Too Much Lead

Team Rabbit

I think in the end the shaded wash effected the colour too much, but it's certainly an unusual finish for a tank!
As to the kit itself, compared to the really simple early Art of Tactic models the M3 is rather complicated, with almost 20 parts.  These serve to put a complicated superstructure together without significant loss of details.  I would highly recommend the model to those looking for a 15mm version of this tank.  At about £3 you cant complain!

I have  working prototype of my Girls Und Panzer game, but for play it certainly needs some play pieces, and as a previous post about my purchases of Zvezda and PSC tanks showed, I wanted them to be top notch.  Well I've been working on them and can reveal some progress.

First of all let us look at the antagonists, Pravda:

Pravda Girls School...

Pravda field a variety of Soviet armour, and with certain concessions to game balance I prepared three tanks for them:

Pravda

I'm looking to have a test version of my game concept ready in fairly short order, already I have some 26 different cards developed (18 for main play and 8 for vehicles and characters), but I needed some tokens and a map for playing on.

Well with a fat paypal account this seemed like a good excuse to pick up a range of 1/100th scale tanks.  Big enough to be identifiable, but small enough to use in a 'game'.

A quick visit to the Plastic Soldier Company's site and I came away with this little grab bag of mainly Zvezda models:

Teams Ooarai and Pravda...

As a small review I can say that all of these were a joy to build.  The Russian tanks and the 3(t) and Mk IV are all Zvezda kits and mainly comprise 5 or 6 parts, they take about five minutes each to assemble but the engineering is great, and at this scale you can't ask for much more.  The KV-2 has a multi-part turret, but the whole is held together by a single connecting structure attached to the main gun which is absolutely ingenious!  If you're looking to build up early war forces in 15mm the Zvezda models are hard to beat.

By comparison, the Stug IIIf, by PSC, is a more traditional model, and benefits from more versatility and detail as a result, but the extras are not essential at this scale, though it did permit me to build exactly the right variant for GuP so I shouldn't really complain.

These may get a quick lick of paint but are more likely to get used as seen for initial play testing.

A nice diversion from MSc study yesterday however.

Clue

Going to a gaming show has focused my mind, I am planning a new game.  I've tried writing wargames rules and board games in the past, and come to the conclusion I am generally better at the former; how someone goes about designing a big game like Le Harve, or 7 Wonders is beyond me at present.

However when it comes to the mechanics of battle I have a much better handle on things, and have long thought about ways to combine the best board game and card game mechanisms into wargames rules.  It isn't just a case of novelty too as often they can offer a very real way to reflect more accurately command and control, or replicate luck without resorting to dice.

One project I'd come up with a couple of months ago was for a tank combat game driven by a card mechanic.  The concept would be based on a style of game known as 'Deck Builders', in which players begin with a set range of cards to control play but can choose to buy other cards into their deck from a shared supply of options to develop strategies and gain victory points.  I pondered this a while and left it on the back burner.

In part the idea was inspired by a sweet, but frankly bonkers Japanese anime series Girls Und Panzer.  In the tv series High School girls practice tank combat as an after school activity, it being elevated to the state of a sport thanks to the use of safe ammunition and a culture that sees tanks as unsuitable for men.  Did I mention it's bonkers?  Anyway, the show nicely displays how tank combat can be presented as a sports activity, and divorced of the need for infantry, artillery or air support can be boiled down to the sort of essentials a card mechanic could handle.

Whilst at Essen I had adequate down time to think about the many deck building games I've played (Dominion, Tanto Cuore, Streetfighter, Arctic Scavengers and Trains to name a few), and which elements I could combine and add to to make my own idea work.  Finally once home I got started.

Work in Progress

And the ideas flowed quickly, too quickly perhaps; I have Masters work to do as well!  Still the idea has proved to have legs, and soon I can try it out in a somewhat raw form.  Obviously this is a game about fun rather than deep simulation of tank combat, I flogged that horse for well over a decade and got nowhere with it!  But it will balance elements of command and control, battlefield tactics and logistics as well as featuring distinct profiles for different vehicles.