Green Red Horde

 

Quite some time ago, I designed a 1:100 scale model of the Soviet T27 tankette (based on the Carden-Loyd Mk.VI) and uploaded it to Shapeways. Unfortunately, Shapeways 3d printing is still pretty expensive, so though I did get a sample printed, I never went ahead with the numbers that would be required for these little cockroaches.

Of course, now that I have a resin printer of my own, all that has changed. I've printed 21 of them so far, which is enough for between four and seven platoons, depending on how much I want to pay for them in Battlegroup: Barbarossa (it's 25 points for a three-tankette platoon, and an extra 10 points for up to two more).

The thing is, they're pretty pointless on a Barbarossa-era battlefield. They're unreliable, their narrow tracks bog easily, the armour is minimal, and they're armed with just a single 7.62mm machine-gun. They'd been declared obsolete by about 1935, and though there were still some around by 1941 they were relegated to towing light anti-tank guns like the 37mm and 45mm.

They were more common in the Winter War of '39-40, but even then they weren't front-line vehicles, and they didn't deal at all well with the snow.

Still, I've got them now.