Team Yankee 15mm Leopard 2s and BTR-60s + Vallejo Vehicle Paint

One of the things that the pandemic has been good for is ordering stuff over the Internet. What can be hit-and-miss though is the fulfillment of those orders. Back in April I thought to take advantage of some free shipping from Battlefront and ordered some GF9 terrain. I figured I'd add a couple Team Yankee tank sprues just for fun, so I threw in these two Leopard 2s. Well... suffice to say that my order finally arrived in July after having to cancel the first order and re-order the stuff... I guess I should also add that the complete order hasn't even yet arrived, since the two aircraft flight stands I added on were on backorder. I guess it doesn't matter much because there's no sign yet of the two 1/144 SU-25 Frogfoot model kits I ordered off eBay at the start of July... typical.

 

Anyway, the models finally arrived and have duly been built and painted in the same fashion as my other Bundeswehr Leo 2s.

The TY sprues don't come with decals, of course, but I had plenty of Iron Crosses and tactical numbers left over from prior projects. I just had to freehand a license plate for each of the vehicles.

The BTR-60 company came from a local brick and mortar store, so no worries at all about shipping or postage. Super-fast to paint these using the magic spraypaint (Krylon Camouflage Olive) - supposedly it's still in production but I haven't been able to find it anywhere. This lot of five vehicles emptied my last can :-(

 

Anyway, another thing I really like about the Battlefront Team Yankee vehicles is that they come with crew figures as well (are you listening, 1/72 aircraft makers???) I just love the cool character that a crew figure adds to the vehicle.

Cool looking crew eh!

Of course, one good use for these BTR-60s will be to transport the heavy weapons platoon of the Motor Rifle Regiment!

Just such cool little models. All injection-molded plastic and a snap to assemble, while retaining good detail.

I also have to give a shout-out to Vallejo for this paint set, which was a very generous gift from Conscript Perry (thanks Perry!)

I used the Panzer Colours "Dark Rubber" on the tires of the BTR-60s and it really worked a treat - I love the effect. It'll certyainly be my go-to paint for vehicle tires and likely also for Bundeswehr "teerschwartz" (tar black) as used in their three-colour camo pattern.

Anyway, that's it for now... until we can (finally) get gaming together again, stay healthy everyone!
 

MDF Power Stations from Sarissa and Wargame-Model-Mods

You know how it's so easy to let hobby projects languish when something new and shiny comes along? Well, I'm here to tell you that sometimes it comes back around... when it turns out that new and shiny thing is actually related to an old hobby project, and this creates some incentive to drag out the old project and finish it off!

In this case, Conscript Mike had given me an MDF building he'd acquired that was surplus to his requirements. This is the "Blasted Power Station" from Wargame-Model-Mods (sic). It was a pretty straightforward model to assemble and covers a reasonably large area of table. Unfortunately, though, the roof is not removable so that limits playability in a wargame.

As the "new shiny" I referred to earlier was my current obsession with Judge Dredd and Warlord's eponymous wargame, I'll be putting on a Dredd game this week, and wanted to get this model cranked out, so I put the world's fastest paintjob on this one over the weekend.

After assembly, I sprayed the model with flat black primer, then followed this with a mist of grey primer. Normally my next step would be to Nuln Oil the sh!t out of it, but unfortunately the magic Oil just beaded up and rolled off the primer like water off a duck's back! So I had to do the weathering old-school with drybrushed craft black and sponge chipping.

It turned out "OK" but not amazing, and I might do some further work in putting some graffitti on the walss - that might look cool, and the Dredd game came with a sheet of decals for that purpose. One thing I really liked, though, was that the roof vents and radiator stack are separate, so they can be positioned in different spots on the roof, or left off altogether.

The Blasted Power Station retails for 14.99GBP.

OVERALL RATING: 7.5/10

Along with the Dredd order, I picked up the "Factory Power Room" from Sarissa Precision. I also put it together last weekend and slapped on a pretty basic paintjob, ready for this week's game.

The latticed windows and detailed door are "greyboard" attached to the back of the wall. The models I've used for scale are from Wargames Foundry's "Street Violence" range - SVO14 Mercenary Fire Team. The roof is removable, giving some playability to the interior of the building, which I like. However the tolerances are so fine with the way the roof goes on, the MDF is easily broken... which I did.

The model went up very easily and in only a few pieces, which is great. Again I did a pretty basic paintjob which I'll likely revisit... that ladder is looking particularly clean and that should be addressed.

The model will pretty much work in any setting from WW1 to sci-fi - I just love the flexibility. As noted, the roof attachment is a bit fragile and might have been designed a bit better. It was super-easy to assemble, although a narrow file is a useful tool to have on hand. I reckon I'll go over the railings in dark grey and weather up the ladder a bit as well, and that should do it.

The Factory Power Room retails for 12.50GBP.

OVERALL RATING: 8.5/10

Star Wars Battle (System Sci-Fi Terrain) Report

So, last Thursday I hosted an evening of our old favourite brain-free skirmish game, Star Wars Miniatures. I love SWM because the system is simple, we love the setting, I have tons of figures for it, and I have a handy scenario book that I grabbed up when I saw a second-hand copy (it's now long out of print).
 

