Seventh Painting Challenge Submission - "Bannon's Boys" for Team Yankee

"Bannon's Boys" - 15mm Moderns from Battlefront

Switching a few gears, in this submission for Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge we head over to another favourite period of mine (I seem to have a lot of those) - 15mm "Cold War Gone Hot".  Of course, the big news in this space has been the release of "Team Yankee" by Battlefront.  While I can't say much about the novel which inspired the rules, (I had to settle for the comics, and they weren't great, although I wish I still had them), and "Flames of War" style rules have a lot of warts, I am pleased to see a serious entity like Battlefront enter the space, because it means some ready access at last to a consistent line of figures of decent quality. 

"Army" box from Battlefront

M1 Abrams sprues...I, for one, do not bow down to our new plastic overlords

Battlefront's first releases for this range were for the US and Soviet sides.  The US box is called "Bannon's Boys", named after the US Commander of "Team Yankee" from the novel.  This submission has the whole box painted - six M1 Abrams tanks, two AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunships, and a resin terrain marker, an M577, a command variant of the ubiquitous M113 armoured personnel carrier.

Seriously...f*** plastic, I tell ya....this was the mounting for one of the flight stands

With the exception of the M577, the models are all plastic, multi-part kits.  So many gamers seem to be thrilled by this, but I have never seen a plastic model in 15mm that would not have been better in metal, or even resin, and these were no exception.  Battlefront has improved the quality of its plastic (although that's faint praise), but the assembly, while straightforward, is a real, fiddly pain in the @ss.

After all the cursing is done...an M1 Abrams, ready for action

Each sprue of M1 tanks has two of each MG you will need (I stupidly interpreted this as an option to mount two .50 cal MGs on the cupola, seen on my first test model here - oops!).  But they actually do this "in case one of them breaks".  Um...isn't that telling you something about your plastic?  I can't help but imagine what one of these things would be like if done by the great folks at Peter Pig. Beefy, proper metal with nice definition that you can just paint the sh*t out of.

And yet, well, they are not done by Peter Pig, so my wishing is irrelevant! The competitors here are really QRF (with very variable quality), and Khurasan potentially, depending on your flavour of M1 Abrams. I believe Khurasan has the M1A2, which is a most current version of this beast.  The "Team Yankee" setting, in the mid 80s, has the original M1, with a 105mm gun.  So whatever my issues with plastic models in 15mm, I do have to say, vs. the competitors, Battlefront wins here in my view. YMMV.

AH-1 Cobra - assembly of the rocket pods and TOW missiles is super fun - NOT

Assembly of the Cobra helicopters was even trickier.  Again, in many ways - wow! Having useful helicopter models is cool.  In fact, having helos racing around the table shooting sh*t to bits in a key appeal of this period. And hey, if these were metal, mounting them would be a serious pain - but multi-part rocket pods and TOW missile racks for a 15mm model? Who is out there going "yay, can't wait to glue my fingers to these!" F*** that!!!  Just make one piece castings for God's sake! 

And again - are there competing models? Maybe some 1/100 kits out there, but those would not be less complicated than these ones.  So, my ranting aside (and MAN did I HATE putting multipart rocket pods together), these things whip the available competition.  YMMV. 

Tank commander in the cupola, good way to mark out a command tank

I have a photo up above there in the post of what happened to one of the plastic flight stands during assembly.  That was the mount for one of the helicopters...shattered...so had to be glued to the stand in pieces! That was a lot of fun!

Col. Reynold's Command Post - this is a one-piece deal done in resin

They give you magnets for the helicopters - very thoughtful - but again, sooooo tricky...I
just went without them.  The rotors will last as long as they last, and they sit well on the flights stands, even the broken one, without the magnets. But you hobby aces out there will be able to detach your rotors for storage - a neat idea overall.

This was a neat piece, nice for the table

So, anyway, voluminous amounts of cursing aside, it all got built, and primed, and under the paint brush over the past two weeks. I tried to copy the "MERDC" paint used by the US forces in the time period the "Team Yankee" novel is set...the results are OK.  I don't like to bother with airbrushes, so I just used the plain old brush, and it turned out alright, good enough to stand against the Soviet hordes!

