M1 Abrams Tank Expansion For TANKS The Modern Age

Another close look at anonther tank expansion for Galeforce 9's new game "TANKS The Modern Age". This time I will show the content of the M1 Abrams tank expansion.

This box contains a tank model kit and some cards for the game.

The tank kit is the same as in the starterbox. Neither sinkholes nor flash can be found on the sprue, but there are two ejectormarks that will be seen if you build the M1 version of the Abrams tank.

The building instruction are way better than the poor instructions included in the starterbox but in case of emergency you can look at the Team Yankee website. I built two of them in different versions and had no problems while construction.

Then, there are the cards:

First there are three cards for the different variant which you can build from this expansion, all based on the Abrams tank.  While the M1 Abrams and the IPM1Abrams have an Attack of 4 dice, the M1A1 Abrams has 5 attack dice and compared to the other tank 1 or 2 more hitpoints. This version is on par with the Germa Leopard 2, which in my opinion is the strongest tank in the game.

All 3 tanks have an Advanced Stabilizer, which may let you re-roll 2 attack dice.

As in all other expansions for the game some crew and equipment cards are included:

"William 'Buck' Taylor"

This is the American hero unit. He may seem pretty expensive with 6 points but he gives the tank which he commands an additional attack dice. Also all other Abrams tanks in the platoon get an additional initiative point.

For 6 Points I would take him in every battle.

"Cunning Commander"
Usable for all nations. For one point he adds an additional initiative point.

"Adaptive",
This doctrine seems pretty nice, +2 initiative for only one point, usable for all nations and all tanks, but only if the tanks has three or more crew cards.This would be a nice addition for an Abrams with the Alpha 66 crew, but also for every other tank with three or more crew members.

"True Boy Scout",
US tanks only. This crew member gives you +1 initiative while movement phase, for only one point. But that is not all, you gain the possibility to use two different equipment parts.

and "Silver Bullet"
US Abrams tanks only, this card gives an extra attack dice for a single attack. It may be useful but there is better stuff to equip.

This expansion offers not only 3 strong tanks to choose from, the crew and equipment card which are included offer some great advantages, but a first game will show the strenghts and weaknesses of this expansion.

TANKS The Modern Age by Galeforce 9

 

A closer look at the new starterbox for Galeforce 9's new game "TANKS The Modern Age".It is a remake of TANKS with an advanced ruleset. This game is a spinoff of Team Yankee, the tabletop game based on this book. I did not read it, but I have this one in my library and it seems both books almost happen in the same fictional universe.

In a future post I will go in detail with the rules, in this post it is only about the content of the starterbox.

A quick look on the back offers a first impression of the game. It is a fictional world war three scenario, I copied the official introduction from the game's website:

Sunday, 4th of August, 1985 the Soviet Union attacks.
The attack came quickly after news of the Soviet advance reached you. Your men have been preparing for this battle, but the reality of it actually happening is still hard to comprehend. But they’ve really started it -World War III.

Your orders are to hold the ridge, no matter what, and that’s what you plan to do. Scanning the battlefield you see your ITVs open fire on the advancing Soviet tanks as they pour out of the distant treeline and into the valley. Now is the time to act.

They may have started this war, but you’re going to end it!

The content of the box. All gamematerials are included, only some glue is needed to build the tanks and start playing.

Let us take a look at the plastic first:

Three tank model kits are included, one M1 Abrams and two T-64, all three in 15mm scale. All parts are nicely sculpted and casted with no sinkholes or flash, after construction no ejector markings will be seen.
The assembly instructions are simplified, to build other versions than the M1 Abrams you have to look online for building instructions, which sure can be found at the Team Yankee website.

Next to the tank kits and the booklet with rules is the rest of the needed material. The stuff that is included looks fine, some terrain pieces and the needed game counters and markers. Both made from durable cardboard. I would use the terrain if I would not prefer "real" terrain. Luckily I gave this stuff not away, now I can use it for the game.
Also 12 12mm D6, 6 for each player are included.
On the last picture you can see the aviation marker for the helicopters and the advantage marker, two new elements of the game.

Since every tank uses a stats card, let us look at them in the next section of my closer look at the new starterbox for Galeforce 9's new game "TANKS The Modern Age".

The unit cards of the United States of America's army.

This introduction can be found on the official "TANKS The Modern Age" website. There are 10 units to choose from, including one helicopter. It is possible to use models from other sources with these cards.
In the second row you can see the three possible variants of the M1 Abrams kit included in this game.

The unit cards of the Soviet Union's army.This introduction can be found on the official "TANKS The Modern Age" website. There are 9 units to choose from, including one helicopter. It is possible to use models from other sources with these cards.

I do not like the fact, that there is only one card available for the two T-64 tanks, what means, I will have to make a second card by myself.

The unit cards of Great Britain's army.

This introduction can be found on the official "TANKS The Modern Age" website. There are 8 units to choose from, including one helicopter. It is possible to use models from other sources with these cards.

Not much to say about these forces but they offer a nice selection of light vehicles.

The unit cards of France's army.

This introduction can be found on the official "TANKS The Modern Age" website. There are only 5 units to choose from, but it includes two helicopters to choose from. It is possible to use models from other sources with these cards.

Including two helicopters offers an interesting choice, would you use a heavy tank hunter or would you use a helicopter with strong weapons against light vehicles.
Also the French are at the moment the only nation whicht can use artilly units.

The unit cards of the Federal Republic of Germany's army.This introduction can be found on the official "TANKS The Modern Age" website. There are only 4 units to choose from, including one helicopter. It is possible to use models from other sources with these cards.

