Playing the ETC Meta Nostradamus 2/2

So I already talked about what is new to Late War in terms of books/pdfs/digitals. Now it is time for some more guesses of what would be the popular builds for the upcoming ETC.

This one is not so easy I have to admit. I think I cannot nominate (although I might try later on) specific briefings, as there is probably over 200 to go through, but some groups can already be identified.


Always Defend Tanks - this one is easy. Since the introduction of Bridge @ Remagen, there was a discussion if Always Defend heavy tanks are the new black. Well, honestly - I am not 100% convinced they are, but now they are at least something you have to consider each time you build your list. For ETC purposes, my opinion is that they can fit in just perfectly. Being able to defend more often, yields a higher win probability as shown by this year's ETC top 4 teams results of defensive battles, where the defenders won 58% of such games.

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Bolt Action - Review: Warlord Games' Atlantik Wall Terrain Set

I LOVE great looking terrain on a tabletop. There is nothing better in my mind than playing a close game against a good opponent on a table covered with beautiful scenery with fully painted models. It is the perfect combination. 

The problem is that I am stupidly busy and that I am a legendarily slow painter. This means that I am constantly battling my age-old nemesis… time… to get armies to the point that I feel comfortable putting them on the table. This leaves little time to build and paint terrain… This is why I am such a big fan of Gale Force Nine’s “Battlefield In A Box” range. Pre-painted, good looking durable terrain? Yes please! 

Over the years, Warlord Games has also released several excellent limited runs of pre-painted terrain like their “Battle Ready North African House” and this… Their “Atlantik Wall Terrain Set.”

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Iron Maiden: My Wish List

Many of you can accurately say that I beat the Iron Maiden release to death this month! I did feel the need to cap off the month with an article on what my future IM list will look like. I think you may have gathered from my previous articles - and the podcast dedicated to IM - that I really like this book for a lot of reasons.  With IM, Battlefront really changed the scope of the game away from it being an fight based on just tanks, and gave us some really good infantry to disrupt the “meta”. It’s not that the British tanks are bad - in fact they are quite good and appropriately priced - it is just that the strength of this list is the amount of missiles you can throw at your opponent. While tanks do feature on my list, I know going into this that I have to play them differently that I would the Leo’s and T-72s.

So here we go with my 100 point list:

Formation 1: Chieftain Armoured Squadron
HQ: 1 x Chieftains (6 Points)
Platoon 1: 3 x Chieftains (18 Points)
Platoon 2: 3 x Chieftains (18 Points)
Platoon 3: 2 x Swingfire Troop (4 Points)
Formation Total: 46 Points

I know I said my list would be based around the infantry, and here I go spending half of my 100 points on tanks. My defense of that is simple: tanks cost more, and a full up list based on tanks would have a lot more tanks in it.

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Bolt Action - Taking The Crossroads: A Closer Look At Bolt Action's Second Edition

For months we, as members of the Bolt Action community, have been subjected to rumour, hearsay and the occasional innuendo about how our great game would change in its second edition.  Leaks of earlier test copies and hints dropped by those who had tried trial versions of the game muddied the waters further. For example a few weeks back, the gentlemen over at Beasts of War recorded an introduction to Bolt Action Second Edition video that was based on an earlier playtest version of the game, meaning it contained a few glaring rules errors when compared to BA's final form. Add change induced hysteria being broadcast loudly by certain members of our online community to the mix and things get even more confusing.

As the great Chuck D says "Don't Believe The Hype!" Make the decision yourself. In my last article, I encouraged folks to kick the tires so to speak and try the game themselves. Wanting to take my own advice, I did the same. Although I have played several "learning the system" games, now that I have gotten my sea legs, I wanted to play a game with the express purpose of recording what has changed and what the implication of these changes might be, for us the players.

