Finished: 15mm Dutch Leopard 2A4 troop III

Hi folks,

A quick post - much delayed at this point - on my final finished unit from my Team Yankee project. 

These Battlefront plastic Leopard 2A4s were painted prior to the Geopards, but I'd forgotten to document them. While preparing a post showing off the finished project I realised I'd missed it and for the sake of my end of year roundup... wanted to put something up. 

These were painted to the same formula as the other troops, so nothing new to report. I do need to go back and do a little standardisation of the highlighting around the gun barrels. 

Battlefront decals applied, usual fishing line aerials. Usual command tank with a commander for ease of picking out on the table. 

The whole Leo 2 squadron lined up. 

I'm slightly tempted to pick up 3 more of these models, just to get 3 troops of four vehicles.

Full army display post will follow soon. 

Finished: 15mm Dutch PRTL Platoon

Hi folks,

Powering on with my Cold War Dutch project, I oddly found my motivation flagging on the last few models. However, I managed to grit my teeth and get on with it - and it's all done!

One of the last units was a PRTL Panterluchtdoel Peloton. These are 15mm resin and metal miniatures from Battlefront. 

These vehicles were a parallel development of the German Flugabwehr Panzer 'Gepard'. These used a different radar that the German version. 

Nine complete crews were assigned to each platoon, allowing the three PRTLs to operate around the clock. The crews rotated from the PRTL to the stinger group (during the day), to rest. Hence in Team Yankee the number of Stinger units is limited to the number of PRTL units. 

As usual, Battlefront decals have been used, with fishing line as aerials. I applied my standard weathering to these. I have to say adding the weapons was a bugger, as well as balancing the turrets while painting them. 

Team Yankee - Red Thunder news

Hi Folks,

Saw this posted on Facebook, so thought it would be worth repeating. Coming in July and August 2017 apparently, we have:

- Red Thunder Briefing Book (Early July)

This contains, according to the Battlefront website:

The Soviet Union’s most powerful forces are stationed in East Germany and Czechoslovakia poised on the border with West Germany ready to strike at a moment’s notice. They are equipped with the very best Soviet industry has to offer, from sophisticated missile firing T-64 tanks and powerful T-72 tanks to versatile BMP infantry fighting vehicles, as well as plentiful BTR-60 armoured personnel carriers.

Supported by elite Afgansty Air Assault troops, powerful self-propelled artillery, and effective and numerous antitank and anti-aircraft weapons, there will be little that the corrupt capitalist armies of NATO can do to stop them. Soon the western workers will be free and the dawn of a new socialist age will begin.

• Background on the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, 94th Guards Motor Rifle Division, 18th Guards Motor Rifle Division, and Yuri Volkov’s Tank Battalion.

• Instructions on how to build a T-64 Tank Battalion, BTR-60 Motor Rifle Battalion, BMP Motor Rifle Battalion, T-72 Tank Battalion, or Afgantsy Air Assault Battalion.

• Three Scenarios to test your skills with your Soviet force.

• A detailed painting guide to help you prepare your Soviets for combat.

- Yuri's Wolves Starter Army (Early July, 5 x T-64's and 2 x BMP-2's + rules)
- Potecknov's Bears (Early July, revised original Russian starter set with 5 T-72's and 2 Hinds + rules). 
- T-64 Tankovy Company (Early August, Plastic)
- BTR-60 Company (Late August, Plastic)
- 2S3 Acacia 152mm Heavy Battery (Late August)
- SA-8 Gecko SAM Platoon (Early August)
- Storm Anti-Tank Platoon (Early August)
- Motor Rifle Company (Late July, Plastic)
- Motor Rifle Platoon (Late July, Plastic)
- Motor Rifle Heavy Weapons (Late July, Plastic)
- Afghantsy Heavy Weapons (Plastic - not mentioned on Battlefront website)

Along with some pictures of the kits (better images taken from the pre-order section of the Battlefront website - use to show whats available, the pictures are not mine!):

AHPC 'East' Bonus Round: 6mm and 3mm vehicles

Hi folks,

This week has been one of mainly prep, bad moods and full schedules...

I've now finished a good portion of the initial 'Gunuary' workload I had set myself. As such, I've moved from painting the guns to painting all the various bits and bobs that are required to put a full artillery unit on the table in Flames of War. As such, on the painting table currently are:

3 x Jeeps
3 x UC OP Carriers
8 x 15cwt Trucks
8 x Matadors
5 x Command squads (15 figures)
2 x OP stands (4 figures)
2 x Staff teams (8 figures)
Infantry for the bases of each of the 15cwt trucks... (25ish figures)
1 x resin scenic base

I'm the first to warn against overloading your table at any one time with stuff to paint. For me it puts a real dampener on my feelings towards the project, as the sheer amount to do seems to loom far too large. Along with a very busy time at work and the changes eventually (although for late war not initially) happening in v4 of the FoW rules mean that a lot of these 'extras' might be useless. I was starting to feel like putting the painting aside for a bit.