The other reason to roll out this game was that a Kickstarter I'd backed in 2016 finally arrived - this was the Battle Systems Sci-Fi II project.

I put together a bunch of the card scatter terrain and some of the walls, and set up a scenario from the Ultimate Missions: Rebel Storm book - Escape from Hoth.

In this mission, the Rebels have two squads of soldiers and Leia, Han, Chewie and 3PO. They must escape the Echo Base command centre and get to the Millennium Falcon before they are "defeated" by the Imperials - two large squads of snowtroopers led by General Veers. The Imperials get 2-4 snowtroopers as reinforcements every turn, as well.

Here's one Rebel squad in position. Leia can be seen in the command centre at top. We used the game mat supplied in the Kickstarter for Echo Base, it seemed to work well. The mat is a high-quality piece made out of a thin mouse-mat type material.

Here come the snowtroopers! The Echo Base walls are all card, held together with plastic connectors. The walls all go together fine but do take time to assemble. The buttresses just hang off the walls and are a nice touch.

One room in the floorplan is a medical centre. The chairs, consoles and beds are all card from the Kickstarter as well.

In the scenario, Leia starts off placed in the central command room, with Han and Chewie in the medbay. Leia may not leave the command room until Han is placed next to her - she's too worried about the troop evacuation to be concerned with her own safety. In the pics above and below she's just been convinced by Han to beat it and is headed for the ship.

Rebel soldiers desperately hold back the Imperials as Han blasts a snowtrooper.

Han was reduced to only 10 hit points by the time he decided to flee. Fortunately Chewie could absorb some damage from the approaching snowtroopers. The rules have an interesting mechanic where most models may only shoot at a model in cover if there isn't a closer target in the open. The Rebel players used this to advantage by moving Han and Chewie together - being screened by another model counts as "cover" so they had to shoot at Chewie instead of Han.

Blood bath in Echo Base as the Imperials flood in. Where's Lord Vader when you need him?!?

Leia and 3PO make it aboard the Falcon...

...with Han and Chewie right behind.

It was quite a fun game, with the result coming down to the wire. Han and Leia were quite seriously wounded with both being only one hit away from "defeat" - however the Rebels pulled it off and the heroes escaped to continue the Rebellion another day.

No word on what happened to the Rebel soldiers who were left defending Echo Base!

Some final thoughts on the Battle Systems terrain - I really like it. There's a ton of scatter terrain to put together but there are lots of videos on how to do this - thankfully (it's not exactly intuitive in some cases). The stuff seems well designed and fits together well, mostly. As far as the walls, they're awesome and it's not up to me to try and design some games that utilize the "third dimension" of multi-storey structures that this set encourages. Looking forward to more games with the tiles, I could really see having some great games of 30K or Necromunda with them.

40K Podcasting in Review

Many of us Conscripts are polymaths. This is a nice way of saying that our gaming interests are very broad and we're prone to the "oooh SHINY!" syndrome that plagues many gamers.

One of the constants with the core group, though, is our enthusiasm for Games Workshop and Warhammer 40K. Although interest may wax and wane, it's always there. Right now with the group, 40K seems to be on the ascendant. Several Conscripts are beavering away at Horus Heresy projects, Greg and I just finished painting our Imperial Knights, and we're gearing up for some huge games in the summer and fall.

With the advent of the Internet, hobbying has the potential to become all-immersive. There are a ton of blogs, discussion forums, and websites dedicated to all things 40K. But what if you're like me, and don't have a smartphone? How do you get your hobby fix while you're, say, riding back and forth to work on the bus? Well, the Internet has you covered too. You can download and listen to hobby podcasts!

So this is what I've been doing the last couple weeks. I've sampled a few of the more popular podcasts and while this won't be an in-depth review of each episode I've listened to, I'll give some impressions. I definitely have a favourite out of the ones I've tried so far.

40K Radio - as the name indicates, this might be considered "the daddy" of 40K podcasting. While there has been some controversy around the podcast in the past, it seems to have smoothed out now under the ownership of "Romeo", who also owns Battlefoam, makers of laser-cut foam packing materials for transporting models. This fact was kept top-of-mind through several "commercial breaks" in the podcast for Battlefoam adverts.

I have to say that I didn't enjoy the episode I listened to all that much. Romeo is kind of an overbearing host and came across as the kind of guy who thinks he knows it all and isn't afraid to let you know too. There wasn't a ton of 40K content in the episode I listened to either; there was a long discussion about Kickstarter and Romeo's experiences with Wild West Exodus, his own miniatures game. While this was of moderate interest (especially the comments about how Kickstarter can gut future retail sales) there wasn't any 40K content in it at all.