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Iron Maiden Preview: Armored and Recce Company Detailed

In the previous article in this series, I spoke about the great British infantry lists contained in Iron Maiden. This article will turn its attention to the other two lists in the book, the Armored and the Medium Recce Companies. For those who have read my other article, you already know that the Mechanized and Airmobile lists are already some of my favorites from IM. The other lists are still pretty good, and I feel they support the mechanized company very well. I will also give some details on the scenarios and paining instructions that are in Iron Maiden, which will wrap up our preview of the formations contained in the book. 

The Chief
The Armoured Company revolves around the Chieftain MBT, which at the time Team Yankee takes place (1985), was being replaced with the Challenger MBT. The Chief represents the British focus on firepower and protection at the expense of speed. In the game, the Chieftain is just a bit slower than the T-72 and has one more point of FA for the non Stillbrew version of its Soviet counterpart. At the cost of 6 points per tank (7 with Stillbrew), the most you can hope to get in a 100 point game is 16, by taking one in the command element, and taking all of the 3 tank troops in the formation list and another 3 tank troop from divisional support. This makes it the closest NATO version of a Soviet tank horde. This is not something I would recommend, since that prevents you from taking anti-air or those great infantry platoons. Maybe at games over a 100 points, where you can mass your tanks and take other platoons in support, this might be an option.

What I do like about the Armoured Company is the price.  You can take the mandatory 7 tanks of this company with Stillbrew armor for 49 points, and then add a mech platoon and some divisional assets to make your 100 point list.  This seems to be pretty powerful.

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Bolt Action - Review: A look inside Warlord Games' Band of Brothers Starter Set

Today I received my Warlord Games Band of Brothers WWII Starter Set and after spending some time going through it, I wanted to share my thoughts with the community.

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Team Yankee West German Tips and Tricks #2: Fuchs (TGBX06)

What does the Fuchs say....

Sorry 'bout that  :-)

Round 2 with the West Germans in Team Yankee from Battlefront.  This time we look at the Fuchs (TGBX06) and this Fuchs say va-va-va-voom!

A hefty little 6 wheeled all terrain troop transport to move those Panzergrenadiers around the battlefield.  Yes please!  You can find these bad boys in the Panzer Aufklarungs Kompanie list and can you can get 2 zugs of them with 3 Fuchs in each.

On to the models!

This is another very sweet kit. The kits I have for prepared are pre-release versions. This is an old-school resin hull with metal bits. These are chock full of detail and are VERY clean. The metal wheels had just a few metal whiskers and no flash or mold lines.

The fit of the wheels here is a very simple peg on the hull and hole in the wheel, but is very well designed. They are a different style than the Luchs wheels, but fit just as snug.

Build:  Since this was a pre-release kit, I didn't have the instructions that are up on Battlefront now. But that didn't matter! The kit is super easy; very intuitive...put all the wheels on one side of the hull.  Let those dry a little so that they don't wiggle any more, then do the other side.

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Bolt Action - Campaign Task Force Generation Preview

Now that we have published several games from the Bolt Action Campaign system we are developing we wanted to give you a preview of the basic task force generator tables. 

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Team Yankee: Contemplation and Collecting; the Soviets

Back in December 2015 I covered the Team Yankee demo put on by the guys from Battlefront.  While I liked the game I did state that the period wasn’t my thing and I would pass on fielding an army.  While I read the book Team Yankee and was a fan of the game, I just did not want to collect either army - I never play Americans, and while I have painted a ton of WWII Soviets for friends, I do not have a Soviet army in my collection.  What changed?  Well a few things actually changed my mind which should not surprise anyone.

My first worry stemmed from my work on the Great War line. Ehile I love the period and the game, few folks I know have built a Great War army, and I found it tough, even in the player rich I-95 corridor, to find a lot of folks playing the game. I did worry that Team Yankee would not gain the popularity it deserved. However after a few months, I have seen the popularity of the game grow and a bunch of folks I know play the game.

The Army on parade, oops no Hinds..