However, the v4 changes wouldn't impact for a long time, and I have the models bought. And stopping altogether wouldn't get anything done! So I resorted to just ignoring the bulk of it, picking 4 stands of the infantry figures and just getting them done to a wash stage. Last night I started on the next 4 stands, and I will just keep chipping away. I also spray coated the various vehicles and generally just made slow steady progress.

Last week I finished off my 5.5" guns, and quickly worked on some 6mm and 3mm stuff to enter into the AHPC bonus round, which this time had the theme 'East'. I had thought about doing some Full Thrust ESU star ships, but decided to stick with the Gunuary theme and go for my 6mm Soviet artillery (conventional and anti-air).

These 6mm models are all GHQ and are the first 6mm figures I think I have ever painted aside from some Epic models back in the day.

5 x 'Shilka' ZSU-23-4's.

5 x BMP2

5 x SA-13 'Gopher' SAMs

5 x 2S1 'Carnation' SP Guns

These are all part of my 6mm Team Yankee project - although the fact they are in packs of 5 means they don't currently exactly fit the TY army entries.

Radio aerials were done using a small pin vice and some toothbrush bristles. I have considered putting some 1/300th decals on them as well, but haven't ordered any yet. The pictures came out very dark, so I had to mess with the contrast and brightness, which has meant they look a little flat colour wise.

These are mounted on standard 'small' flames of war bases. For the bases I used PVA and sand, then strips of 1mm static grass and my standard length static grass (3 or 4mm?). I also added some small tufts.

I also, while I was working on these, dug out some of the 3mm stuff I still had to finish. This consisted of 4 x Cobras and 2 x Hinds (with the other 2 Hinds just needing basing). These are also based on 'small' flames of war sized bases and using some small paperclips for the flight stand. You should be able to see on the bases where the paperclip has been bent to provide a base. These are all 'Tumbling Dice' 1/600th scale models.

Hinds:

Cobras:

Side views:

So that's all I've finished since last week... hopefully soon I'll have a lot more to show off!

Gunuary - Week 1 AND Team Yankee thoughts

Hi folks,

With me having this week off work, I made a focused effort on finishing the various crew and infantry figures I have to paint for my gun crews.

Thankfully, after several days of feeling like I was getting nowhere, these guys are now ready for a coat of matt varnish. I had some issues which really slowed me down and were mainly due to my shortage of lollipop sticks when I was prepping the models. This meant I had crowded the figures on, and as a result I was touching the models while handling the sticks during painting. This meant that I was rubbing the paint away as I painted, meaning I was spending as much time repainting as actually painting!

I had picked up some new sticks last weekend, so I grabbed some (easier buying new than finding my old ones that are packed away!) and made some room by moving models over onto the new sticks. Being able to hold and handle the sticks made a big difference and let me actually make forward process.

A fairly simple issue, and one I should have seen coming!

Still, today I managed to get the final highlights done and revisited the faces - an area I really need to work on. Just a coat of varnish to go and they are ready to be based.

Speaking of bases, I got enough done for the models I currently have. Thinking about it now I mucked up a little and should have done at least 2 large ones more. But that's no big issue. I think I will follow technique I used last time I had vehicles to paint, which was to base them before painting. 4 of the guns will be on the resin Battlefront artillery bases I think, which will give me 8 on standard bases and 4 others on the artillery bases.

And as for the artillery, I took a break from painting one night and started assembling guns. So far, 4 x 25 Pounders, 1 x 5.5" and 2 x Limbers assembled.

I've some poor quality pics of the infantry up to this point - better pictures will follow once they are based.

As for Team Yankee... I've been thinking a lot about this over the weeks since release. It is a game I would like to play, but the experience of painting lots of 15mm infantry figures again has been one of the things that has caused me to seriously look at my plans. I've been thinking about the following issues - if anyone has any input themselves, I would be happy to hear it!

1.  I can't be sure of finding a player here collecting 15mm Team Yankee. This would probably mean I would need to collect both sides in order to get a game.

2.  A box set to get started with is £60+. With the plan to collect a Russian force that means a lot of T-72's and BMP's. Plus the above thought of having to get both sides (while I am starting to think about making a start on my WW2 Germans) makes this new period an expensive proposition.

3.  The ground scale looks far better for this period in 6mm than 15mm. It really is a time period where artillery should not be on the table, or if it is it's because it's a big table (centimetre ranges rather than inches).