At the moment West Germany offers the smallest choice of vehicles but with the Leopard 2 they have one of the strongest tanks of the whole game.


Each nation also has a platoon card with its special advantage. This would have been a pretty nice addition to the original TANKS game, I will prepare those cards in the near future and offer them for download.

The last section shows the included gamecards, starting with the damage deck.

The damage cards offer some lucky hits and a lot af critical hits, each with it's different effect on tanks or helicopters if needed. There are some pretty mean damage effects you can draw.

15 crewcards are included, 10 generic crew members which can be used by all nations, 4 American Heroes (the crew of #66 from team yankee?), but only one Soviet hero. I do not like this, I think it is onesided compared to the contents oft the ww2 TANKS game.

I made a quick comparison of the generic crew members of the ww2 and the ww3 TANKS games, 9 of them were included in both games.  

The last cards are the equipment cards of which 17 are included. 16 generic equipment card which can be used by all nations, and only one card for the American forces. Another thing I do not like, why not at least two things for both, Americans and Soviets?

I also made a quick comparison of the generic equipment cards of the ww2 and the ww3 TANKS games, 9 of them were included in both games. 

As usual, when I take a closer look at things I want to state that this is not a review, it is only my first impression of this box.

This box is a solid starter. At the moment I have no time to read the rules, but if you want to check them out, you can download the rules at Beasts Of War after registration. The first impression is that the new gameplay elements like missiles and helicopters will make the game more dynamic. Seems like a nice game like it's predecessor.
Since there are some cards used in both TANKS games, it is possible to use dublicates from the ww2 in "TANKS The Modern Age".

What I do not like on this box is the fact, that there are almost no nationspecific crew members and equipment cards, to get more of them you will have to buy more extensions.

Finally I have to say that this game is a good addition for my collection, next year (hehe) the tanks will get some paint and then it is time for a first game. I have the Revell Cobra and Hind kits, both in 1:100, and it seems like they found their destination.
Too bad that I have no crew or equipment cards for them but I will make some private backups of the cards from the official website until the helicopter kits are available at my favorite shops.
But more on that in a future post.

15mm Nightfighting Panthers and some 3D printed stuff

Some pictures of my 15mm Panthers for TANKS. As you can see they are equipped with infrared vision. I saw the IR equipment at the Heer46 onlineshop and I could not resist buying some of it. Here you will find a picture of more built IR equipment which is still not finished.

I used "UHU hart" to attach the whitemetal parts of the IR visions. This stuff is pretty fine, glues all the materials I have to glue, and dries pretty fast and hard.

Closeups of the three Panthers. I will have to add decals but before I have to order new turretnumbers, maybe at Peddinghaus Decals, but I also found some nice decals at Skytrex and Dom's Decals.

But this was not the end, I wanted something different and found some nice files at Thingiverse and then I started the 3D printer.

I printed 2 Panther Schmaltürme, they can be seen in the Civil War battle report. The ridiculous big barrels are from the Battlefront Miniatures Jagdpanther. Maybe they are a little too big, but I like that look.

Last month the two turrets were modified, I added new hatches, and attached the remaining IR parts from my bitsbox. Now these kitten look great.

We are needing antiair units for our (w.i.p.) TANKS addon, that I decided to visit Thingiverse again, and look what I found:

I had to rescale the Coelian turret, which I downloaded, but after the second try it was perfectly in scale. After cleaning the residue from printing there was not much to do, I changed the turret's hatch for a scratchbuilt one, added a simple gunner shield from plasticcard and the very last IR part I had.

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While I was at work, the postman dropped a note in my mailbox, tomorrow I will get the stuff I ordered at Frontline Games, and then it is time to get a closer look at "TANKS The Modern Age".

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Some kind of update,
I watched documentary about tanks on Netfix and wondered, is it ignorance or incompetence that the Panther tank was not mentioned in it.

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.

Faces Of War (4)

 

Some more pictures my grandfather made while he was taking part in the African campaign during ww2. I even did not went too school, when my he died, so I never had the chance to ask him about that time. It would have been very interesting what his story was.

 

I don't know if I wrote that before, but the pictures were hidden for some decades in a desk until my grandmother died and we cleaned her house.

Her wartime stories were very intense. When she told me about the struggle in the last days of the war to get from the region arround Munic, where she had to build planes for the regime, to her home in the region of Eiderstedt, I felt that some dark memories came back to daylight.

 

 

Seems like the last picture got lighted(exposed?) twice.
I am still not able to say where all these pictures were made except for the fact that the war happended in Northern Africa. I would have to get a map of Europe and the northern part of the African continent, then I could use the distances from this picture, draw some circles, and have a rough spot, where this signpost was standing. If I am not wrong this is called triangulation (?).

There are some pictures of monuments and special places, maybe one day I will identify some of the locations like this:

Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung

 - Nicht kommerziell - Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International Lizenz. -

...by the way, I finished three more Amera ruins, there is only one ruin left to rework. This will be a bigger task, since it will be a mission related building and has to get additional rooms and structures.

In one of the earlier posts I wrote that I was almost finished with the figures. No, I am not.

The plan is first to play a small map with two minis per player, a fighter and a technician, to get them understand the basic rules. It will be a dungeon escape with different exits, these minis are painted and ready.

After the escape, and a pause, the several teams will unite with some squads, and then the "cooperative" game ends. From then, each player has to reach its goal on the streets of Sassnitz.

Squads for three players are finished but there are three more groups to do, roughly about 20 minis, today I started one of them, on the bench are the Siberian veterans on which I too a closer at some weeks before.