A half-shift of gears from the previous post – we have another trio of WWII tanks, though this time the models are a touch smaller – 1/100 scale aka 15mm, from Battlefront Miniatures. These three specific models come from Battlefront’s now-discontinued Tanks! game, and one from the individual unit/tank pack – that when I found out was the same sprue as the pair in the starter set – made the rather obvious choice to paint alongside the others as a batch. After finishing the Valentines shared in the previous post, I had the motivation to press on with more armour – especially since vehicles also count for Dave Stone’s Season of Scenery Challenge.
Since I already have a bunch of Shermans of various types, both painted and unpainted, I decided to stick with the main purpose of these three – which is to paint them primarily for use in Tanks! Of course, they can be used as a unit of three/trio in other games, but given the nature of Tanks!, I wanted to make them a little more distinguished from one another, which gave me an opportunity for a little Easter Egg…
These models were actually pretty nice to assemble and paint – much nicer that Battlefront’s earlier attempts at plastic Shermans (I have a bunch, still WIP-assembly), and these come with the options for the 75mm/105mm gun turret, as well as the 76mm turrret, as well as hedgecutters and some additional armour, tracks and so forth. Sadly, the Tanks! versions of these kits (say it with me!) don’t come with any fucking decals, so I had to scavenge some from my heavily-declining number of other sources. I used the decals, along witht he add-on parts and a touch of freehand to customise the three tanks differently.
Aside from the decal issue, and how hard it is right now to find 15mm Allied Stars through any of my normal channels, these three were relatively pleasant to paint and assemble. Adding all the magnets so I can swap out the two different turrets was a bit of a pain, but it was certainly worthwhile. As I noted earlier, sadly, TANKS! was discontinued a little while ago now, and re-released with a few changes as World of Tanks, with the eponymous videogame licence attached, in preassembled and pre-primed form. They did make enough changes so that the rules aren’t straight-across compatable, which is annoying since I would have liked to get a bunch of additional unit cards beyond the ones I picked up as “expansion” sets and the ones included with the core box. Also, we seem to have lost the actual rulebook… good thing I found the PDF at least…
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Another great trio of tanks mate, painting on symbols can be a pain, so decals can make it easier, when able to get hold of them by the sound of it at the moment. Hope this is only a small setback for you.
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Cheers Dave – I figure that unless a tank or other vehicle or model is supposed to have freehand (slogans, etc) then I’ll always go with decals as a preference for designs that are stencilled or printed, etc on. I’ve picked up a decent few more decals, and found another source to stock up with, though I expect it’s not going to be cheap….
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I like them, all nicely different! 🙂
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Cheers, John! 🙂
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An Easter Egg for me! All the way from down under even! So cool Az, thanks much for the nod, gave me a chuckle indeed. And of course the honor dovetails nicely with my August 2019 post https://markamorin.com/2019/08/01/british-armor-and-some-blogs-worth-a-look/ !! Your Cromwell namesake and mine can give the Nazis hell! As for the models, superb weathering and nice paint jobs per your normal high standards. Excellent adds of the hedgerow cutters too. Your scavenging of decals is understandable – I had to buy a lot of FoW decals just to get mine acceptable. Now, what follows is not a criticism in any way, just a point of reference for your curiosity and because I bet you’d find it interesting historically. The decal of the cat eating the tank is the symbol of the US Tank Destroyer Corps – which was at the time a separate US Army branch, like Infantry, Armor, Artillery, or Corps of Engineers (my branch), among others. Each branch has its own school or center and develops its own wartime fighting doctrine. The Tank Destroyers had a very unique mission and history that is worth a look https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_destroyer_battalion_(United_States)#Development_of_US_tank_destroyer_doctrine Anyways, that cat eating a tank symbol is one of my favorites, and I have a T-shirt with it emblazoned on it! And it’s my granddaughter’s favorite too as she has a cat Izzie – plus you do as well of course. So, while no Sherman would have had it on there, I’m still “chuffed” as you guys say, that it’s named after me, and that it has one of my all-time favorite symbols!!!! THANKS!
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Those are great- I appreciated the detailing of the markings that you added to them all.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete! Those details are what make them more interesting to me beyond just the basic colours and weathering. 🙂
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Excellent paintwork! I don’t know how complex your painting method is, but it certainly looks like you’ve put a lot of effort into these. Single colored tanks could easily be a bit.. Drab, but it looks like there’s nice texture and weathering on the armor. And everything is very nicely defined! The decals and small bits of freehand finish off the models beautifully.
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Thank you! I do like these smaller scale models as they’re a lot quicker and easier to get finished, but they still need some weathering and work to make them look worn and bring them to the point where I’m happy with them.
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Another great set of tanks! I’ve only painted 28mm and larger and I find these to smaller vehicles to have a lot of charm about them. That is interesting about the games history too. I thought World of Tanks was pretty popular still but I’ve never played it so I could certainly be wrong on that.
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Cheers Kuribo! WoT the PC game has definitely declined in popularity (I jumped on again recently after a few years off to have a look) but it’s also on the consoles now, and still seems popular enough to be making money and have a name that GF9 was happy to licence.
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