The second issue I had was that neither of the two initial armies did much for me.  I cannot explain why this was, but after reviewing Leopard, I got excited about the game and it caused me to look into collecting a Team Yankee army.

The last two issues are the same we call have: time and cost.   I stopped serious painting well over a year ago, the last army I collected was my Napoleonic Brits, which I sent to Ceylon for painting.  When I clean my storage room, and moved my painting area to my part time man cave, I had tons of unpainted men and vehicles.  While I love the Great War stuff, I have a full French and American army in boxes and blisters.  I have 5 each of Plastic Soldier Company and Battlefront Panthers which I won at tournaments still clinging to their sprues.  I just lost the desire to paint.  The other is cost, since starting a new army can cost anywhere from $250-$500.  While I am not cheap, I just wondered if starting a new game after I made a huge investment in Malifaux was worthwhile.  This changed when I realized I had some credit coming from my Great War work with Battlefront, and July being my birthday. I decided to treat myself to a few boxes of Team Yankee.

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Firestorm Bastogne - A WWPD Online Flames of War Campaign

Starting this month, WWPD will run a "Firestorm Bastogne" Campaign as a global Flames of War campaign. This campaign will run for about six weeks and will give players a chance to fight out the engagements that revolved around the encirclement of Bastogne from 16 to 21 December, 1944. If you are not familiar with Firestorm campaigns, no problem! Basically the campaign map and movement of units on that map will be used to generate battles that players, from around the world, can fight out and report their results from to determine the campaign flow and eventual winning side.




2nd Panzer moves in on CCR/9th Armored Division at Longvilly



A battle at Longvilly plays out on the table top

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Iron Maiden the Last Wave and a Freebie!

In this article - the last of three that are focused on the new releases coming out for Iron Maiden - we have a bit of surprise for you.  The folks at Battlefront are releasing a new mini version of the Team Yankee rules in the new Charlie’s Chieftain boxset deal.   The mini rules are 90 pages and cover everything except the data on the forces of the game.  I like this move since you will get the info on the forces either from the books or the cards when you buy the models.   I am guessing here, but Battlefront sent me a picture of the sticker that announces that a particular box has the mini rules, so maybe we will see the mini book in other releases and maybe re-releases of the three previous box sets.  I have some snaps of the new mini rules at the end of this article.

I also said in my second article of this series that I will provide you pictures of the sprues for some of the plastic models.  I finally got my hands on the Scorpion/Scimitar and Spartan/Striker. It looks like unless you find a smart way to make it work with magic or magnets, you will not be able to do swap outs between the two different versions for either model.  Maybe the gun on Scorpion/Scimitar can be magnetized, however the Spartan/Striker looks like it will take more creativity since the rear of the model is so different.  I will be doing the unboxing articles in the future and I will see what can be done to give you some flexibility.

Scorpion-Scimitar-sprue

Spartan-Striker-sprue

On to the new stuff.   This article will detail the resin and metal releases that are coming out with Iron Maiden. Much like the metal and resin of Leopard, we are looking at infantry and support vehicles.

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First Playthrough of Mansions of Madness

Steven, Lydia, and Eric Riha play through Mansions of Madness on Twitch! The team of investigators is barely holding it together by the end- and Lydia is barely keeping her eyes open... but take a look at how this fantastic game from Fantasy Flight Games works!

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Armada Ship Analysis: The Nebulon B

Good morning Admirals. Apologies for being sometime between updates! I will attempt to get all of the ships currently released before the pending release of Wave V- hold me to it!

On the docket for today: The Nebulon B as of Wave IV. The Nebulon B comes in two distinct flavors: The Escort Frigate, and the Support Refit. As you can see from their cards below, the Escort Frigate is a fighter-command centric version while the Support Refit is a stripped down jouster. The difference between the two is that, for 6 points, the Escort Frigate gains a second blue Anti-Squadron die and 1 extra squadron command. The roles thus become quite evident: The Escort Frigate is all about commanding (well... Yavaris anyway...) and defending against squadrons while the Support Refit is far more of a jouster.

