Some What A Tanker! action

Last Sunday we had one of our occasional all-day sessions at the club. Although I had something planned for the afternoon, my diary was empty for the morning. Therefore, I grabbed my WaT folder and a few tanks and bunged them in the car.

The tanks I chose were Western Desert 8th Army and DAK ones. I took the four DAK tanks I painted up some time ago, as seen here and here, plus some British ones that I bought ready-painted at our Tabletop Sale in 2018. 

Doing this turned out to be a good idea, as Matt, a recent new member needed a game, so we played some WaT. Given the option, Matt chose the Desert Rats, picking a Matilda II and a Crusader II, both with the QF 2pdr gun. I decided on two PzKfw III tanks, an Ausf. H with the shorter 5cm Kwk 38 gun and a Ausf. L with the longer 5cm KwK 39 gun.

The scenario was pretty simple, an encounter in and around a small oasis.

I decided that I'd get the PzKfw IIIL into cover, where its superior firepower might give me the edge.

I then sent the PzKfw IIIH around the other side of the oasis.

Things were quite cagey at first, bit I did inflict a bit of damage on the Crusader which decided to go to ground in some partial cover.

I was horrified when the Matilda managed to brew-up my main strike tank, the IIIL pretty soon after it had sustained damaged gun optics from an earlier shot of mine.

The rest of the game was all about my remaining tank dodging the two British ones, while taking potshots whenever possible, nibbling away at their effectiveness and eventually knocking out the Crusader in a tense exchange of fire across the limpid waters of the oasis.

Eventually, I also managed to take the Matilda out, despite my tank having taken damage to both gun optics and running gear.

All in all, a fun game, which reminded me of what excellent rules these are. Once again, well done the Lardies!

Two more tanks for What A Tanker!

Here are two more recruits to my Afrika Korps tank force for the TwoFatLardies What A Tanker game. On the left is a Panzer III with the longer 5cm KwK 39 L/60 gun, which means that it is  a Panzer III Ausf. J, although the ones with the longer gun were later reclassified as Ausf. L variants. The smaller tank on the right is, of course a Panzer II, armed with the 2cm KwK 30 L/55 cannon. As it has five road wheels, it is an Ausf. F variant, produced in 1941/42, rather than the earlier Ausf. C, so ideal as a vehicle serving in the North African campaign.

Both of these are Battlefront 15mm resin models. Although I am a big fan of plastic tanks, I think that for WaT resin models make more sense to me, because I don't really need to buy a box of five PSC models if I am only going to need one or two. I quite like the extra weight of resin vehicles for WaT.

Of course, when I eventually do something about my CoC in the desert project, these will be perfect for that too.

A couple of Afrika Korps tanks for What A Tanker .....

...... and not only for WaT, either. 

I have plans for building up some forces for Chain of Command in the North African Campaign in the 1940-42 period, but those plans will probably have to wait now that the TooFatLardies have announced their Blitzkrieg handbook is available for pre-orders. The CoC priority now is going to be switched to BEF and German forces, with French to follow later.

Anyway, having bought some already painted 8th Army vehicles at the club's Tabletop Sale back in May, I always planned to get some German opposition. I'll look at getting a couple of Italian tanks later, which will also come in handy for Desert CoC.

For the first time, I looked away from PSC box sets and decided to get a couple of resin tanks. The ones I chose were Battlefront ones, a Panzer III H and a Panzer IV F1. I did want to get a Panzer II as well, but they were out of stock. I'll probably go back later to get one.

These were pretty straightforward to paint. They were given a base coat of Army Painter Desert Yellow spray and then the detailing was built up with drybrushing, first with some unmixed Vallejo Natural Steel (if you don't shake the bottle too much you get a graphite sort of colour with only a hint of metal) to show wear on the desert colour and then with Iraqi Sand, which is a massively useful colour for all sorts of things. I used black for the rubber rims on the wheels.

I think that they have turned out pretty well. Oddly enough, it was only after I'd bought these that I remembered that I have a couple of Zvezda kits of exactly the same tanks. I made them up and compared the two for size. The two Mk IIIs are an almost perfect match, but the Battlefront Mk IV is slightly longer. I'll paint them up one day and that will give me a couple more tanks. Of the two, I have to say that I prefer the Battlefront models, though.