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For Christmas I was kindly given not only the Team Yankee Iron Maiden book I also got a box of the newly released 15mm British Scorpion or Scimitar Troop.
I have been thinking about the paint scheme for my Scorpions and Scimitars and I outlined this in a previous post.
I started them off, with a base coat of a spray of Chieftain Green paint.
Like the Scorpions, I didn’t quite get the coverage I was expecting.
There aren’t too many parts to this model, so I thought it would be a simple build, but in the end I made a mistake which meant having to start again.
The problem arose when adding the tracks to the main hull. Unlike when building Flames of War resin models which include notches for the tracks, the LVT-4 Buffalo tracks had no way of indicating where they were placed on the hull.
Doing a dry run I thought I had it right, but when I came to place the rear mudguards I realised I had them on too far back! So I had to remove the tracks, then attach the rear mudguards before replacing the tracks.
Apart from that, the rest of the model went together really easily.
The next step will be a white undercoat.
For Christmas I was kindly given not only the Team Yankee Iron Maiden book I also got a box of the newly released 15mm British Scorpion or Scimitar Troop.
I have been thinking about the paint scheme for my Scorpions and Scimitars.
One choice would be to paint them as part of the BAOR tracked reconnaissance regiment. The kind of scheme they would have in 1985 just as war broke out.
Another choice was to paint them, if they had been fighting World War III for a while, possibly even after a limited nuclear exchange. The inspiration for this scheme is of course GDW’s Twilight 2000 background. These could be BAOR vehicles struggling to find their way home or another perspective could be the remnants of the British Army attempting to maintain control in a Britain broken apart by the nuclear exchange.
Another possibility was to use my own British Civil War background and paint them as Royalist forces, or as their Republican opposition.
In the end though I started them off, with a base coat of a spray of Chieftain Green paint.
Due to poor light I didn’t quite get the coverage I was expecting.
However I do think once I have added the black camouflage and given the model a dark wash, then this won’t matter so much.
The Centurion, introduced in 1945, was the primary British main battle tank of the post-Second World War period. It is widely considered to be one of the most successful post-war tank designs, remaining in production into the 1960s, and seeing combat in the front lines into the 1980s.
According to this source, in 1981, the BAOR had 300 Centurion main battle tanks in reserve.
You can imagine that if World War III had started as imagined in the book by Harold Coyle that the British Army would want to use all the tanks they had access to when faced with the might of the armoured formations of the Warsaw Pact.
So though the Iron Maiden rules don’t cover the Centurion tank and no (British) models have been released I still thought it would be nice to have some Centurions on the gaming table.
So I ordered and purchased a couple of Sho’T models from the Flames of War Fate of a Nation range and will paint them up as British Army Centurions for use in Team Yankee games.
These look like really nice models.
Another possibility was to use my own British Civil War background and use them as Royalist forces, or as their Republican opposition.
I did consider getting the ANZAC Centurion Mk 5s from the Vietnam range, but they don’t have skirts. After operating for a few weeks in Vietnam, the tanks crews soon learned to remove the protective armoured side skirts from both sides of the tank, to prevent the vegetation and mud from building up between the track and the mudguards.
I did think that in a World War III scenario such modifications or battle damage would still mean the models could be used, but as the Israeli Sho’T models already come with skirts, I decided to use them.
So are you using Centurions in your Team Yankee games?
For Christmas I was kindly given not only the Team Yankee Iron Maiden book I also got a box of the newly released 15mm British Scorpion or Scimitar Troop.
The British Army Of the Rhine had three tracked reconnaissance regiments. The recce troops of the first two were equipped entirely with Scimitar reconnaissance vehicles, while the recce troops of the third mixed Scimitars and Scorpions together.
The box contains four sprues and unit cards for use with Team Yankee. Each sprue allows you to build either a Scorpion or a Scimitar. I have made them up as two Scorpions and two Scimitars.
Here are the two Scorpions.