Both Nebulon Bs offer the same three upgrade slots: an officer, a support team, and a turbo laser. So, let’s dive in on these ships in the new Wave 3/4 world!

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Bolt Action - German 'Aufklärungs' army project (Part 1)

This is the start of a my latest army project for Bolt Action, 'late war' Germans. After doing many of the more obscure armies of the Second World War (Free French, Hungarians and Australians) I have finally decided to do a German army for the ETO. Being a fan of scouting forces I have decided on making mine an Aufklärungsabteilung. For those who don't speak German, that basically means a recon detachment. Let's take a look at the lovely miniatures from Warlord Games that I have started the project with; some Kradschützen and a Schwimmwagen.

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Preview: The Forces of Iron Maiden: Tommy’s Not Tanks

Now that you have seen the spoiler and the cards for Iron Maiden, the next step is to give you an idea of the formations the book offers you. Let me go back to my first impression of Iron Maiden: “Wow”. Yes, the book shocked me. I saw right away how different the British would be as compared to the other three nationalities in the game. I got the advanced copy of the book before Throck, and I left for the Guns of August Tournament in Williamsburg VA. I told him I saw the book and he asked for my thoughts. I can recall saying “it’s different” and “if you like infantry, this book is for you”. I loved the fact the first lists - and especially Leopard  -featured the tank as the main weapon. Who doesn’t like tank fights? However, with the release of IM, I see how the developers expanded the scope of the game and put a tool in the game's tool box that you will love to play or hate to play against.

On to the Book
While Leopard had 3 formations to choose from, Iron Maiden has 4 types of formations: Tank, Mechanized Infantry, Air Mobile, and Recce. After reading the book a few times, I would say it would be hard to argue against the fact that the strength of the British in Team Yankee is their infantry.  This article will detail the infantry-based lists from Iron Maiden.

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The LRDG II Podcast: Episode 9 - "Talking To Alessio About BA Second Edition"

The LRDG II: Episode 9

In this action packed, full length episode, the LRDG II is back with a two shot of Bolt Action goodness!

In part one, Brad is joined by BA superstars Brian Ward, from the Northern Front Podcast, and Luke Emerton, of the Australian Bolt Action scene. The guys talk Stalingrad. From a historical and from a gaming standpoint. Now, Stalingrad, in and of itself, is a HUGE topic so we, at the LRDG, invite you to listen to the cast and send us suggestions for follow up conversation.

In part two, we welcome the father of Bolt Action back to the show. The one and only, Alessio Cavatore, returns to talk us through the best and most the most controversial parts of Bolt Action Second Edition.

Thank you for tuning in. For more information and to contact us, please look for The LRDG Podcast on Facebook.



As always you can find this episode in the iTunes store or you can download directly HERE.

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Bolt Action - Review: Warlord Games' Ersatz Panther

During a secret German offensive through the Ardennes towards the end of WW2 (The Battle of the Bulge), Otto Skorzeny daringly dressed his infiltrating German soldiers as Allied troops, with varying degrees of success. His plan was called Operation Greif, or “Griffin,” and the rumours of its existence caused widespread paranoia in Allied troops across the region. In part one of this series, I discussed how I was converting and reequipping US infantry models to turn my existing greatcoat American army into a German infiltration force. As a lover of big tanks, I will be looking at one of the most unlikely infiltration vehicles of all time, Warlord Games’ Ersatz Panther.

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A Tale of Two Tournaments (Part 2)

And we're back for day 2 of my 2 day Flames of War binge.  My first tournament (Battle Report can be found here) ended in a 4th place finish after 3 fun but bloody games with armored lists in Manchester CT.

