Review: Battlefront 17/25 Pdr Pheasant (BR520)

17/25 Pdr firing in North Africa

This blister has been sitting in the lead mountain for an age. V4 and my desert Rats force was exactly the inspiration I needed to dig this out and put it together.

Blister contents

These are old metal models. I suspect they are at least 2 generations behind the current plastic version. The final generation before plastics typically included a command team. This blister didn’t. Given that I am going to be using these guns for a v4 army, this is far from a problem. Another good clue to the age of the models is that it includes an assembly guide.

Assembly:

I typically lay out all the parts from blisters before cleaning and assembling. The 17/25 pdr blister is packed full of pieces. There should be 34 in total made up of the limber, gun, crew and bases. Mine was sadly missing a few. I was missing the 2 wheels for one of the guns and one of the limbers was missing a set of doors, a wheel and a yoke. For the list I was working on (see my Cancon post here) I needed only 3 guns. I would only need one of these 2 metal guns to go with the pair of the new plastic ones I already had.

Whilst I worked on this one complete gun, I sent off an email to Battlefront Customer Service. I got a quick response and a package arrived a short time later. Thankfully, the introduction of plastics, at least for popular items, should greatly reduce the blisters in circulation and therefore the chance of blisters missing pieces.

I made the decision to just paint up 3 crew for each gun (there are 5 in the pack) and leave the limber off. Whilst the limber looks terrific and the extra crew would be nice, it was all a little busy. In addition, given the size of the gun barrel and the length of the gun carriage, I would need to place the gun right at the front of the base. This leads to issues with storage and transport. I.E bent barrel syndrome.

Included instructions

I went ahead and glued the gun, carriage and turntable together. If you have glued a metal Battlefront gun together before, you won’t have an issue with this one. The gun fits to the carriage and the shield is glued to the front. I then attached the wheels. These old metal kits are the basis of many of my armies but really are yesterday’s technology. The models need a little clean-up from the casting process and the fitting points for the gun shield, wheels and gun barrel all needed trimming, drilling out or filing. That said, we are talking minutes and not hours.

The crew are the typical high quality and dynamic casts we can expect from Battlefront metals. Yes, there are mould lines to clean up but they are otherwise well cast, have a real depth of detail and well represent their function. Each gun came with 5 different crew figures – all of them good.

I glued the crew to the base along with the gun ready for painting.

Painting:

Not much to say here. I followed the same process on the gun and crew that I did on some of my earlier units. You can find the method and colours I used on my earlier review here.

When I painted up my earlier models, I didn’t add any flock or tufts. At that time, I was still unpacking my modelling stuff and hadn’t yet found all my hobby boxes. Now that I have, I used some standard tufts in 3 different colours along with some straw/sand coloured flock. Contrary to popular opinion, there is vegetation in the desert and some of it is even green.

Summary:

These old blisters are still out there. There are still lots of them in lead mountains and retail outlets the world over. Yes, some popular models (UK 6 pdr, 25 pdr, USA 105mm, 37mm, German Pak 40 Pak 38 etc) are being replaced with plastic, but not every gun will be. They still serve a purpose, are well made and look good on the table.

In my instance, I managed to pick up a blister with some missing parts but BF customer service are terrific at organising replacements. What I did get was free of imperfections, goes together well and best of all, paints up well.

Tournament Report - Cancon 2018 - FOW

Cancon is hands down the largest Wargaming event on the Aussie Calendar. This year was the 40th Cancon and like those before it was not to be missed. Cancon, being a national event is the one weekend that draws players from all over Australia and occasionally overseas. Aside from the numerous competitions and campaigns, there are lots of participation games, a large board game area, traders, a 2nd hand stall, roleplay games and even Cosplayers. Something for everyone.

