US M3 Halftracks for Flames of War

On a whim a few weeks ago I bought a set of Plastic Soldier Company M3 Haftracks.  OK, it was not really a whim, I have been wanting some of these for my US army for a long time.  An Armored Rifle Platoon will be a nice addition to my mid-war US Tank Company.  The Armored Rifle platoon can be a very expensive unit to model for FoW (but it is getting a little cheaper with the new plastic set from Battlefront).  The tracks are one of the main expenses for this unit and the PSC option saves lots of money.

The kit is pretty nice and very similar to their other sets.  The instructions are adequate for the job. It would have been nice to get a little detail on the different models and options but it is easy enough to find on the web.

 I did find these to be a little fiddly (the first model of a new PSC set is always the toughest) to build and if you don't like to build models you are probably not going to like these much.

Since these are for my 1943 Tunisian theamed US force I opted for the M3 rather than the M3A1 model.  The only real difference is the A1 has the ring mount for the AA MG rather than the pintle mount.

The platoon HQ track is the only one that gets the winch.  All the others get the bumper with the roller.

I really love these models, and all the PSC models I have built.  Now I need to dig out the infantry and the 37mm AT gun and get them painted up.

Black Powder ACW Game Photo Dump

Last weekend some friends and I got together for a Black Powder American Civil War game.  It has been about 6 months since we have put on a big game and it was great to see it back on the table.  W played a simple meeting engagement with 3 brigades to a side.  Tom created some random unit generation charts and we tried them out for the first time.  This randomizes the number of regiments per brigade, the size of each regiment, the troop quality and the special abilities of the unit.  This worked pretty well and is likely to be a regular feature of our ACW games.

Here is a quick photo dump of the game.  Sorry for the lack of photo editing and resizing but my laptop is in the shop and that make things a little tough.