My second tournament, Sunday August 21st, would take me south to Cedar Grove NJ and the Time Warp Comics Store

The store was a crazy mix of stock.  Every game system was represented, and in the back were tables enough for 6 to 8 games simultaneously.  Much was taken up by comics or people's armies and terrain, but it was the kind of store you could get lost in while finding all sorts of crazy stuff.

There would be prizes for Best allied player, best axis player, and best painted. we had 6 players come in, but a wide variety of lists participate.

Game 1 - 51st Highland Division vs. Veteran Japanese infantry in fighting withdrawal

After 2 days, 6 games and a whirlwind of travel, I confess I forgot the name of my first opponent, should he read about himself here, I apologize! I think it was Dave.

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Iron Maiden, Release Preview Two

Last week we gave you a look at the Chieftain, Lynx and the Charlie's Chieftain army deal, This week, we will look at the plastic models that will come out in the second batch of releases. We have some vehicles that you will just love and use quite a bit since they will carry around your infantry, shoot missiles at planes and tanks, or scout. So far, I have been very impressed with the quality of the plastic models for Team Yankee, especially the Leopard IIs and the Marders from the Leopard release. I have a feeling I will have a stack of these boxes on my painting table since each box set can be built into two different types of types. We are lucky that the British used some of the same chassis and hulls on different vehicles or we would be looking at a ton of different box sets coming out. Since I have yet to see the sprues for these models, I do not know if you can do some magnet magic and swap out the tops of the vehicles as you can do with the BMP box set. Once I get those pictures, I promise to tell you if that is possible. No matter what, the models look great and they look relatively easy to paint which is nice.

The first box set is the Spartan or Striker troop.  The Spartan makes an appearance in the Mechanized Company armed with the Milan missile, or they can bought from Divisional support where they cover your forces as mobile Blowpipe teams.  The Spartan is in your Recce Company, you have a slick version which acts as your command vehicle or can carry around some infantry.

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Peiper Down: The New SS lists in the Ardennes Offensive

By Mitch Reed

One of the first articles I wrote for this blog was a piece in my “Lists We Play” series where I talked about some of my favorite Waffen-SS lists.  One of the lists I did mention in that piece was KG Peiper from Battlefront’s Devil’s Charge book, which at the time was relatively new.  The new Ardennes Offensive (AO) book augments the Waffen-SS force that took part in the offensive by adding two new lists which I will detail in this article.

Much like my last article on the Waffen-SS I want to reiterate my distaste of the actual SS, however their inclusion in the game does cause us to remember their history and helps us ensure that we never see another organization like that again.

KG Hansen
In my overview article on AO, the I said that KG Hansen is like KG Peiper without the tanks - however there may be more to this list than what I assumed at first glance.  The biggest reason why players would shy away from a list like this is because it is rated a Fearless/Trained instead of Fearless/Veteran like most other Waffen-SS units.  However, being that these guys are trained means that you are paying less for then as you would vets and in a true Bulge themed tournament, where they use the snow and fog rules these guys may not get shot up so much. 

One thing I didn’t like about this list was the lack of types of tanks you can pick, however I forgot how great the Panzer IV/70 (V) is.  They have a front armor of 9, and a gun which has an AT of 14, which at 390 points for a platoon of three is not too bad. They do have some downsides: they move slow, have glass sides (side armor 3) and are overloaded.  However placing these in ambush would be deadly to any American tank the Battle of the Bulge book.

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Team Yankee: The British Army of the Rhine in Iron Maiden

The British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) has its roots in the British forces that occupied Germany at the end of World War Two. Initially made up  of the units from Field Marshall Montgomery’s 21st Army Group, these units found themselves busy in rebuilding post war Germany and preventing the westward expansion of the Soviet army.  When the occupation of Germany changed to the front line of the new Cold War, Great Britain, a founding member of the NATO alliance pledged forces for the defense of Western Europe and the BAOR was stood up as the administrative command for these forces.