This year there were no less than 6 different FOW and TY events. In the past few years I had played during the day and night flames but this year I setting on Mid War v4. The total list of events were:

Mid War V4
Early War Campaign
Team Yankee
Team Yankee Campaign mm)
Night Flames Arab Israeli
Night Flames Late War`

I suspect the total FOW and TY numbers were down slightly on past years . We had a very healthy 22 players for MW. Given the newness of the rules and the fact that there are only 3 books out, I think this is pretty good.

Caunter Corner

Players could select 80 points of troops with up to 10 points of cards. Only the 80 points of troops counted towards reserve calculation.

I ran my newly painted Crusader company with some 17/25 pounders, Carriers, Infantry, Bofors and Hurricanes. Over the 8 games I played a variety of different forces - German Tanks,  German Infantry, German Armoured Cars, British Crusaders, British Grants and a US Tank force. The top four players were running British Crusaders, German Armoured Cars, German Infantry and British Grants. Every British army I saw seemed to have Scout Tank and this is still a problem. I think that is a pretty good spread and highlights that MW V4 is otherwise largely balanced.

Interestingly, I played against 2 different German lists with Tigers. Even at these low points, they can be a threat. I don't think they can work with DAK tanks but certainly can with infantry or mechanised Companies.

The MW tournament was well run in the capable hands of Trick and Ben. I didn't see any major issues or heated arguments. The hottest anyone got was the warm pavilion where the air conditioning struggled with 30 plus degree temperatures and too many sweaty gamers.

Darren's Bunkerflak

EW Eastern Front Campaign table

I didn't have a lot of time to look at the other FOW and TY events but I had time to snap a few pics. These events also seemed well attended and the players having a good time.

Nappy game on Monday

Trick doing TO stuff

Some of the lovely desert terrain.

Ben not doing TO stuff

It was this long...

Tournament Report: ACT GT - V4 MW

It seems that every competition in Australia at the moment is a GT, a Nationals, a Masters or a Championships of some kind. For my first visit to a FOW event in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) outside of Cancon, I was lucky enough to attend the inaugural ACT GT.

I wanted to use my newly updated Desert Rats force. You will have seen that I have painted 10 Crusader Tanks, 4 6 Pound Anti-Tank Guns, some Bofors and (spoilers) a 17/25 pound gun. I wanted to use all these in the competition.

The weekend was a good opportunity to take the family down and spend a few days in Canberra being a tourist. We planned to visit the War Memorial, the Zoo and a few other attractions.

The event was held at the 3D6 store at Tuggeranong. The store is located in a small retail complex just off the main road in Tuggeranong. There is a large gaming area, a retail space and a bar! This was definitely a surprise.

The event itself was well publicized with both the store and Ken (the TO) spruiking the event.  21 players lined up for 5 games of 100 points MW V4 fun. Players could select any formation or formations from Fighting First, Desert Rats or Afrika Korps and include up to 10 points of cards. There were 10 German forces, 7 British Forces and 4 US lists.

The terrain was a mix of store tables and player supplied tables. The level of terrain overall was very high and the tables were well spread out with spare table space, all making for a very comfortable environment.

It was clear that the British lists dominated the weekend with 3 of the top 5 places being taken by the Desert Rats. The lists were different but they all had Crusaders with the Scout Tank card. I have said it before, I think this card is overpowered. I personally only ran 10 Crusaders but the lists at the top had full companies of Crusaders. For 1 point, the benefits provided to a whole force of hit on a 4+, skill check on a 4+ and GtG when moving and not shooting, far outweigh the reduction of tactical move of 2 inches. I believe the card should be either 1 point per unit or simply changed to be 10 points.

The event was well supported by 3D6 with generous prizes for the place getters and every player walked away with an objective marker. I think the store and the TO, Ken did a great job putting on an excellent weekend and tournament. Overall, I really enjoyed the event and hope there will be another event like it next year in a different location. Sadly the 3D6 store announced it was closing the doors shortly after the event. 

Here are the results from the event provided by Ken:

I hope you enjoyed this article.