When the subject finally turned to Games Workshop and their financial woes/crazy IP issues, Romeo's comments had me literally yelling at my iPod (yes, I know what "literally" means, I was actually yelling). He was talking about how most GW shareholders are just hobbyists who think it's cool owning GW shares and who don't really care if the company makes money for them or not. When another of the podcast guys tried to correct him (the majority of GW shares are actually owned by VC-type firms and Tom Kirby, the CEO) he talked right over top of him... for a guy who is presumably a sharp businessman, it didn't sound like Romeo had any idea of how really big business works. Institutional shareholders demand returns - if same are not provided, they sell out their positions, and the share price (and the value of the company) goes down. We've seen lots of movement in the institutional shareholdings at GW and what happened earlier this year? Value of the company dropped by 24%. QED.

The last item I listened to was a much-hyped interview with gaming personality Dave Taylor. This was a disappointing interview in that opportunities were missed. Romeo set up the interview by explaining how Dave was a long-time industry luminary who spent time at GW Australia and USA as well as more recently, Battlefront - but it was never explained in what capacity. I kept waiting for an exposition of what role DT actually filled at these companies but I never found out. We did find out (at length) that Dave plays Malifaux and has opened a new "consulting" business that caters to people (like Romeo) who produce tabletop miniature games. Great if you're like Romeo and you're one of these people, but this would seem of marginal relevance to the average hobbyist. I got the sense that Dave had some interesting stories to tell but Romeo really didn't draw this out of him, evidently preferring to talk up Dave's new consulting business as something everybody should take advantage of (!) Oh yeah, and 40K Radio has an Internet discussion forum that you have to PAY to join. Meh.

Grade: D

40KUK (aka "40K Global") - this is a British 40K podcast that concentrates on the tournament scene. I didn't get all the way through this one as my time on this Earth is limited and listening to reports about tournaments I didn't go to isn't a high priority, although I have to say that what I did hear entertained me. The host is a Ricky Gervais sound-alike and the the guy he interviewed had the grittiest Scots accent I've heard in a long while. Listening to Ricky and the Scotsman banter was very enjoyable, even banal exchanges had me laughing out loud. Ricky asked about the building where the tournament was held, and particularly the state of the "toilets" - "och aye, the toilets were lovely and clean, you could really feel comfortable having a sh!t." Magic.

This podcast really opened my eyes to the new tournament meta. Scotsman's tournament army is a Tau "Farsight Bomb" with allies Tigurius (Space Marine Librarian) and an Inquisition special character, Coteaz. The dripping cheese he ran up against (not to mention his own army) was ridiculous... three Chapter Masters! Multiple Greater Daemons! Four Riptide suits! Three Skyrays! etc. The battle reports were entertaining, but convinced me that I have no interest or desire in tournament play, ever. The best part of the podcast was the interaction between Ricky and Scotsman, it really made me laugh.

Grade: B+ 

The Overlords - another British podcast that I quite enjoy. There's something about the Brits and their sardonic sense of humour that appeals to me, especially as regards 40K. They seem to have a much better sense of fun than the American podcasters on 40K Radio, who just seemed like they were on the edge of roid-rage all the time. These guys are pretty cool and laid-back. They do have one American on the show, Jason, whose voice reminds me of Mark Ruffalo.

They discuss hobby news, new models and codices, GW's general insanity, their hobby activities and armies they're working on, and games they've played. Listening to these guys is kind of like shooting the breeze with the lads on a Thursday. They're down to earth and not too serious, and do enjoy a terrible pun or inappropriate sexual reference. Good stuff.

Grade: A-

All of these podcasts are available for free on iTunes. Check 'em out for yourself and if you listen to any others that you like, leave me a comment. Cheers!

15mm Zvezda KV-2

On a recent trip to Calgary I stopped in at the Sentry Box, probably Canada's best game store. Among an armload of stuff (mostly scenic grass tufts for basing, if truth be told) I impulse-bought one of the new Zvezda 1/100 snap kits - a WWII Russian KV-2 heavy tank.

A few days later I busted it open. The model is comprised of 12 (!) pieces which, as you can imagine, assemble very quickly.

Here's the completed model.

Comparison with an Old Glory 15mm KV-1. Same chassis and certainly very compatible in scale execution.
 

 Last night I was watching the hockey game and decided to paint the model. I'd already undercoated/basecoated with the excellent Krylon "Camo" green primer (a dead-nuts match for Russian armour olive) so I just needed to do some drybrushing and weathering, and stick the model on a Greg-approved base ;-)

The model painted up very nicely. I used GW Codex Gray to put a few chips in the paint but they may not be too visible.

Powder treatment with MIG light dust and light rust powders. Lazily, I decided to use the latter for red dirt treatment on the tracks and lower hull.

Decals were from the decal folder but only one side worked - the other side fell apart so I trashed it and painted the numbers on freehand. Can you tell which side is which?

All in all a very satisfying little model and fantastic for gaming - especially at the price - $5.50 CAD!

It Done Blowed Up Real Good! (product review)

One of the lovely presents I got for Christmas this year was two sets of resin explosion markers from eBay seller small_terrain. Andy and Sue sell a set of five pre-painted explosion markers for GBP5.95. I only had to file the bottoms flat and add a washer for stability. I think they look pretty good.

Above and below - seen on a 1/48 Russian T-34/76 model from Tamiya.

Below, on a 15mm T-34 tank.

Definitely a recommended product and I would say hard to beat for the price!