The BAOR commander was dual hatted, and not only served as Royal Army’s senior officer in Germany, but also as commander of NORTHAG, or the Northern Army Group which consisted of the 1st British Corps, III US Corps, Dutch and Belgium Corps, 1st German Corps, and depending on the year some French forces as well. The territory that NORTHAG was responsible for was the area north of the Harz Mountains to the Elbe River near Hamburg. This area is well known as the North German Plain and factored in many battle plans drawn up by both NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

Many felt that the flat farmland in this part of Germany would be a great axis of advance for an army.  While this fact is true, it is also the widest part of what was West Germany and it is dotted with rivers and towns that also form natural defensive barriers. No matter the suitability of the terrain, the British and the Warsaw Pact forces would have had a bloody fight if WWIII ever kicked off.
The BAOR was made up of forces that were stationed in Germany permanently such as the 1st, 3rd and 4th Armored Divisions, and the 2nd Infantry Division that was based back in the United Kingdom. In the event of a conflict, the 1st and 4th ADs would meet the Soviet attack at the frontier, with the 3rdAD held in reserve. Once the 2nd ID arrived from the UK it would be used as a reserve force and to provide rear area security.  The other major British force in Germany was the “Berlin Brigade” which was not a part of the BAOR and was based in West Berlin.

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Playing the ETC Meta Nostradamus part 1/2

Ok, so now that we are through with Athens, I decided to do a quick check of how my guesses about the Mid War meta have turned out and then move on to the new, exciting stuff that is LW 1625 :)
For this second part of the article, I will concentrate on what books have been added and what are their rough contents, instead of doing a full review. Predictions will follow in a separate post!

So almost a year ago I did some investigations into the lists and came up with my own ideas of what would be the most common lists. Here is a summary by company type and how they performed at the ETC:

Tanks
- I was totally right about Soviet tanks (especially Mixed Tankovy lists). There were only a few teams that did not have Soviet armor included in their structure.
- I completely missed the fact that Panther lists would also be so popular. At that time, companies like Tancuri, Czech Panzers or US Tank seemed more versatile and fitting for the role. And even though I have seen a few of each, Panthers were the dominating second choice among tank forces at the ETC 2016.

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Team Yankee: Comparing the Main Battle Tanks

So who is number one?  A question that should be familiar to us here in the United States with college football season about to kick off. The answer to that question usually is “Depends on who you ask”.  However the question we are asking is not about football, but out of the 4 main battle tanks (MBTs) in Team Yankee which one is the best? Oddly the answer to this question is also “depends on who you ask” and since we do not have a playoff system like college football (which is flawed) I will try to tackle that question here. I wanted to find out a few things about the game, first of all is it well balanced and does it hold up to history.  I also want to see if some of the thoughts I had about the different forces in the game were true. I also looked at the match ups based on Red vs. Blue fights in order to look at the historical accuracy of the game.

With the upcoming release of Iron Maiden, we now have 4 MBTs that form the core units of the 4 nations represented in the game.  Each MBT has different abilities and attributes, however how do these effect gameplay?  I plan to analyze and compare these MBTs and try to see if we can determine which one is the best.  I will limit the discussion to only gameplay and not how these tanks performed in the real world.

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Intensify Forward Firepower XXIV: Eatin' Lwabstah

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In Episode XXIV: A Cah Pahks in the Doah Yahd, Dano, Skyshuffler, and DT have lost the mysterious bounty hunter Easy somewhere between the aft and fore taints of the Flesh Star Destroyer. In his place, the dot matrix printing R1H4 sits at the conference room table. The crew talks about recent tournaments, upcoming events, and of course their thoughts on all the new toys with a few (dozen in some cases) games under their flesh belts.

Want to join the conversation? Please sound off in the comments below, or let us know on our forum!

