1:100 M36 Jackson Bitsbox/3D Print Hybrid

When I built the Achilles tank hunter from its expansion for "TANKS", I had an unused spare M36 Jackson turret that went to the bitsbox. Since I had some time ago the idea to combine leftover parts with 3D printed parts, you may already know what I did.

This chimaera is the result of combining the Battlefront Miniatures M36 turrets with a 3D printed hull from Thingiverse.com, if I remember correctly, I took it from this collection. The last indegrent were the tracks, taken from a 1st generation BFM plastic Sherman. 

The tracks are a little oversized what clearly can be seen when this tank is compared to his British comrade, the Achilles.

While the lenght and the height of the printed hull do not differ much from its plastic counterpart, the printed part should have been 2mm wider, what clearly can not be seen on this picture. Except for that, I am pleased with the print.
Sure, since the machine which made it is, ahm, let me call it, ahm, pretty basic as also the overall print quality is pretty basic and would be better with a better machine. But I am still fascinated with this relatively new technology and what is possible with the cheapest printer we got.

I do not want to get too enthusiastic about 3D printing, I think you can see the endless possibilites of this stuff, not only for modelling purposes but on a bigger level, for yourself. As I may have written sometime in the past, I compare 3D printing to the replicators of "Star Trek", even when these are completely different technologies.

But back to the Jackson, then there are the tracks.

The scavenged tracks are the reason for the height differences of both tanks, while they look ok, they are way to big and I may change them in the near future. This would be the oppurtunity to get some "Art Of Tactics" Shermans, to see if their tracks could be used.

Sunday, funday, and since the next Montagsmaler meeting is on close sight, you may not expect another post for today except for the case, that I will get motivated to drop some lines about another Zvezda 1:100 kit. But at the moment, the chances for that are pretty low.

1:100 Zvezda Opel Blitz With 3D Printed Flak 38

I recently finished another 3Dprinted/modelkit hybrid, this time it is the 1:100 Opel Blitz model of Zvezdas "Art of Tactics" game which got equipped with a 3Dprinted Flak 38, like this one I did some years ago.

The built of the truck went fast and without any issues, all parts were casted fine and had a good fit. There will come no closer look at the kit, but some good reviews can be found on the web and youtube.

I changed the freightbed and added the flak to use it for a final playtest of my planned planes expansion for TANKS. The plastic of the kit seemed very soft but it took modelglue without any issues.

On the left side you can see the 3D printed Opel Blitz of my mate Olli, with a scratchbuilt freightbed and also equipped with the same flak model. Both files came from this excellent collection of 1:100 .stl files of tanks and trucks, the Flak 38 was icluded within the Horch files, at least I think so.

Another time I was positively surprised by our printed stuff. While the Opel was one of the first kits we ever printed, we had no idea what we did and its quality could be much better nowadays, I would not say its is bad, but it is not good either.

The flakguns got very well done with the cheapest 3D printer on the market (1 1/2 years ago). They needed some cleaning from the support structures but would have been ready to paint after that.

A view on the additional stuff which was added, I decided to add a scratchbuilt seat and a gunner from the bitsbox for both Flak 38. The gunners had a shoulder amputation for a better fit, but this can hardly be seen on the finished model.

Another small modification was magnetizing the flak. I glued a 2x2 rare earth magnet into the socket of the Flak 38 and glued a small metal plate right on the freightbed under the carriage for the gun.

When Olli has finished his truck, I will show you how it is applied.

Next Monday the Montagsmaler will continue their roguish projects, since 3 of 4 factions got their mobile AA units finished, the only thing left to do is to get some AA units for the Soviets.

And this will be (what a surprise) more 3D/Zvezda hybrids. I already printed some guns but I think I will have to redo them because the scaling seems wrong.

By the way, is it 3Dprinting or 3D printing, I think I will continue to use both versions.

