Incoming: Plastic Chaffee and Chi-Nu!

We’ve talked a lot about plastic lately when it comes to all of our ranges, but particularly with regards to Bolt Action. More and more plastic infantry and artillery are coming off the production lines every month, but that doesn’t mean we’re slowing down work on the third pillar of any Bolt Action force – the armour! This week, we’ve got something of an unlikely late-war pair hitting pre-order. US, British, and Japanese players, rejoice – It’s time to meet your new toys! We’ll begin with the…

M24 CHAFFEE

Do you feel like your Stuarts are getting a bit tired by 1945? In the market for a more modern light tank, one with a bit more ‘oomph’? Boy oh boy, do we have a vehicle for you!

The Chaffee is the last word in Allied light tank development, pairing the reliable and proven 75mm gun made legendary in the M4 Sherman with a fast, low-profile chassis to give a fast-moving and hard-hitting vehicle. Historically, this was just what the doctor had ordered, as British and US forces had found the 37mm gun on their M3 and M5 Stuarts increasingly ineffective against heavier German armour. The Chaffee (so named by the British for the American general so pivotal to the early development of US armoured doctrine) gave light tank battalions a vehicle which retained the Stuart’s excellent mobility, but with massively improved firepower. Although it arrived late in the war, it continued to serve around the world for decades afterwards, playing a particularly notable role in the Korean War.

Of course, if you’re going to have great mobility and great firepower, there has to be a downside, and that comes in the form of very thin armour. Virtually any anti-tank weapon worth its salt can really mess up a Chaffee, which relies on speed and cunning for protection over weight of armour. It’s important to remember that the Chaffee wasn’t designed to go toe-to-toe with a Panther or Tiger, and to use it accordingly!

Speaking of using it, let’s look at the Chaffee in Bolt Action. Available to late-war American and British forces, it gives you a very interesting platform indeed. In terms of capability, you can think of it a bit like a less well-armoured Cromwell, with the Fast and optional Recce rules doing a lot to offset that paltry 8+ DV and Vulnerable. In terms of armament, it’s packing exactly the same punch as a later Cromwell or early Sherman, with a brace of MMGs and a Medium Anti-tank gun with Improved HE, and this makes the Chaffee a surprisingly punchy little machine. For 170pts at Regular, it’s a significant saving over its bigger cousins, without any sacrifice in firepower, and this makes it a fantastic ‘economy’ option for your Armoured Platoons – provided you remember that it’s essentially made of wet tissue paper and will die to a stiff breeze!

While the Allies get lighter, the Japanese are getting heavier. Let’s meet the…

CHI-NU

Let’s be honest here. Japanese armour in the Second World War wasn’t the best. If we’re being kind, we could say it was optimised towards the dense terrain it was expected to fight in, but really Japan was in broadly the same boat as Italy – stuck with outdated armour and lacking the industrial capacity to keep up with the rapidly modernising Allies, and therefore forced to keep lighter types like the Chi-Ha in frontline service long after they had been rendered obsolete by the introduction of the Sherman and similar ‘mediums’. 

Italy resolved this issue (albeit too late to really make a difference) in the form of the P40, which for all intents and purposes is a Sherman equivalent, and Japan ended up going down much the same route. The Chi-Ha (which had already been upgunned to produce the Shinhoto Chi-Ha) served as the basis of the new tank, which was significantly beefed up in terms of both armour and firepower to produce the Type 3 Chi-Nu. This was built around the Type 3 75mm gun, which was arguably Japan’s best anti-tank gun of the war, and finally gave Japanese tankers a vehicle that could contend with Shermans on an even footing.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) for Japanese troops, they never got the chance to test their new mounts in action. Of the 150-odd Chi-Nus produced, all were held back to defend the Home Islands against the anticipated Allied invasion. However, Bolt Action lets us send them to the front, and test their mettle against all manner of targets, and so you can finally field a plastic tank with more than ‘notional’ armour and anti-tank weaponry!

For a cool 190pts at Regular, you get an honest-to-goodness 9+ DV medium tank, with a Medium Anti-tank gun and co-axial MMG up top. No hidden downsides, or funky special rules that make it a challenge to use effectively, just a good, solid tank at last for Japanese forces, one that you can stick in an armoured platoon and trust to do its job.

Naturally, all of the above also applies if you choose to ‘import’ either tank to your Konflikt ‘47 force. With that said, these are late-war vehicles – exactly the kind of thing that might be upgraded with new Rift-tech weaponry to help them stay relevant in a world of heroes, horrors, monsters, and mechs…

More Plastic Tanks!

Now you might already know all of the above. After all, we’ve had the resin and metal Chaffee and Chi-Nu (including a K47 version!) in our range for absolutely yonks, so you might have been fielding them for years already. Trust me, though – you’ll want these in your force! The new plastic kits are a massive upgrade on the resins, both in terms of detail and finish, and are designed to be as pleasant to build as possible. This is all part of our wider ‘plastification’ project, where we’re continuing to expand our range of plastic vehicles with both brand-new types joining the range and, like here, vehicles that had previously been resin becoming plastic kits!