Propaganda photos - the M1s have knocked out some T-80s and are rolling out...

The decals on the ground vehicles are hard to see...would have been nicer if the numerals and chevrons were white, but I'm not sure they actually were...I don't know the US forces of this era well (hence my screw up with the .50 cal over the loader's cupola).  They also did not include enough decals for both helicopters, so one of them is missing the hilarious "danger" sign pointing to the rear rotor - this is a more danger-mind crew, perhaps?

Looking forward to a game with these fellows

I already have a smattering of Russians in 15mm, so I wanted to paint some US troops first in the hopes of getting the rules out for a test drive sometime soon with our group.  Since I have run out of Americans (the infantry and other models are still riding on whatever snail-managed hot air balloon Battlefront uses to ship products to retailers), the Russians will be up next. In the meantime, hopefully our friend Mike F might be amenable to bringing out his awesome 15mm WARPAC Russian collection for a game soon...

The command post is a great little item

Battlefront is planning to do West Germans and UK forces for this setting as well.  Both sides are way more interesting to me (Chieftains! Leopards!), so I hope those models appear soon, but with Battlefront, it could be six months at least before we see anything - so for now, we will prepare for the US and Soviet Union to fill the table with flaming tank wreckage!

Cobras cover the US advance

These nine 15mm vehicles gave me 54 points for my little side race with Byron and Curt. It's good to see a jolt of new modern 15mm stuff rolling out into the market, and I'm looking forward to getting these fellows on to the table.  Whatever my frustrations with plastic models in this scale, at the end of the day I do recognize Battlefront is making a major effort here, and it's in a period I'm really keen on.  Proceed carefully with the fiddly bits, and you will have some fun forces to collect and shoot up on the table.  Already these six tanks and two helos comprise a fairly significant force for a game of Team Yankee.

What's next for "Bannon's Boys"? As newly painted miniatures, I'm confident they will dominate the tabletop whenever they make their debut :) Hopefully we'll have some WARPAC Soviets ready for submissions later this week, and a game in a couple of weeks!  Or sooner, if Mike F is around :)

Team Yankee Test Model - M1 Abrams

M1 Abrams in 15mm from Battlefront

I finished off a test model for my "Team Yankee" US forces.  This is a plastic M1 Abrams from Battlefront's US boxed set "Bannon's Boys".  I haven't painted modern stuff in a while, and I've never painted US stuff in this setting at all, so I wanted to practice a bit.  In particular I wanted to see if I could manage the US camouflage of the period in question, which I think is known as "MERDC".

Bit of a blurry view from the rear aspect

This is where the real hobby guys will crack out their airbrush, but I generally avoid those things, and gave it my best shot with my boring old regular paint brushes. Battlefront is great for tutorials and tips, and this was no exception with a nice little section at the back of the "Team Yankee" rule book offering helpful step-by-step guides on painting US and Soviet kit.

I tried to "pop" the lenses a bit, just to add some life to the otherwise slightly bland (if menacing) overall appearance

The results? Well, a solid "meh".  It's funny how rusty I felt painting this up, and I'm not sure I quite matched the brown correctly.  At first I tried a brown craft paint ("Chocolate Brown", from the Americana range), but the pigment in that is too thin and the green base coat was bleeding through.  So I switched over to GW's (stupidly named) "XV88".  That paint has a nice, strong pigment and covered very well.

And an airbrush would surely give a nicer results, but I don't feel like confronting the hassle of an airbrush for this project. The tank started to look better after I weathered it up a bit. It will do well enough for a fight on the table.

"Gunner - target, Soviet T-72...."

I kind of regret opting for the attempted MERDC now - maybe I should have gone with a straight green tank, representing a reinforcing National Guard unit, or perhaps just a replacement from the divisional depot which had been waiting for new camouflage.  But now that I've done the one tank, I think I'm kind of stuck with it for now...there are six M1s in the "Bannon's Boys" box, and from I can tell in the "Team Yankee" rules, that seems like plenty.   I think I can manage five more of these...then on to the Cobra helicopters!
***
UPDATE - January 19, 2016 - many thanks to Tacobat for (politely) pointing out that I had messed with the turret MGs, mounting two .50 cal MGs on the turret, when in fact the MG over the loader's hatch is an M240 MG, not the .50 cal.  What can I say? I looked like the .50 cal on the instructions...