4.  I can buy the whole of Team Yankee (Command, 2 x Abrams platoons (10 tanks total), 1 x mech inf platoon + support aircraft, artillery, helicopters, anti tank, anti air) plus a Soviet force (command + 2 x companies of T-72's (15 T-72's), Motor Rifle Company, Air support, helicopters, anti air (guns and missiles), artillery, rocket artillery, recce) from Heroics and Ros at 6mm for the price of one starter set at 15mm. Or for 3 x more could get the same (ish) force from GHQ.

5.  I don't really enjoy painting 15mm infantry. 6mm should (?) be much easier to do.

6.  6mm would give me both sides, would allow me to use the mini's for other systems, would be much more efficient cost wise and for expanding my forces and fits better with the scale of the conflict.

7.  I would need to look at different terrain for 6mm, when I still have nowhere near enough terrain for 15mm. However there would be some crossover, and the cost wouldn't majorly offset the saving for the reduced scale.

8.  6mm may be the way to go, for now*.


* Until later, when the the British range is released or I find a group playing at 15mm...

Post 250 - And Team Yankee

Hi folks,

A nice little surprise was waiting for me when I got home tonight, in the form of the Team Yankee rulebook. I had per-ordered this back in November and have been eagerly waiting for it to arrive.

Unfortunately the package was missing the launch event objective markers, and I had to go to the retailers website to find out why (no e-mail, no note in with the book). As it turns out the markers have been delayed - the retailers message on the books page was 'talk to battlefront about it' without even a link or an email address. Very shoddy and will make me think twice about using Stafford Games again.

The book itself is bigger (thicker) than I thought it would be. It's hardback and 122 pages - with artwork and quick reference on the inside covers. The artwork is very nice, starting with a map of Europe and little 'news articles' laying out each event in the run up to war.

Within the first few pages, the book lays out the story, details the main divergence from actual history and sets out the situation along the West German border.

I love this sort of stuff, and I hope they include more of it in future releases. As this book only covers army lists for the American and Russian Armoured and Mechanised forces, I'm pretty sure we will see more products (a review I read tonight of a BF event specifically mentioned Brits, East and West Germans, Canadians, French and other Warsaw Pact and NATO forces) and there is still a lot of scope for different types of lists - the fact that the Abrams tanks come with both the 105mm and 120mm gun versions does make it look like we might see some sort of development into the future as well. Perhaps different periods of what if's?

I've spent the night going through the rules, and they are all pretty clearly laid out and cut down a lot of the if>then stuff that Flames of War has. I'm interested to see how this simplified system works - I'm not keen on games that try and over simplify wargames so much, and I know that this game is designed for fast play. Still, it has a lot of tactical options and I can see it working quite well at scales other than 15mm - and I am tempted to try it at 6mm myself, having been looking at GHQ tanks recently. However 15mm will work with some other games I am interested in trying... so I will see.

I'm sure there will be (and has been) a lot of sites giving more detailed walk through's of the rules. What I can say it that it looks good, and reads well.

Manoeuvre seems important and while there is no reaction rules (other than for anti-air units) there are lots of chances for units to move. Examples include special movement orders that can be issued once per turn by a unit HQ team. A 'blitz' move that allows a unit to take a test in the movement step and if it passes any units within 6" of the HQ team can move 4" but still count as not moving for shooting and GTG, as well as a 'shoot and scoot' which is the same, but in the assault step - basically, stormtrooper moves at different points in the turn for all units. 'Follow Me' allows an extra move of 4" in the movement step after movement (on a test, units within 6" of HQ, etc)... so lots of movement options and lots of dashing from cover to cover and infiltration into and out of lines of sight.

Shooting and line of sight have been cleared up a lot, artillery and air seem a lot more straight forward, as does assault.

Army list selection is very easy, with the unit cards greatly simplifying things.

I'll be keeping an eye out for battle reports and reviews, and trying to build up a picture of where things are a little weak. There has been a few head scratching moments when I have read the rules (Thermal sights let you see through smoke, but only if you are within 6" of it for some reason, laser guided artillery rounds appear to only have a range of 16", etc). But I'm glad I have this book... now to figure out what army to collect!

Edit: the 16" range on Laser Guided Artillery is a minimum range.. that solved that one!

Oh, and in other news, post 250 and just over 60,000 visitors. Thanks to everyone who has stopped by, and especially the 6MMRPC guys and all the people who regularly leave comments. You have all helped me keep my hobby interest going, and I would not have made as much progress with my collection if it wasn't for all your input and interest. A competition may follow, after Christmas! Thanks Guys!