LAV Tank Expansion For TANKS The Modern Age And Magnetizing The LAV

A closer look at the LAV tank expansion for "TANKS The Modern Age". This game, made by Galeforce 9, is a new version of "TANKS", this time the conflict happens in the eighties of the 20th century in a fictional world war 3.

This game uses 1:100 modelkits from Battlefront Miniatures "Team Yankee" game, just as "TANKS" does with models from their "Flames Of War" range.

Beside the cards for the game, this plastic kit is included in the LAV expansion:

 

Sounds like I am repeating myself, everytime when I take a look at BM kits but once again, this is a kit without any flaws or issues. Neither sinkholes nor visible ejectormarkings can be found on the parts, also there is no flash and there is no mouldlining except for the roadwheels.

The kit comes in 2 sprues of green plastic. If you build the LAV AT version, you will need only the parts marked in the picture above from the second sprue. Also, you could build the LAV-M mortar version from this kit, but since it will not be used for the game I do not mention it in this post.

Seeing the amount of leftover bits, I redid my my little experiment from this post to build a M-163 VADS from them.

Or maybe 2, I reinforced my US troops with another M-901 and had all the bits from the pictured sprue twice. You can see my efford in the post below.

After a view on the plastic included in this expansion, let us take a look at the cards which are included. First there are 2 unitcards in this box:

The LAV-25 is a high initiative unit, but like all (as I call them) support units from the game it has no armour and only 3 hitpoints. Since it is wheeled, the LAV has 3 movement poins. Rapid fire 5 grants some advance against unarmoured vehicles and helicopters, but against all other units this tank is pretty useless with a base attack of only 2.

For 11 points this may be a good addition to your US platoon.

The second LAV version, the LAV-TOW, has with 5 points a lower initiative than the LAV-25. As all other light tanks it has no armour and only 3 hitpoints. Its strenght are the missiles, the vehicle has the ability to shoot 4 missiles each round, supported by its Fast and Hammerhead, instead of 1 this unit has 3 armour when in cover, abilities this thing can be a good support unit.

This unit may join your platoon for only 12 points.

This time 5 additional crew and equipment cards are included, 3 crewmembers and 2 equipment cards.

The US hero is tank commander "Joel Schrader" who pushes the initiative of all LAV and M-60 tanks of the platoon. It is one of those revealable cards, if you do so you will get 2 additional attack dice but lose 1 armourpoint for that round. For 6 points this is a good addition if you have more M-60 and LAVs in your platoon.

Next included are 2 drivers, the US only "Clever Mechanic" gives you 1 Initiative during the movement phase. Also he allows you to drop an equipment card to reroll up to 2 defence dice, not bad for only 2 points.

The "Daring Driver" allows you for 3 points to reroll a defence dice when not in cover.

The 2 leftover cards are for equipment/doctrines. "Spearhead" gives the vehicle which has it equipped to move before the game starts. This may be ok for 2 points, I still did not figure it out, its use may depent on the actual game setup.

The "Duck hunter" is a good addition, especially for tanks without AA abilities. For the cost of 2 points, tanks can do an unmodified  4 dice missile attack versus helicopter. Very nice.

Once again this is a nice addition for the game. I can not say much about its playability but in theory this thing seems nice. If you play versus helicopters, this is a good AA support unit for a releatively low cost.

Not only that I recycled the leftover VADS bits from this expansion, also I magnetized parts of the LAV tank to make it playable in both versions with a change the top part. Maybe this should have gotten its own post, but read on.

First of all, building this kit happened without any issues, made fun and did not take much time. Then I figured out how I would magnetize it and started with this process.
I glued magnets to both exchangable parts, then a blob of epoxy was deployed in the inner hull of the LAV. I pushed the screw with one of the topparts into the epoxy and when it was hardened I only had to take the part off again and could exchange it with the other magnetized top part. Since I used a magnet/screw combination I saved one magnet and did not have to care about the polarity.

Blogupdate

I blocked a specific IP of a network bot or stuff like this, I hope this will not show any negative effects for other visitors of this blog. For now I will test it for a week, to see if I can reduce access for that kinky bot. For this I used the script from http://freehostedscripts.net/blockip/

In the next weeks I have plenty of time for my hobby, this is what I planned beside some spontanous projects. Some older previews of "TANKS The Modern Age" expansions will be updated to fit in the scheme of the actual style, some pictures have to be redone and some additions for the cards have to be made and I would like to add some links.

Next is that I want to build an index page with all built kits from this blog ordered by name or scale of something like that. This will help to find specific models in this blog.

Finally. I will redo one of our battlefields for a more urban look, I have already started to plan the new layout, but removing the actual flock and sand will take some time because waterproof carpenters glue was used.

AND...

I will start to work on the next set of custom unit cards for the game. This time a new US and a new Soviet unit are planned, but I still have to wait for the kits to arrive, to build and to paint them, that I can use a picture of that model on the new card. They will not be completely new, they will only be reskins, what I already did for the French artillery unit. And since the German forces are also limited with only 4 units availabe, Olli and I should take a look on this topic.