By the way, all new  kit pictures are uploaded, so stay tuned to get a small overview (hehe) of Zvezda 1:100 wargaming kits which we use and will use for ww2/ww3 TANKS games in future posts.

AMX-10P Expansion For TANKS The Modern Age

A closer look at the AMX-10P tank expansion for "TANKS The Modern Age" from Galeforce 9. Set in a fictional 1980ies world war 3 background, this game is the followup to ww2 "TANKS" (also made by GF9) with an slightly advanced ruleset and air units.

As usual, this kind of expansion contains a 1:100 modelkit made by Battlefront Miniatures and some cards for the game. First a look at the kit which came in this box:

The kit comes in one green sprue containing all parts needed to built this tank. I can not see any flaws, there are virtually no mouldlines to remove, no sinkholes were found and any ejectormarks would not be seen when this kit is built. As usual, this is a nice engineered kit, like all of the newer BFM kits.

After a look at the plastic, next are the cards included in this box, first we have the card for the unit itself:

The French AMX-10P is a light support tank with a relatively high Initiative and the "Scout" ability which means this tanks should stay in cover. It has with its Rapid Fire ability 5 dice against unarmoured vehicles and helicopters, and if it is equipped with MILAN missiles it has the ability to attack any unit on the battlefield. But this arnament is needed since its base attack is only 2. For 13 points (including the missile option) you get a light tank which is pretty fragile with only 3 hitpoints and 0 armour, but it may be a threat to any enemy unit.

Beside the actual card for the unit itself, the following crew and equipment cards are included in this expansion:

First there is the equippable "MILAN Firing Post" missile launcher for only 2 points which adds the option to  attack with 4 missiles. This may be a nice option, but I think it will not be used often, to be honest, I think that the French forces for "TANKS The Modern Age" can rely on the AMX-30 with its Rapid Fire 5 ability.

Then there are (as usually) the hero units for the French.

The driver "Henry Delacroix" offers the possibilty to re-roll one Defence dice when the tank has a speed token, this is not bad for the cost of 4 points. When you discard the card, this ability is gone but the tank then can do an additional single move in the movement phase without adding a speed token.

"Andre Mareau", the gunner, adds an additional Attack point and gives the ability to re-roll up to 2 Attack dice when the target is in close range. Costing 5 points, this seems like a must-have for any French platoon, since this card offers a big advantage.

Next is a card which the (French only) "charging" pre-fix, this time it is the "Charging Gunner" for 3 points. He adds an additional Initiative point during the Shooting Phase. Since this is one of those revealable cards, when this is revealed, for that round the tank gets an additional attack die when shooting the side of the enemies tank for that round.

The last card included is the "Artillery Observer", which is well known from the ww2 TANKS. Just read the text on the card for yourself , this card is very useful, if you rely on artillery tanks this is a must have worth two points.

There it is,  a closer look at the third and final expansion for the French.

It offers a light support unit capable in bringing down helicopters. The kit of this model once again has a high standard and the grade of detail in fine for its scale. The new crewmembers offer more tactical choices, especially the "Artillery Observer" is very useful, since the French are the only nation which can use artillery.

But the usefulness of this unit is unclear. For only 2 more points you could choose the AMX-30 which has way better stats. But since all reviews for the French expansions are done, it is time to get a view at the possible tactics and platoon builds for them in a future post.

This has nothing to do with the AMX-10P, but since the tank got painted in the same style and I am to lazy to take a picture of it, here is a picture of the 3Dprinted/bitsbox AMX-AUF1 artillery tanks for my French platoon, in the foreground a potential custom unit can be seen.

It is possible that I will add one or two additional posts tonight, at the moment the "TANKS The Modern Age" Cobra helicopter and another 3Dprinted/bitsbox hybrid are waiting for their sealing with matte varnish.

Rügen'46 Gangs Of Sassnitz (1) Schwere Mechanisierte Infantrie

The first pictures of some 28mm miniatures I finished for lasts years first Rügen'46 game. I built for all players a combat squad consisting 5 - 7 figures, since most of them were done in the last moment, the paintjob is pretty sloppy.

