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…