I tried a new set of fonts, the new cards will be better readable and the cards that are finished at the moment will get redone this month and then be available as PDF. And it is unclear, if I should get the French units for the game, maybe I drop them of as a birthday present for a friend, after I took a closer look at them, we will see.

More Bitsrecycling With Instant-Sil

Oops I did it again. Building the Battlefront Miniatures M-901 ITV and LAV tanks left over a load of bits. And as you may know, for me this is annoying, I think it is a waste. Except for the marked pieces all parts of this sprue were leftover once and of this sprue twice.

Sure, sometimes you will get some extra hatches or small parts, but in this case there were so many sparebits leftover, like at the Plastic Soldier Company 1:100 Panzer 38t (these were leftover), that I decided to try to use them like I did in this post.

The main parts were finished and roughly cleaned up. As you may see, the duplicated tracks, skirts and hulls are not perfect but I think they are acceptable. They would look better when builtup and painted.

The quality of the cast could be much better, but with my limited supplies I only got these results. This is how they looked when all parts were attached. Also I had to duplicate the drivers hatch. In the background you can see some of my mates Ollis Leopard 2, this picture was made at another roguish Montagmaler meeting.

Later that day we basecoated more than a dozen tanks via airbrush in a production line that would have made Henry Ford proud of us.

Having a Revell Aquacolor Bronzegrün basecoat, the improvised tanks made a better appearence than thought. On the picture they are flanked left and right by the 1:100 T-55 AM kit by the Plastic Soldier Company, a kit which was also nice to build.

I just made these two pictures, you see my original Battlefront kits of the M-163 and the M-901 side by side with their duplicates. Since I changed my regular matte varnish you can see slight differences in the coloring.
I am happy with them, and their production was pretty simple. Another time I used stuff which would else disappear in the bitsbox. For me, one aspect of modelling was always, that every kit built by every modeller everywhere is a unicate, and these are mine.

And I saved some money for other units, one pack of epoxy putty (2 €) was used for each model, some closer looks at the available French forces for "TANKS The Modern Age" may come in the future, but I am still unsure about that.

Hind Helicopter Expansion For TANKS The Modern Age

A closer look at the Hind helicopter expansion pack for "TANKS The Modern Age" by Galeforce 9. This game is the follow-up to "TANKS", set in a fictional ww3 in the 1980ies.

This expansion offers one plastic 1:100 Hind kit, also usable for "Team Yankee", a flightbase, the unit card and some crew and equipment cards for the game.

First let us take a look at the kit:

The kit comes nicely casted and almost flawless, there is minimal flash to remove, neither sinkholes nor visible ejectormarks were found on the sprues. Also there are virtually no mouldlines. As other kits from Battlefront Models, the quality is top.

The flightbase is casted in good quality, gives you two height options and offers the choice for magnetization, but it works fine in my Revell Cobra/Hind helis without magnets. With a small layer of tape it also fits in Battlefront helicopters without using the included socket piece.

Compared to the 1:100 Revell Hind kit, there are almost no panel lines on the Battlefront kit. Except for this, the grade of detail is nice for a gamepiece.

After a look at the plastic let us check out the cards. First we have the card for the unit.

The Mil Mi-24 Hind is a beast, with 5 hipoints it can take some hits. Sharing an initiative of 7 and 3 armorpoints with all other helicopters, its special strenght is the Predator ability, where you must move each turn but you can ignore the "shooting on the move" rule for missiles, AND you can reroll 2 attack dice each attack. The additional Rapid Fire ability offers 5 dice against unarmoured vehicles and helicopters.

28 points without any equipment or crew may seem quite high, but this thing is worth its price.

4 cards for equipment/doctrines are included, first there is the missile armament for the Hind, the "AT6 Spiral" missiles for 4 points are a must-have because of the Predator ability.

The "UB-32 Rocket Launcher" seems pretty useless, for 3 points you gain the ability to attack all enemies in close range with 2 dice when you discard the card. All targets only throw their base defense dice. This may seem pretty weak but if you attack a bunch of Marder or M-901, there is a chance to erease them all.

As also included in the PAH and the Cobra expansion, "Countermeasures" and "Defense Maneuvres" cards 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.

The next cards included in this expansion are 6 cards for crew members.

Two Soviet heroes are included, first there is the pilot "Vasily Popov". Not only he gives you points 2 additional initiative points, he also adds an additional attack dice versus heavy armored tanks.

Beside him comes "Alexander Gagarin", who pushes the initiative in the shooting phase, he also grants the ability to exchange two hits for a critical hit. For 4 points this is a good gunner for your helicopter.

The rest crewmembers can be used by all nations, the gunners could be used in tanks too.

The "Ressourceful Gunner" may be useful with the UB-40 rockets, and the "Assassin", useful to get rid of enemy crewmembers, are nice additions.

