Apologies for the absence, I’ve had a couple of really stressful and busy weeks, really eating up any time and energy I had for this project.
I’ve been trying to settle on a basic friendly/enemy tank design to begin with. I know these will likely change so I’m trying not to get too hung up on the details, just going for a general aesthetic and pallete.
These were the initial three sketches I did. The Sickle felt too modern, like an Abrams or Leopard 2. The Jackal looked a bit exotic, but it was interesting. The Sabre was heavily based on the Centurion and Chieftain tanks.
I expanded these out into two faction sets. This is the friendly/ally/player set, which features a few vehicles.
I wanted each vehicle to potentially have a different flavour of gameplay. The Recon car would be nimble, but lightly armed, serving more as a command car. The APC has a powerful auto-cannon for lighter enemies, but would have to manually guide it’s ATGM to the target, making for a tense pause in movement. The Tank Destroyer would be a glass cannon, making use of it’s agility to avoid shots. The MBT will be a balance of speed, firepower and armour.
I also did a set for the enemy faction. The inspiration for the enemy faction was a mixture of WWI, WWII Germany, and some of the mid-century Middle Eastern conflicts.
In Operation Desert Storm, the Coalition would encounter somewhat outdated Soviet designed tanks. Some would be upgraded with kits, others would not. It was a one sided battle; the outdated T series vehicles were no match for the Abrams and Challenger tanks they faced.
There were M4 Sherman tanks, from WWII, still serving in armies into the 1950’s, often up-gunned. Some of the last battles fought by WWII era vehicles were in the Middle East, long after that war had ended, as the vehicles were bought or gifted to developing armies.
I knew that, in gameplay, the player would be outnumbered but would overcome the enemy. I wanted the narrative to fit, so I took a bit of inspiration from Desert Storm and decided to make the enemy vehicles a little older than the friendly ones.
Also, often, an army will have such a surplus or stockpile of equipment, it will use it up before upgrading or selling it on. There was a M48/M60 Patton in Iraq, refitted to be a recovery vehicle. A Cold War era Patton, in the Gulf!
The enemy vehicles somewhat mirror the friendly ones, but with a few different approaches.
They have an artillery vehicle, firstly. Their medium vehicle, the AIFV, sports a recoilless rifle, instead of the APC’s auto-cannon and ATGM combo, making it more of a purpose built vehicle than a general support one.
The “Assault Gun” is an ambush vehicle, as opposed to the “Tank Destroyer” which is supposed to “shoot and scoot”. The enemy is on the defensive so it made a bit more sense to me.
The “Heavy Tank” is a bit of a misleading name, it is a heavy tank, but it’s an outdated vehicle, fielded only because it’s too costly to replace the vast stores they have. The friendly MBT is more than capable of destroying it, because of more modern ammunition.
This tank is actually somewhat of a homage to the classic “Tiger” or “IS” tanks of WWII. In that conflict, you had light medium and heavy tanks, with the heavier tanks literally shrugging off round after round. As we progressed into the Cold War, and tank weaponry far outpaced tank armour, the “heavy” tank became obsolete. A modern tank can usually kill another in a single shot, so it becomes more about who fires first, than heavy armour.
I dunno, I just thought it was a fun nod to history, to have the enemy using up it’s stockpile of heavy tanks in a conflict where the very concept is outdated.
Anyway, tomorrow I’ll be actually modelling these things and putting them into game. Exciting!
Parabellum 