The FV101 Scorpion is a British armoured reconnaissance vehicle. It was the lead vehicle and the fire support type in the Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked), CVR(T), family of seven armoured vehicles. Manufactured by Alvis, it was introduced into service with the British Army in 1973 and served until 1994.
Starting to build them they go together really nicely. Unlike “proper” plastic kits, these have a smaller number of parts. The tracks for example are in one piece, whereas the Airfix 1/72nd Scorpion had separate wheels and tracks.
As I mentioned in a previous post I added some ball bearings to the models to add weight.
For one of the Scimitars I added a commander figure and some extra stowage.
The FV107 Scimitar is a similar armoured reconnaissance vehicle (sometimes classed as a light tank) also used by the British Army. It was manufactured by Alvis in Coventry. It is very similar to the FV101 Scorpion, but mounts a high velocity 30 mm L21 RARDEN cannon instead of a 76 mm gun. It was issued to Royal Armoured Corps armoured regiments in the reconnaissance role.
Here are the two Scimitars.
I gave the models a white undercoat and the next stage will be a basecoat of Team Yankee Chieftain Green.
I have started working on my Warlord LVT-4 Buffalo Amtrac for Bolt Action. The LVT-4 is a 1/56th scale 28mm resin and metal kit and comes in a box with a picture of the completed model on the front.
The Landing Vehicle Tracked (LVT) is an amphibious warfare vehicle and amphibious landing craft, introduced by the United States Navy. The Marine Corps and Army used several LVT models during World War II. Five hundred were provided to the British Army. Originally intended solely as cargo carriers for ship to shore operations, they evolved into assault troop and fire support vehicles.
The model comprises four resin parts, the hull, two tracks and the rear ramp.
There are metal components for the mudguards, benches and machine guns.
The resin pieces were nice clean castings with virtually no flash and minimal casting “plugs” that needed to be removed. I did very little cleaning, and as I went over the castings I was impressed with the quality of the castings.
I washed the resin in warm soapy water to remove any remaining mould lubricant.
The next stage will be glueing the pieces together.
I am in the process of building a Commando team to fight alongside my partisans for games of Bolt Action. The force is taking its time to put together, but now I have transport for them.
As well as this model, the Commandos plastic boxed set I also have a couple of blisters, a Mortar Team and the Vickers MMG Team.
One of the things I dislike about the new plastic 15mm kits from Battlefront is the lack of weight the models have compared to older metal kits and even the resin ones have.
With my recent addition of Team Yankee British Scorpion and Scimitar tanks I started to think about I could make them heavier.
My initial choice was some lead (or lead-free) weights of some kind, there isn’t much space in the models so any extra weight would need to be quite dense (so heavy weight but not very big). The obvious choice was fishing weights, but I couldn’t find any that were small enough for the models.
Another idea was some lead sheet, again small, but heavy.
In the end I compromised and went with Weldtite 5/32-inch British Made Case Hardened Bearings – 750 Pieces which I ordered from Amazon.
These are very small and just under 4mm in diameter.
I glued them into the hulls of the light tanks with some super glue before checking there were no loose bearings. I then glued the hull together.
They are not really heavy, but certainly better than they were and I fell less likely to be blown over by a strong breath in a game of Team Yankee.
So do you add weights to your plastic tanks and if you do, what method do you use?
For Christmas I was kindly given not only the Team Yankee Iron Maiden book I also got a box of the newly released 15mm British Scorpion or Scimitar Troop.
The British Army Of the Rhine had three tracked reconnaissance regiments. The recce troops of the first two were equipped entirely with Scimitar reconnaissance vehicles, while the recce troops of the third mixed Scimitars and Scorpions together.
The FV101 Scorpion is a British armoured reconnaissance vehicle. It was the lead vehicle and the fire support type in the Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked), CVR(T), family of seven armoured vehicles. Manufactured by Alvis, it was introduced into service with the British Army in 1973 and served until 1994.
The FV107 Scimitar is a similar armoured reconnaissance vehicle (sometimes classed as a light tank) also used by the British Army. It was manufactured by Alvis in Coventry. It is very similar to the FV101 Scorpion, but mounts a high velocity 30 mm L21 RARDEN cannon instead of a 76 mm gun. It was issued to Royal Armoured Corps armoured regiments in the reconnaissance role.
