

Doyusha 1:40 Leichter Schützenpanzerwagen SdKfz. 250/10

Some pictures of Dyosho's SdKfz250/10. I finished this kit about one month ago, the same time I finished the Tiger II I posted last week of.

The kit was almost build out of the box but the rubbertracks sucked that I replaced them with some 1/35 Panzer II tracks that I had in my sparebox. The barrel of the gun is a 1/72 T-34/76 barrel, that fits great, but the gun needs to be repainted.
The crew figures were taken from Warlord Games or Wargames Factory 28mm plastic German Infantry, the AA machinegun came also from this box.

For the paintjob I used Revell Aquacolor paints (Sand, Olivegrün, Lehmbraun?) and my airbrush, the only thing I did after that was some light drybrush with Beige. The decals were from the sparebook.

A Sdkfz 250/10 in 1:40 with 1:56 crew figures VS a Tiger II in 1:48.

The size difference between these two models is high, and even I think this would not be tolerable for wargaming since the Sdkfz has almost the size of a 1/48 Panzer III, what would it look agains an 28mm model ?

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.

The New Battlefield (Work In Progress)

After some hours of work we finished the smaller piece with the bridge. The large piece got some streets and parts of an airfield but we did not finish it.

The whole battlefield

The connection piece with the 2 bridges

The center of  the new part of the battlefield

The airfield

Soviet tanks approaching the river