Goin' Down South Tactica 2018 In Hamburg

Today me and my mate Olli drove to Hamburg to visit the Tactica 2018. After 1 1/2 hours we arrived, and we guessed right, it was the hell to find a spot to park the car.

 

After we arrived we made a first walkarround. It was the first time for us that we visited something like this. And it was great. They were a lot of great demotables for so many different games. And there were a lot of traders (greetings to Stössi ;) you 're great, man) and the oppurtunity to see models in real-life that I have seen before only in the interweb.

Wow, I knew Brother Vinnie miniatures are pretty nice sculpted and casted, it is a big difference to see pictures in the web or seeing the miniatures in real-life.
And good to see that only the smaller part of the shown ranges of the various manufacturers look like bodybuilder on steroids.

Just take a look at the stuff I bought. Seems like my kids will have to eat rice the whole month.

Just kidding. But I found some interesting stuff, more about that maybe later.

Thanks to my fracking bad photography skills only a minor part of the pictures I made were good. I will upload my better pictures tomorrow.

After the weekend I will link to the galleries of Brückenkopf and Megabotato, there will be a lot of good quality pictures.

CIVIL WAR !!! This Years First TANKS Game

Olli and I finally found some time for our first game this year. As usual we played with our house rules, but this will be a topic for another post. We played 100 points each side with no special rules. The hills you see on the pictures count as woods.

Sorry to say but my cameras batteries went empty and the pics from the mobile were not the best quality. I hope Olli has made better pictures with his mobile. If he has I will add them

This year's first game of tanks was fought by two opposing German tank platoons. My mate Olli played the attacking forces (Tiger, Panther, Panzer IV, StuG) while I was playing the defending troops with two Panthers and two Panzer IV.

In the first round nothing much happened but in the second round all tanks had the opportunity to fire. Only 3 of the 8 firing tanks scored a hit, but the StuG was almost knocked out.

The third round was the same as the second round, many shots were fired but only some of them hit with minor damage.

 

Round four started with the first of my Panthers being destroyed by the enemy Panther and Tiger tanks, with three frackin' critical hits. My other Panther managed to get out of the Panther's and Tiger's sights and to destroy the enemy's StuG (three critical hits, too) but got a critical hit which set his motor on fire.

In round five and six I managed to get my surviving Panther out of all enemies line of sights while my two Panzer IV attacked Olli's Panzer IV. In theory this should have been a garantied kill but the whole game I had bad luck with the dice that I did not get the enemy's tank destroyed.

At the end of the sixth round another try to repair the burning motor of my remaining Panther failed with the result that it got destroyed.

In the seventh and in the eight and final round all attackers went on my two Panzer IV and both got destroyed.

Germany wins.

The game made a lot of fun even when it was unclear in which order the tanks should be moved in the command phase (thanks to their Blitzkrieg special ability) because both sides had this ability. Our solution was to use the same order which we had in the movement phase.

We also changed the rules for hits on the rear of the tanks but as I wrote before, this will be posted seperately.

The next time we play will be a playtest of our first rules addon for Tanks. It will include Planes and their weaponry and mobile anti air weapons. At the moment we are still struggling with the stats for the new vehicles especially the point costs.

When this is done I will make the rules and new cards for the new vehicles available in pdf that you can downoad it, print the new cards, find and build the new models and have fun with integrating these new toys in your game.

My Method To Paint The German Hinterhalt camouflage pattern

In this post I will show you how I paint the German Hinterhalt camouflage pattern. This is very time intensive, I needed for two tanks six hours, but I think it is looking fine.

Step 1:

Apply the three basic colors you want to use. In this case I use sand, green and brown.

Step 2:

Apply dots of sand to the brown and green parts of the tank

Step 3:

Apply dots of green to the brown and sand parts of the tank

Step 4:

Apply dots of brown to the green and sand parts of the tank

Step 5:

Use a light thinned black wash on the whole tank. In this case I use GW Nuln Oil and War-Ter® with a 70/30 ratio.

Step 6:

Give the tank a light drybrush with some kind of bone color/light beige.

The next steps (for that I did not do any pictures) are the following:

- paint all details

- apply gloss coat to the parts you want to use decals on

- add decals

- seal the whole tank with dull coat (still not done)

Maybe some of you readers will try it for yourself, I have still a StuG and a Panther waiting for this kind of paintjob, which I maybe will paint today.

3Dprinted 15mm Scenery for TANKS, Flames of War and other games

This "kit" came fresh from the printer when I made the picture, the brim element is applied. I downloaded the .stl file for this house from Thingiverse.

It was made in 28mm scale but I scaled it down 60 percent to make it roughly fit into 15mm scale.

After removing the brim elemant and separating the parts I was positively surprised about the quality of this print, even the wooden structure of the doors very good to see.

After a little sanding I used cyanacrylate glue (I hate this sticky shit) to build the pieces  to one whole piece. The roof came from a old H0 model house kit. I am not too satisfied with the door, I think it will be replaced by another door, but the rest of the house is fine. The mini and the tank are made by Battlefront Miniatures in 15mm scale.

I will add a base with some interior before  this model will get painted.

A small update on the printed T-34 hulls, I applied the basecolor. The next step will be a layer of drybrushing before I will add a black wash. Maybe I will do some highlights after it, but I have to see the results of the next steps.

3Dprinted T-34 Hulls

Finally, our secret project started successfull.

My mate Olli and I bought a cheap 3D printer kit from the bay, an Anet A8, because we want to print or own scenery and models. We had to build this thing together but that was not too complicated, even when we made 2 or 3 dumb mistakes.

But now we are making our own stuff, what is very nice. Sure, the prints do not have the quality of an hi-end 3D printer, but for 250 Euros, 150 for the printer and 100 for extra parts/filament, this machine gives good results.

One of the first models that I printed were four T-34 hulls. The quality could be better but I am totally new into 3D printing and I think the printer can do better when it is fully finished. I am planning to use the sparetracks of my Plastic Soldier Company T-34, some other bits/scratchbuilt things and the turrets I already painted for my Soviet TANKS!! squad.

I will also do this for for my US tank squadron, where 4 lonely Sherman turrets are waiting for their counterparts, but then I will have to print the tracks too.

The model is in 15mm/1:100 scale and needed about 60 to 70 minutes to print.

 This is the T-34 fresh from the printer. The support material is still there.

The T-34 hull without the support material. I tried to sand a little piece, but I personally think that sanding is absolutely necessary. The print is ok but I think I can get better results by recallibrating the machine and change some settings in the slicer software.

The printed hull with tracks and a turret compared to a Plastic soldier company T-34. They are almost the same size. Except for the printing lines there will be no big difference if these two tanks stand side by side on the battlefield.

Tomorrows project: Reinforcing my Soviet troops.