But anyway, I was (still am) very satisfied with the results of these exhausing nights before the game.

For more informations about Rügen'46, I suggest to read this post.

These powerarmoured troopers were built from minis of the "Void" starterpack. There were two factions included, each squad was built from one of those.

The heads were taken from the SHS range of Westwind Productions, I took a closer look at them in this post. Their arnament and additional equipment was taken from the ww2 German infantry box from (now closed) Wargames Factory.

The shields were also included in the "Void" box.

A closeup of some of the figures with the flash of my camera activated, just to give a better look of the two different color schemes. I think the small Balkenkreuz decals came from Dragon Models 1:144 ww2 tanks range.

Without any paint, the blue/black painted troopers looked like that:

Of course, these troops needed a worthy leader, and that was was they got.

Take a look at "Karl Heinz von Diskowitz", this mini was built by combining some parts of the "Void" box and "Horace Jackson" of Reaper Miniatures Bones range. The look may be anachronistic, but I like this unusual mini.

For some last minute improvised minis, I am happy with them. For years I had no use for the "Void" minis, but now, used for these minis, I am happy that I did not gave them away.

The next batch of miniatures used in the "Rügen'46" game will be shown soon.

Originally this post should have contained a 3D print timelapse video, but due to some technical issues, the first try of making that video was a fail. But I will give it a second try sooner or later.

Zvezda 1:100 T-72B

A closer look at the 1:100 T-72B modelkit from Zvezda. This Russian producer not only makes scalemodelkits, also it has several ranges of wargames with mostly 1:100 models, but their grade of detail differs from kit to kit.
This kit comes from Zvezdas "Hot War - Battle for Oil" wargame, but I will use it as proxie unit for "TANKS The Modern Age".

I like the design of this tank with its reactive armour, and when I got the chance to get one of those for a reasonable price, I took the opportunity to get it, but no further words, let us take a look at the model kit:

This kit comes in 2 green sprues, containing 14 parts, the flagpiece excluded, to complete the model. All parts are nicely sculpted and casted, I did not find any sinkholes or visible ejectormarks on the sprues. There is no flash, but you have at least to remove the mouldline of the one-piece turret.

But since the used plastic is not as soft as the stuff they use for their for "Art Of Tactics" range, this should be no problem.

This kit can be built without using glue, the fit of the parts is very good. When I built it I was sceptical how the sideskirts would fit, but the fit is excellent, even when sometimes some pressure was needed.

Beside the included instruction leaflet, finally there is the decalsheet of this box. Seems that there is a third set of generic Soviet turret numbers for "Hot War" model kits.

For future reviews I call these decals "type 3", this is now "type 1" while this is "type 2".

Suspecting the same quality than other Zvezda decals, these should be fine.

On the left side you see the built Zvezda T-72B compared to the plastic T-72 from the "Team Yankee" range of Battlefront Miniatures. While the general shape of them is pretty equal, the main difference is the reactive armour of the Zvezda Model.

And while I am at the details of this modelkit, the boxart shows a different version of the T-72B, it was taken from Zvezdas 1:35 kit of this tank.

This is one of the better Zvezda 1:100 kits. A nice amount of details and a sharp casting make this kit very nice. Building this kit should go on pretty fast, even whithout glue, the parts fit and sit very well, and the result is a nice looking Soviet cold war tank

The tracks could have some better detail and the addition of an AA machine gun would be nice, but I recommend this kit beside that minor points. 

There is always the possiblity to add some bits to improve this kit, on this Tank I added the leftover mineplows from my other T-72 and an AA gun which was taken from the bitsbox.

Todays modelling session was successful, beside all that modelmaking, in D.I.Y. tradition I built a handy tool, but at the moment I can not find a matching power source.

Maybe it would be better if I would not find one.

Update:
I almost finished the model, there is only some dirt to be added, just watch the picture below: