1:100 Master Modell Avions Marcel Dassault "Mercure"

A closer look at the 1:100 Avions Marcel Dassault "Mercure" made by the German modelkit manufacturer Master Modell.

Initially released in 1975 by the East German Plasticart Zschopau, this kit was re-released from 1989 to 1991 by Master Modell. These and many more informations about this long gone manufacturer can be found on this homepage.

This is not the usual stuff on which I take a closer look, but when I saw a picture* of a scenery piece with a crashed passenger jet, I felt pretty inspired. I checked various sources to get the cheapest 1:100 civil airliner kit which I could find, to build a scenery piece for "TANKS The Modern Age".

I found this kit, even when I did find almost no informations about it. The linked homepage was the highlight from the search but the rest I got was pretty bad. This is a good reason for this mini review. 

Let us take a look at the parts which are included:

The main parts are moulded in white plastic, which is pretty sturdy and hard. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you may know that I am absolutely no aviation expert, but even I see the simplicity of this kit.

There are not much details, only some raised panel lines. I did not expect the quality of a modern Dragon or Revell kit, but building this as desired will take more efford than I tought.

The next sprue comes in a silverish grey plastic, not as hard as the white parts. It contains more parts to finish this model, among some others, the landing gear and the engines can be found. The grade of detail is low and most of the panel lines are raised just as on the other parts.

The next sprue comes in black plastic and contains all wheels for the landing gear. The detail is simple but at least they are round.

The final sprue includes all clear parts for the model. I am positively surprised by its quality, they are pretty clear, especially since today I unboxed another kit with many clear parts which are pretty milky.

Seems that there are some more closer looks incoming.

Beside the plastic there is a big decal sheet included. According to the Wikipedia article about the Dassault Mercure, it was used by only one airline (Air Inter) for which this sheet is included.

I can not say anything about the quality of East German decals, but to be honest, I do not expect much from them but I will see.

All in all, this is an old kit, compared to "west" modelkits from this time, I think this was never a great kit. On the other side, it is a relict from the past, made from a company in a country who both do not exist anymore.

I think with some work it will make a great scenery piece, combined with the planned new battlefield, this will not only be a fun to make but also an impressing piece of decoration.

This weekend I will continue my closer looking at French tank expansions for "TANKS The Modern Age", it took a little longer to prepare, I had to resupply my French forces, but there will be some "bonuscontent" included.

(* The picture which inspired me can be found in this video at Youtube at 15:30 right after the Boxer.)

First Planes Playtest for TANKS

Finally I had the chance to make a first playtest of my custom (work in progress) planes expansion for TANKS by Galeforce 9. After I wrote the last post, I had a friend for visit and invited him to a small game of TANKS.

Luckily he has some experiences with the modern variant of TANKS, having been part of the battle at the Easter front.

I built 2 small platoons and set up an improvised playfield in my hobbyroom, made from a blanket and some pieces of styrofoam. Not the prettiest battlefield, but it is ok for this quick test. We decided against any crew or equipment cards to keep it simple.

My friend played the attacking forces. The German platoon included one Panther (A) and two Panzer IV, all made by the Plastic Soldier Company.

As new custom units he had a Ju 87 in 1:144 scale and a 3D printed SdKfz 7/1 for air defense. I think I did not show the halftrack in any post, the only thing I added after printing were some figures from the bitsbox.

The defending British platoon was played by me and included a Sherman Firefly from an old "Flames Of War" starterbox, and the Comet and Achilles tanks from the game expansions.

My new additional units were a Hawker Tempest in 1:144 scale and an 3D printed M17 halftrack for air defense.

A look at the battlefield before the game started. It looks pretty simply but I may build some snow covered scenery pieces (and wash the blanket) because I like this winter look.

By the way, today I won an ebay auction, when the thing arrives, a new battlefield for "TANKS The Modern Age" will be build soon, maybe usable for ww2 TANKS too.

Having only sightblocking elements and no cover pieces, the game would have a touch of an arena fight. The first two rounds were pretty unspectacular but it seemed that at least the movement rules for the planes would work as supposed.

Would work as supposed in future games. Experiences from this first game showed that a special movement template and its own movement arrow is needed for games using these new rules. Wish I would have built them before, following some older drawings in my notebook.

The selfmade bases were impractical, I already replaced them with bases matching to the standard "Flames Of War" flyerbases.

That the halftracked AA vehicles would work was pretty clear from the start of the game, Actually the only new thing to them was that they got an ability known from ww3 TANKS.

Giving them "Rapid Fire" was an easy solution for their arnament, a thing I had issues with from the beginning.

I think, at this point I should state out that most of the rules were written before "TANKS The Modern Age" hit the market, and even when I took some elements from the TANKS followup, most of the planes rules were written at least one year ago.

While the battle on the ground went as usual, we started to attack with our planes. Not only the equipped weapons were used, we also made some theoretical dice throws to test several variants of bombs and other stuff.

And this also worked almost as supposed.

The planes landed some hits and the AA halftracks gave their best to shoot them down. Since there are no effects for planes in the critical hits cards, we found a simple solution for this. A conversion list will be included in the actual rules addon.

And I think that we have found some good equipment pieces for planes, even some pilots and doctrines will be available. I do not want to spoiler this stuff but after my mate Olli and I discussed the pointcosts for the new stuff, it seems that a big part of this project is already done.

The game took about 2 hours, ending with a victory for the German troops. I decided that when all enemies ground units are lost, the game is over, no matter if there are enemy planes left or not.

Having planes available adds some new tactics and advantages to the game, even when this was a very first test it made fun.

And I learned a lot of things that will have to be included in the rules to make this whole as easy to understand as possible.

 

At the moment I think I am going to create units (for this expansion) only for plane models which I have in my collection, what means, the first edition of the planes expansion for TANKS will include 5 to 6 planes and other units, that at least each nation will get one new type of AA unit and plane available. There will be different planetypes available, but I will keep this for a future post.

Maybe some readers will allow me to use pictures of their plane models for new cards.

But since the expansion is just a fun project, it takes some time. Some more playtests will have to happen, the final costs for all the new cards will have fo be found, and than I can start to write the actual expansion.

Maybe some more units may find their way in future revisions, once all the digital work is done, it will be no big issue to create new cards for them.

Faces Of War (6)

More pictures from the African campain during ww2. My Grandfather made these pictures but I had no oportunity to speak with him about these pictures and the memories he had.

I do not exactly know where the signpost from the picture above was standing, but I found at least two more pictures of it while browsing through the net.

Update:
Seems like this was the signpost which stood at the Lybian Marble Arch, found on this picture, near Ra's Lanuf. AKG images has this picture from the signpost.

All of the pictures come from the first two posts of this series, the remaining pictures in these posts were digitalized in better quality, as also the pictures from the third "Faces Of War" post were.

I do not know if he was in the Luftwaffe, but a lot of the pictures show planes and stuff which belongs to them. It seems there is a repair crane or something like that on the pictures above, either the plane was scavenged for spareparts or it was repaired, who knows.

Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung

 - Nicht kommerziell - Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International Lizenz. -

In the next post I will take a closer look at the French AMX10 expansion for "Tanks The Modern Age". It is possible that a playtest of the new custom rules for planes will happen tonight. Than that review will be the after next post, aehh, I mean that closer look.

While I ordered some more AMX 30 tanks, all French forces on my desk, including a new custom unit, got their basecoat of Army Painter Skeleton Bones, I think it is a nice basecolor for a desert scheme.

Actually I wanted to use some 3D printed stencils from Thingiverse for their camouflage pattern, but I decided against it, a quick test showed that they did not work as supposed at least in 15mm scale.

Gazelle Helicopter Expansion For TANKS The Modern Age

A closer look at the Gazelle helicopter expansion for "TANKS The Modern Age" by Galeforce 9. It is a remake of TANKS with an advanced ruleset and additional air units, and a spinoff of Team Yankee (based on this book). I did not read it, but I have this one in my library and the scenario seems equal to me.

As all other "TANKS The Modern Age" expansions, this pack contains an 1:100 model kit, taken from the "Team Yankee" range, the matching unit card(s), additional equipment/crew/doctrines cards, and a flyerbase for the model.

First let us take a look at the kit from this expansion:

The kit comes in one green sprue which contains all parts to build the Gazelle. The casting quality is good, there is minimal flash to remove, but there are annoying ejectormarks on the bottom of the rotorblades and the HOT launchers.

But except for that, the kit comes in the usual good quality as the other 1:100 kits for the game. I think, that building this kit would go fast and without any issues.

The flightbase is casted in good quality, gives you two height options and offers the choice for magnetization, but it works fine in my Cobra/Hind helis without magnets. This are not the actual parts included in the box, they are identical to them.

After a look at the included modelkit, now let us take a look at the cards which are included in this expansion. First there are the cards for the unit itself:

The French Gazelle 20mm has a initiative of 10 what makes it the last to move but first to fire what is a clear advantage. Beside that it shares its Armour of 0 and only 3 Hitpoins with all other helis except for the Hind. Its "Rapid Fire" ability offers 5 dice against unarmoured vehicles and helicopters, but that is needed with an base Attack of only 2. For 21 points you would get a basic helicopter hunter for the French.

The Gazelle HOT version shares its Initiative of 7 and its Armour of 3 with all other helicopters from the game, except for its 20mm version. With 3 hitpoints it is pretty weak and except for its 5 dice missile attack it is unarmed. This restricts its attack abilities because of the special rules for missiles but for 23 points this is a strong unit for every French platoon.

After a look at the unit cards, now let us take a look at the equipment/crew/doctrines cards which are included in the Gazelle expansion.

7 crewcards are included in this expansion. As in the other helicopter expansions there are 2 heroic crewmembers for this specific nation and some crewcards usable for all nations.

The French pilot "Baptiste Deschamp" offers for the cost of 6 points not only 2 additional initiative points, also you may change the elevation of the chopper at the end of the movement phase without to add a speed token. This sounds very useful.

"Clement Martin", the French (helicopter only) gunner changes every attack into a Sideshot what is a high advantage, reducing the opponents defence dice by 1. With 8 points this card is pretty expensive, I will see how useful it is.

Then there are the cards which can be used by all nations.

First there is the "Defensive Pilot" which lets you reroll one defense dice for the cost of 4 points,  the "Risky Pilot" gives you a bonus if you attack at close range for the cost of 3 points. Both are good alternatives if you play more than 1 Gazelle helicopter in a game.

The remaining 3 crewmembers are not limited to helicopters. The "Inspired Commander" offers 2 additional initiative points for the cost of 4 points, but I would prefer "Baptiste Deschamp", who offers for 2 additional points and a very good advantage.

Two gunners are included,  the "Bloodthirsty Gunner" adds 1 attack dice at close range. For 3 points this may be useful for a tanks, but in comparison to the fragility of helicopters the only helicopter which may have use for this card is the Soviet Hind.

The "Sharpshooter Gunner" could be a pretty powerful addition, its cost of 5 gives you the advantage that your enemy has to draw 2 cards at the first critical hit and you have to decide which card counts and which would be discarded.

Last, there are 3 equipment/doctrines cards included.

"Extra Ammunition" lets you reroll your attack dice when discarded, for 2 points this card is useful for every unit in the game.

As also included in the HIND, the PAH, and the Cobra expansions, "Countermeasures" and "Defense Maneuvres" cards are included in this box, both are very useful for defending attacks, worth 2 and 3 points this equipment may save your helicopter in critical situations.

This expansion is a nice addition for each French platoon. The kit is almost without any faults, and the cards included offers some nice options to customize your Gazelle.

The only negative point on this and all other TANKS games expansions is that there are no decals included in this box and this sucks. I am still looking for a cheap kit to loot for some French decals.

But except for that an additional air unit is always welcome. Based on experiences from earlier games, helicopters are strong units and the Gazelle is no exception.

I will build the Gazelle equipped with HOT launchers, since the French main battletank has the "Rapid Fire" ability, what you may see in one of the nexts posts when I will take a closer look at the next French unit for "TANKS The Modern Age".

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Beside that, I continued some work on new custom stuff for "TANKS The Modern Age". As I mentioned in earlier posts, I would like to try to write a plane expansion for the game.

Originally this was planned for the ww2 version of TANKS but there is no reason why the planned rules would not fit in a ww2 setting with the matching models and cards.

Just for fun as the other custom units which were made before, but containing not only attack planes, but also new units and some additional equipment like new air-to-air missiles for helicopters and matching new rules for all of the new stuff.

But that means that I would have to think about new game mechanics, for helicopters, you may choose not move, but a plane has always to move, and I think it would have to move in the attack phase too. As also in the command phase.

And it should have only maximal 45 degree turning abilities, since it is a plane and not an UFO. I do not want to make it too complicated because this is just a fun project. Maybe it turns out stupid or it may be a big fun. When it is finished, you will find it in this blog.

The other thing I would have to find a solution for are the pointcosts for the unit itself and all its armament, pilots and equipment. As I wrote in the SU-25 post, a potential game unit, the point costs for this stuff have to be well balanced.

This would be powerful units, that is why I decided so set the costs for ground attack fighter higher then the costs for a well equipped Hind, in other words, would you rather take 2 M1A1 or would you take an A-10.

Revell 1:144 WW2 US Army Vehicles

Some pictures of my recently finished 1:144 U.S. tanks and trucks made by Revell. The box contains 2 equal sprues from which you can build 3 different vehicles twice.