Corrected MGs on the turret

Anyway, fortunately I hadn't thrown the plastic sprues away, so last night I was able to replace the errant .50 cal with the proper MG.  And now I will do it for the other five tanks I built *cough*.

M240 over the loader's hatch

While I was "at the store", I recalled how Tacobat had also noted, in a series of helpful turorials, that little dabbed lines of contrast colour can offer a helpful "chipped" look on some edges of a big slab of armour like the M1 Abrams, so I tried a little bit of that too.  The effect is subtle - probably doesn't show in the photos much - but I like it and I'm glad I remembered that. 

Ready to roll...for real this time...

Thanks to Tacobat - and be sure to check out his blog, "Modern Warfare" - the painting skill on display will blow your mind. 

Up Next: Team Yankee

Great! More toys! 15mm "Team Yankee" US starter set from Battlefront

What's a New Year without a New Insane Project, right? The madness of Warhammer 30k will certainly continue in 2015 - in both 6mm and 28mm scales to boot! I guess I could try and "focus" on those.  I've heard of this thing called "focus"...but screw that. The release of a set of cold-war-gone-hot rules from Battlefront is certainly too interesting to pass up.  The goodies have arrived in the mail, and I was excited to dive in. Let yet another New Insane Project Commence.

I generally enjoy Battlefront stuff - Flames of War, when I take off my gaming snob hat, is a ton of fun, if you ignore some of the sillier stuff (and there is a lot of that - like artillery right on the table -arrgh! but I digress).  I was pleased to hear Battlefront was doing some 80s Cold War rules.  I expect they will be relatively light, fun and quick, and have lots of flaming tanks on the table.  If you check through a lot of the modern "what-if" and historical AARs on this blog, you will notice that is a recipe that works for me...
 

You get a bunch of cards...whatever - it's the figures that matter!

But in this case I care less about the rules and more about the figures. Finding a unified, relatively complete set of figures for any particular sub-period of "modern" is not easy.  Micro stuff is covered extensively and completely (see GHQ, Scotia and Oddzial Ozmy). Once you are looking to get larger than 6mm in size, however, the ranges become incredibly balkanized. So I'm excited Battlefront is stepping in, as they tend to be really complete with their ranges. They certainly were with the Arab-Isreali Six Day War stuff (and seemed to be with Vietnam).

Pretty nice plastic on the M1 Abrams sprue - I'm pretty sure the parts are included to make another variant...maybe the M1A1, which had a bigger gun, among other things?

And yet, a few things hang in the background. Maybe the word that worried me most is "plastic".  Battlefront is making a huge effort, it would appear, to have most, if not all of the Team Yankee product range be plastic. Plastic today seems to have this totemic place in the minds of many gamers as "oooh, this will be so great and cheap". But this is not always true.  Price is a function of supply and demand - plastic in and of itself is not magically cheaper as a final product.  Furthermore, plastic is really hard to do well, particularly in smaller scales, and my previous experience with Battlefront plastic has not been great - cheap, brittle plastic and soft details.

To give Battlefront credit, I think they have been working very hard to make improvements when it comes to the plastic. They care what customers think, and they want to get things done right. They seem to want to have a great product, and are prepared to risk some bumps to get there. So I was keen to see for myself when I received my first "Team Yankee" products.  

Test model number one...now to figure out that MERDC camouflage...

I wanted to start with the US forces first, as I already have some 15mm Soviet kit painted (as does Mike F), so this seems to be a quicker way to get to a test game. The US starter box contains five M1 tanks and a pair of Cobra Helicopter gunships. I stuck together one of the M1s, and I have to say, not too bad.  The detail on the plastic is nicer than I have seen on other plastics from BF, though still nowhere near the nice, sharp details you get on properly executed metal vehicles. And the plastic is still a bit brittle for some parts, like the .50cal MGs - use extreme caution clipping those suckers off the frame.

With the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge underway, one of the side-duels I have going on is "Modern Mayhem" with Curt and Byron.  Getting these models underway will hopefully score me a few points in that area.  Just have to try and puzzle out that confusing MERDC camo the US seemed to use in the 1980s...