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.

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.