Last but not least there are two pilots in this expansion, the "Risky Pilot" gives you a bonus if you attack at close range, and the "Daring Pilot" lets you reroll one defense dice if you are not in cover. Both cost 3 points and may be good additions depending on your playstyle.

In the next days I will prepare some last closer looks at "TANKS The Modern Age" expansions for the moment, a closer look at the PAH and the LAV expansions are almost finished.

The kit built and painted. Building this thing went on without any issues. As usual the model was painted with Revell Aquacolor paints.The main color is Sand with Leatherbrown (or Dar Earth) spots, the bottom was painted Light Green. Most decals were taken from the Revell Hind decalsheet, the "33" was taken from the Zvezda 1:72 Hind.

TANKS The Modern Age The Easter Front

Yesterday we played our first 2 vs 2 game of "TANKS The Modern Age". With almost 800 points it is the biggest game we played for now.

Setting up the game was some work, I had to move some of my furnitures to get enough room for the playfield, the cards and the players. Since we do not have enough cards for all tanks, I had to go to the copyshop to get some backup cards. Luckily there are some cards from "TANKS", which can be used in "TANKS The Modern Age" too.

The battlefields size was 2,20 x 1 meter, to save some time I preset the scenery. The village was built with H0 houses (in pretty bad condition) and some selfmade ruins. The hills in the South count as unpassable terrain, and the windmills block attacks from ground to air/air to ground and helicopters. Most of the stuff you may have seen in some older posts.

The Soviet Unions army, on the left side you see the Southern attack group. It is made of 4 T-64, 2 BMP-2 and 2 Hind helicopters for 162 points and has equipment and crews for additional 60 points.

On the right you see the Northern attack group of the Soviets, for 118 points it containes 1 T-72, 3 T-55AM, 2 BMP-1, 1 2S1 howitzer and a Hind chopper. Additional crews and equipment worth 52 points was used.

On the all T-55AM and BMP-1 I used some Team Yankee GDR decals.

Both groups united had 392 points against the troops of the NATO.

The NATO troops were made up from the US Army in the North, equipped with 2 M1 Abrams, 1 M60, 1 M901, 1 M163, 1 M109 howitzer and a Cobra attack helicopter for 114 points, who got additional crews and equipment worth 56 points.

The South was protected by a Bundeswehr platoon, consisting 3 Leopard 2, 2 Marder and 2 PAH for 164 points and got crews and equipment for additional 60 points.

Both NATO groups together had tanks and equipment for 394 points.

394 versus 392 points, that sounded like a fair fight, and sure, this game would take some time. We did a simple chart where we could see the order of tanks to play. And this clearly showed that the Soviets may be stronger in numbers, but the NATO has a higher initiative for almost all tanks

The dice decided that the tactical advantage for the first round was on the Soviet side. After all troops were placed, it was time to start the war. But before we did that we had to make some makeshift cards for Ollis Leopard 2 because he forgot them at home.

Just some impressions from the game. The first two rounds went on quite slow. For the first three rounds the tactical advantage was on the Soviet side. They concentrated their air force in the South, trying to push the NATO forces to the North, while the brave T-55AM tanks of the GDR tried to take the village in the North. Eqipped with missiles these reletively weak tanks would offer a threat to any helicopter.

First blood was taken by my comrade who shot down a PAH in the third round.

With the first casuality it was getting hot, the Soviet Hinds attacked the Nato choppers and AA tanks. The NATO got the tactical advantage for the 4th and all following rounds. Bundeswehr Leopard tanks tried to push back the enemy while the US troops held position at the border of the village, knowing that fighting within the streets of Auerbach would be fatal for both sides.

One of the players had to leave the game after the 4th round, so my mate Olli had to take over his US platoon. And he played them well, securing his positions and waiting to strike back. Meanwhile the 3 Hinds dominated the air.

As you may see, it was getting late, the sun went down, and I had to use the flash of my camera. The whole game took over 6 hours, luckily we had foreseen that it would take much time to finish.
In the North the village fell and all NATO troops withdrew or were destroyed.

Since the Soviets in the South were pushing hard, the rest of the NATO forces had to move to defense positions. The Soviet Hind gunships were a big threat and both Marder got destroyed, giving the Soviets air advantage.

While the Soviet T-64 in the South took heavy fire from the technical advanced NATO tanks, the supporting Hind helicopters distributed heavy fire to get rid of the last NATO choppers. Most AA units were destroyed resulting in Soviet air superiority.

The 7th round was the final round, what means that one round took about an hour. But we did not rush and played a pretty relexed game without any stress.

The game made a lot of fun, even when one of us had to leave before we finished. Due to the experiences from our first 2 vs 2 game, a lot of improvements were made, for example this time we did not have to use an ironing board for the cards, and this was helpful too.

More pictures will follow when I copied them from the other players who also made some pictures.