Originally these small kits were included in the 1:144 medium U.S. Navy Landing Ship modelkit, but you can get them seperately too. When I saw them at my local hobbyshop I could not resist to get them.

Building the Shermans was pretty simple. Each tank was made of only 6 parts and took only some minutes to build after all parts were cleaned. I painted them (and all other vehicles in this post) with the same color combination as I did for my 15mm Shermans which I used for "TANKS".

I had to improvise with the decals and markings because I used some of this box decals for other projects.

Also included twice is the M8 Greyhound recon vehicle. This kit was almost built as fast as the Sherman, but the wheels took some time to clean them up. Last year I 3d printed some of them in 15mm scale.

Some crewfigures would have been a nice addition to these kits. But I may have found a solution to get some crew members, more about that will come in a future post, but this may take 1 or 2 months

The third vehicle included is the GMC CCKW 353. This kit had twice as many parts as the other kits included in the box. The buildup took some time since many parts had to be cleaned from mouldlines and flash.

I added a floor made from paper to the freightbed and installed the Browning AA machine gun on it. The guns belong to the landing ship but I think the fit pretty nice to the truck. Maybe it was a frontline modification.

Last but not least this is a size comparison shot with the Revell 1:144 Stuka. This may not fit but at the moment it is the only finished plane with landing gear I have.

15mm 3D Printed Gepard and some updated posts

As I mentioned in a previous post, I think the more choices for platoonbuilding in "TANKS The Modern Age" you have, the more flexible you can create your platoonlist.

The choices for AntiAir units are limited (*) to (as I call them) support units with no armour and low hitpoints. Using  the "Camouflage Net" upgrade, combined with "Scout" or "Hammerhead" abilities may give some basic defense, with no speedpoints this are at least 3 dice to defend and missiles will not be affected by their special rules.

But all in all, the available AA units are very weak.

(*): There is at least one exception, but I will keep this for a future post.

This is the reason why my mate Olli mentioned that it would be nice to have armoured AA units. Said and done, I headed to Thingiverse and after a quick search I found this German Gepard AA tank.

I think the hull took 4 hours and the turret parts were printed in 2 hours.

The turret came in 5 parts, of which you can see only 4. The parts were roughly cleaned on the picture above, but I still had to remove the launcher tubes attached to the guns. As I understood, these were equipped in the beginning of the 21st century and would not fit in our late 80ies/early 90ies game setting. And without, this tank would look better.

In the background you can see the AMX-30 Roland turret, another custom unit which still has to be created as also the Gepards unit card. We still have to figure out the values and costs for these units since it may get too easy to make them over- or underpowered.

When we have found some good schemes for point costs and etc, heavy AA units for the other nations will follow too, or at least the British and Soviet forces may get some. I still have not found this type of unit for the US troops, but at least I will make the HMMWV Avanger available as option.

Both turrets side by side. The Gepard turret still needs some filling and sanding but it is remarkable in its shape. The Roland turret is ready to get painted, but this will have to wait until its comrades will have arrived at the homefront.

I magnetized the tankhull and turret using a screw and a magnet. I glued the magnet in the opening for the turret and turned a screw in the bottom of the turret. This way you can simply adjust the point where both parts meet.

Since the US and German tanks have the same NATO colorschemes, I want something different for the new platoon. I have planned to paint the French tanks in a (probably, but I do not care) historic inaccurate multiscale camouflage pattern with desert colors, using a set of 3 stencils which I downloaded from Thingiverse and printed on our Anet A8.

I hope this will work as proposed, especially the big turret of the AMX AUF1 artillery tank would look nice in this digital camouflage pattern. Unluckily, I took a picture of the only stencil which will need some cleanup.

Today Olli started to paint the Flakpanzer Gepard as you can see on the first picture of the post. There is still some color and the sealing varnish to do, but at distance this thing already looks very good.

A custom unit card for this tanks will follow soon.

(update: I forgot to add a picture of the unpainted tank, this was done as you can see below)

Some words on the blog update:

I made some better pictures and replaced some of the old in the "TANKS The Modern Age" stuff, which got a closer look  in some previous posts.

At the moment the starterbox and the expansions for the PAH, Marder, Abrams and T-72 got some new pictures. Tomorrow I will exchange some pictures from the closer looks at the BMP-1/2, M163/M901, Hind and Cobra expansions for the game.

And I will take the oppurtunity to make new pictures for the earlier "Faces Of War" postings, the quality of the actual pictures is simply bad.

I may split the earlier posts and preserve the leftover pictures for future posts, following the parole quality not quantity.

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.