Painted Proxies and Custom Units For TANKS The Modern Age

Just some pictures of 15mm 3D printed Humvees and Zvezda Bradley tanks which are used for "TANKS The Modern Age".

Since I do not have the HMMWV TOW expansion for the game, I thought that I could print some of them and use the matching card from the starterbox. After a quick search at Thingiverse I found this stl-file for the vehicle. I resized it according to the measurements I found in the Wikipedia article about the HMMWV and printed it.

The print took roughly 2 hours, on the picture above you can see the Humvee in different stages. After I removed the support, I cut the Tow launcher, cleaned it seperately and exchanged the front part of the TOW launcher with a piece of sprue. It may be a little thick, but I found only too thick and too thin sprueparts, that I decided this way.
Since the wheels were pretty shabby, I used some Vallejo acrylic putty on them.

Painting these things did not take much time, as usual I used Revell Aquacolor paints, except for the wash I did it as I showed in this post.

In a painted state these cars look great. You still see the layers of the printing process but at distance they will not stand out too much. Overall, I am happy with them, but they will show their worthness on the battlefield, which also got a small makeover.

The official Humvee TOW expansion is still on my list, but first I want to build up a small French force which will hopefully arrive in the next days.

Next are a couple of Bradley APCs which I got for a heavy discounted price. I took a closer look at the kit in this post.

I did not like the original look of the sideskirts, so I made a quick websearch for alternatives and found this blog which shows some modifications to the tank. Again I stole without any shame some ideas and applied them to my models.

The Trumpeter scribe tool was very handy when I added new panellines to the modified sideskirts, but not only the skirts were changed, I replaced the stock barrel with an 1:72 2cm Flak barrel from RBModels, which looks pretty nice. Also I changed the TOW launcher into firing position and the smokelaunchers were placed in a different angle.

Finally I changed the position af the headlamps, and, since they are moulded as solid block, I drilled some holes them to improve their look.

Maybe I will replace them at a later time, but I am happy with the final results from the Zvezda Bradley modelkits

I added some camouflage netting following the method I described in this post. As i did for for the Humvee, the Bradleys were painted in the standard scheme which I used for all my US troops. Except for that I did not use any wash for the hull, and used a rusty brown for the tracks, followed by 2 different rust washes and some graphite from a pencil.

Since I do not have approciate decals for the vehicles from this post, there are no markings yet, but I could not resist to add a Snoopy decal from the Sparebook to one of the Bradleys. Looks great and makes it easier to tell them apart.

15mm 3Dprinted SU-25 Frogfoot (1)

Some first pictures of my selfprinted SU-25 plane. It is 1:100 scale and I found this stl-file in this growing collection, which I mentioned in a previous post.

I am working on an inofficial plane addon for "TANKS The Modern Age" (still unsure, if this will work), and needed some planes. For the first version I wanted to add only planes for the USA and the Sovietunion, beside some new equipment cards and custom armoured AA units.

For the USA I had chosen the 1:100 A-10 fastbuild kit from Revell, you can find this review at Modellversium, but I am still waiting for it. Sure, I could go for smaller scales, but would it not be great if all has the same scale at the battlefield?

Finding an approciate plane for the Sovietunion was harder and ended in this thing. As I mentioned sometimes in the past, I am no aviation expert, but I think these two planes would be almost equal. At least they will have almost equal stats in the future addon.

The print took 7 hours and consumed 0,5 kWh (accourding to my new gauge), the plane was printed with an infill of 15 percent and weights 24 grams with all residue. It took some time to remove it, but when the residue was removed, the plane looked like this.

Not bad compared to the printer which was used, now it was time to optimize the model.

First I added a layer of Revell Plasto filler. This stuff has a strong chemical smell, much more then the Wamod filler I used before. 

One day later when the filler was hardened, I started with sanding, and as you can see, with all the filler and sanding the wings are starting to have a smooth surface.

The bottom does not look as good as the upper surface. To print the wings, the printer builds up some support structures (see the first picture) and, at least our prints, the models sometimes have a very rough surface after removing the support.

This was the case, but a good layer of Plasto and some sanding are a good start to smoothen the lower surface. But there has to be some more filler to add as also some more sanding.

Then it may get experimental. I got the very handy Trumpeter Scribe tool and some templates from Voyager Models, also I found some nice bluprints of the SU-25.

So I may try to add some panel lines. If I will mess up, I can always add a new layer of filler, but I may give this a chance.

And finally, I will have to make my thoughts about the armament of the Frogfoot, since there were no bombs or rockets included in the 3D files, I will have to improvise, print, loot, scratchbuild or whatever ist needed to get this thing some weapons.

More on that in a future post. At the moment I am printing some more stuff which you will see in the next posts, beside some proxies and more custom units for "TANKS The Modern Age".

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.

Postapocalyptic Car: Officer Friendly

Originally I wanted to get a copy of Gaslands last month, but I read that the new updated version will arrive this Fall. So I will wait some more months, hoping that also a German version of the game will be published.

But I already got some Hot Wheels from the 1 Eurostore and started to build my first car for Gaslands or other games, there are much car battle games, some free rulesets can be found at http://www.freewargamesrules.co.uk/.

This one was a nice distraction from always building warmachinery, even when it is some kind of it, too. I call it Officer Friendly, manned by the two ex-officers Law & Order.

I had a nice time modding this car. It got 2 Maxim machine guns from Escis ww2 Russians installed to the hood, a new set of wheels and some armourplates made from plastic.

Law, the driver which can not be seen, is a Hong Kong (?) clone of an Africa corps officer, while his co-worker is a cheap clone of the officer from Matchbox' German infantry set.

The original paint of the car was scratched, then the scratches and the new parts got painted in various rusty red and brown tones with minial steelcolored highlighting, also different washes were used. The figures got their uniforms Ultramarines Blue painted.

A layer of matte varnish was the final step after I added some Green Earth pigments by Vallejo.

Even when I still do not own a copy of Gaslands, I decided to host a car war game on this years birthday. I already have found a ruleset which I will modify heavily, in an old Warhammer Chronicles book I found simple rules for steamtank destruction derby, this should offer a nice basis.

But don't tell GW.