What A Tanker!

The first Sherman I built several years ago. I spent an hour or so today giving it a brush up and weathering. I lost the hull machine gun piece and improvised with a gob of green stuff and a piece of gun barrel. (German I think). The casual knife stuck down as stowage, the bad hull machine gun replacement and other aspects make this painful to share, but this is how we learn. ??

The Sherman’s stats (bog standard 75mm M4) are:

Strike 6, Armour 6, 12 Points.

No special rules.

US M18 Hellcat.
Painted this years ago, forgot what it was called it was so long (mistaken for a wolverine by me) but I didn’t have a photo booth back then and wanted to sprouse it up. It sadly fell foul of the same fateful drop of the box that my Stug III suffered. The metal barrel snapped off this resin Warlord Games tank. Being resin I was lucky, as the damage could have been far worse. I tarted it up a bit, touched up some areas I had missed and added a bit of weathering. This was one of my first tanks and I can tell where I was scared of getting paint on one area or another in a tricky spot and… just chose not to paint it. Lol. As good as I am fussed with right now.

I didn’t know the colours I used back when I originally painted it so I had a guess. I went with a Vallejo Brown Violet green and it matched OK, perhaps coming up as a slight highlight.

Hellcat Stats:

Strike – 8, Armour – 3, Points 12

Special rules of Fast and Tank Destroyer.

A pleasant surprise. I checked through the draw I had found the rules in and found a set of 10 dashboards I had printed and laminated and a set of cards. I had forgotten how many I had done. I don’t think I printed any tokens to mark off the changing effects, but perhaps just using a dry wipe pen would be adequate. Looking forward to organising a game soon.

Selling this one. This was the first Bolt Action tank kit I built and painted. Learnt a few lessons since then. Trying to paint camo with washes has probably been the main sin on this one. I have a new Panzer IV kit still on the sprue and want to get that built and painted instead. I just think it will be a better effort and won’t make the mistake of priming on the sprue etc. Probably won’t ever need or want more than one of these in my collection. (Update: Sold on eBay 06/09/2021 £22).

The Stug III had been built quite a while ago and sadly got broken when a box was dropped. Track back on, camo pattern and a mini added and it’s ready for action. I think the main reason for the break was because of the bad call I made in the assembly of it. I was younger, didn’t know any better and… Primed it on the sprue. Having to cut away paint and then add glue to put it back together highlighted the error. Made me cringe at how daft I was to think that gluing painted edges to painted surfaces was going to do the job.

Stug III stats:

Strike 4, Armour 5, 10 Points.

Special rules Low Profile and Tank Destroyer.

The stats don’t always reflect reality fully, because the 4 Strike of this tank versus the 6 Strike of the Panzer III would make you assume the hitting power was quite different. In reality the Stug III had a better gun than the Pz III Ausf L, but the lack of turret maybe and game balance reasons highlight that WAT! is a well play tested game focusing on fun and challenging players, rather than just a historical tank simulator.

First from my pile of potential a Panzer III.

Panzer III Ausf L. This is the plastic kit from Warlord Games. The transfers sheet doesn’t really support this vehicle well. There aren’t any Balkenkreuzs small enough to fit on the side and rear, even though these are shown where to place crosses on the box art. I might revisit and improve my freehand efforts on the crosses. The box art shows DAK and Eastern Front paint jobs, but not anything for the Western Front. The transfers regiment markings and numbers also only seemed to support the box art. I know the Panzer III was being phased out and the chassis used for the Stug III instead, but I wanted this model to be used in my Market Garden plans and my Post D-Day stuff as a hanger-on from the refits etc. I chose to use the same red and white style numbers as my Puma as I know that the Puma was meant to be a 1944 example from that kit’s box art and instructions.

The Panzer III stats:

Strike – 6, Armour 5, 11 Points.

No special rules.

This M8 Scott GMC was great fun to paint as part of my USMC force and wanted to add him as a bit of a left field option for the game. This pick was so left field that he wasn’t one of the variants that even the What A Tanker! (WAT!) fan group Facebook page had considered.

So after some fun banter and consideration, with some of the  assembled well informed tread heads and enthusiasts, we came to the following conclusion:

Strike – 6, Armour – 4, 11 Points

With special rules Fast and Tank Destroyer.

The game works off of a wonderful dice mechanic. Check out the Let’s Play on the site for the basics.

When you start to pick tanks to play with there are detailed lists. These point up tanks for balance and give you the Strike stat (base number of attack dice when shooting) and the Armour stat (base number of defense dice).

For the Puma, being an armoured car and low down the pecking order in the scheme of things, there was no entry in the main rule book.

I joined the What A Tanker Facebook group and found people very open to discuss a potential score and a good number of off book tanks already pointed and statted up for armoured fighting vehicles like the Puma.

According to their fan created table the Puma is:

Strike – 5, Armour – 3, 9 Points

With special rules Fast, Wheeled, Fast Reverse and Slow Turret.