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Bolt Action - AAR: Campaign: Road to Victory, part 2

Last Campaign game saw Pavlov and Schmidt lose most of their men.  Now they have been reinforced with replacements and additional units.  The Russian drive into Poland has brought them to a poorly defended German checkpoint.  Word of the Russian advance has reach Battalion HQ and Lieutenant Schmidt and his men are rushed to the front to stop a potential break through by Pavlov.

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Preview: Iron Maiden, Charlie's Chieftains Army Deal

We all love new toys to play with, and with the upcoming release of Iron Maiden the folks from Battlefront have some great stuff heading out way.  In the first of three preview articles, I am going to talk about the Iron Maiden army deal called “Charlie's Chieftains”, the British paint set, and the Lynx.  I am excited to share this stuff with you because it seems much like the previous releases for Team Yankee, the British models look excellent.

The Chief
The centerpiece of Iron Maiden is the Chieftain tank which bring me back a bit.  When I was younger, a company called Corgi came out with a series of excellent die-cast metal tanks that could shoot little red projectiles from its main gun.  One of the tanks in the collection I really loved was the Chieftain, and in fact it is the only one of the collection I still do not own.  Despite is plan color, I just had to love the look of this tank.

Well now with the release of Iron Maiden, I can re-live those days with a plastic version, that also has an AT rating of 22. Looking at the single Chieftain sprue, you can see that two turret tops are included - one for the normal version of the tank and another for its “Stillbrew” armor.

The British used this modification to increase the protection of the tank over the years to meet with the latest threats it would face on the battlefield.  In the game, for 1 point each you can upgrade your 17 FA Chieftain with Stillbrew armor and increase your FA rating to 18.  This does come with a down side because the “Cross” rating goes from 2+ to 3+ because the tank is so much heavier.

What I wish I would have seen on the sprue is an extra turret bottom so we can swap out between regular and Stillbrew versions.  I will have to wait for the unboxing to see if something can be done with magnets to remedy this.

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Team Yankee - Iron Maiden Unit Cards Reveiwed

Iron Maiden, due to be released in October, brings to life the British forces in World War III for Team Yankee.  Who else better to review and spoil the new British forces other than we Colonials over here at WWPD?  This article will focus on the units available and will show you all of the new force structures and units available to the British.  The excitement around this release is well justified.

The British feature air mobile options along with the Chieftain Main Battle Tank, which I might add are only six points each. They may lack the ROF 2 of the West Germans and Americans, but can quickly make this up in numbers coupled with great support options and more Milan missile teams than you can shake a stick at.

Mitch has already given us a quick preview, so now we will give you all the new units you can expect in Iron Maiden.


The basic British force structure.  There is a plethora of Recce options to choose from here and you can accommodate quite a large force of lighter troops to compliment the Chieftains.  As with Leopard, we see a tremendous amount of support units to accompany your force.

 You get the option of having either 2 (for 5 points) or 4 (for 10 points) Harriers.  Cluster bombs for the win.  This will definitely make me want to purchase this air option.

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Team Yankee - How I painted my Leopard 2s

Well team we have all had time to digest the great new range of West German kit coming out from Battlefront Miniatures and I have been seeing some amazing painting efforts in the community. I finished painting up my Leopard 2's recently and thought that I would share my techniques for those looking to get their force up to a tabletop standard in quick time. I did a similar guide here for the Russian vehicles and I will be using some of the same techniques.

I always prime in black and follow it up with a light spray of white to create a small amount of subtle colour modulation. I then used an airbrush (a brush would be suitable as well) to spray on Olivgrun Base AK1172 from the AK Interactive range of acrylics. I did not worry about any variation in the green as it was pretty thin and the black and white base did all the work for me.

I had painted a Leopard 2 previously for this review and rather than go to the templates online I used that tank as the template. I figured I would rather have my force looking similar so if I made a mistake on the first one it will at least be consistent with the entire battle group. I painted with a brush the black part of the NATO camouflage first using Vallejo Game Color German Grey 70.995. This was the most time consuming part and will be the most amount of brush work.

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