This is the box art which shows two Scorpions and two Scimitars patrolling (probably) a West German town.
The box contains four sprues and unit cards for use with Team Yankee. Each sprue allows you to build either a Scorpion or a Scimitar.
Starting to build them they go together really nicely.
More soon…
I was pleased to get for a present the Warlord LVT-4 Buffalo Amtrac for Bolt Action.
The LVT-4 is a 1/56th scale 28mm resin and metal kit and comes in a box with a picture of the completed model on the front.
I am in the process of building a Commando team to fight alongside my partisans for games of Bolt Action. The force is taking its time to put together, but now I have transport for them.
I am also going to use these models as UNIT troops for some Doctor Who scenarios that I have been thinking about, the LVT will probably not be used for these games.
As well as this model, the Commandos plastic boxed set I also have a couple of blisters, a Mortar Team and the Vickers MMG Team.
The Landing Vehicle Tracked (LVT) is an amphibious warfare vehicle and amphibious landing craft, introduced by the United States Navy. The Marine Corps and Army used several LVT models during World War II. Five hundred were provided to the British Army. Originally intended solely as cargo carriers for ship to shore operations, they evolved into assault troop and fire support vehicles.
…in the meantime let’s take a look at the Germans.
One thing that I thought that Battlefront would do when they released the Germans for Team Yankee was that they would do a minimal release and was pleasantly surprised by the range of models they did in fact bring out.
With the initial releases for the US (and Soviet) I was slightly disappointed with the limited number of models that we got. Though we had the M1 Abrams, we didn’t get the M60A3 MBT.
It felt like a really limited release, so when I saw that Battlefront were going to release German and British forces my expectation was that we would get a limited number of vehicles. So to get thirteen sets for the Germans compared to the seven for the US was really refreshing.
I did like the Raketenwerfer model, something very different.
I also was pleased to see the Marder too.
I think it would be nice to have seen the Kanonenjagdpanzer, but you can’t have everything.
![Reportage Bundeswehr Kanonenjagdpanzer, Munsterlager, KTrS III [Munsterlager, Truppenübungsplatz in der Lüneburger Heide]](https://i0.wp.com/www.ifelix.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Bundesarchiv_B_145_Bild-F027421-0002_Kanonenjagdpanzer_KanJPz_-_Jagdpanzer_Kanone_90_mm.jpg?ssl=1)
As a result I have higher expectations for the future British releases. I am hoping to see the following models release for the BAOR forces.
I would like to see both the Chieftain and Challenger 1 main battle tanks, but if the American releases are anything to go by then we might only get one tank and I suspect that will be the Challenger.
I think we might also see the light tanks or armoured reconnisance vehicles the FV101 Scorpion and FV107 Scimiatar. They are very similar vehicles I can see how we could have both. The Scorpion and the Scimiatar were part of the Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) family. As they shared common automotive components and suspension I can see how easy it would be, if we get the Scorpion we could also get other members of the CVR(T) family such as the Spartan armoured personnel carrier (APC).
As well as the Sultan command and control vehicle, Samaritan armoured ambulance, Striker anti–tank guided missile vehicle and possibly even the Samson armoured recovery vehicle.
The main British APC in 1985 was the FV432 APC so I suspect that may be a likely contender for a model. 1985 is a bit early for the Warrior IFV that entered service in 1987.
In terms of artillery, though the British will probably get the M109 it would be interesting to see if we get the FV433 Abbot SPG. If we get the FV432 then we may get the FV438 Swingfire variant (as well as other FV430 series variants).
We already have the German Tornado, so no surprise if we have an RAF version.
I would also like to see, but don’t expect to see various British armoured cars such as the Humber Pig, the Ferret armoured car or even the Alvis Saladin Armoured Car.
So what do you think we will see for the Team Yankee releases for the British?
Image credits: Wikipedia and Battlefront