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From now until 31 October 2015 the PSC 15mm Soviet IS2 tank kit will be on special offer with 20% off. That's 5 x 15mm IS heavy tanks for GBP 15.60, GBP 3.12 a tank - incredible value!

The cynical part of me notes that this was announced the day after Battlefront finally put their new plastic IS-2s up for sale...

Market forces... customer wins!

I'd like to see a side by side comparison.

[Edit: typo fixed]

IS2's, do you want them anyway?

They seem awful expensive for what they can do. I suppose it's about having them for fluffy Guards lists.

 George Spiggott wrote:
Market forces... costumer wins!

Its a win for the people who wear the costumes as well

 Orlanth wrote:
IS2's, do you want them anyway?

They seem awful expensive for what they can do. I suppose it's about having them for fluffy Guards lists.

It may upset you to know that some people will be buying these tanks to play them in Batttlegroup or other ruleset other than Flames of War. In fact, there are some people who are enjoying 15mm without a single Battlefront product! Can you believe it??

 sing your life wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
IS2's, do you want them anyway?

They seem awful expensive for what they can do. I suppose it's about having them for fluffy Guards lists.

It may upset you to know that some people will be buying these tanks to play them in Batttlegroup or other ruleset other than Flames of War. In fact, there are some people who are enjoying 15mm without a single Battlefront product! Can you believe it??

That was really an unnecessarily snarky response to what was a rather innocuous post.

 Avatar 720 wrote:

 sing your life wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
IS2's, do you want them anyway?

They seem awful expensive for what they can do. I suppose it's about having them for fluffy Guards lists.

It may upset you to know that some people will be buying these tanks to play them in Batttlegroup or other ruleset other than Flames of War. In fact, there are some people who are enjoying 15mm without a single Battlefront product! Can you believe it??

That was really an unnecessarily snarky response to what was a rather innocuous post.

Matter of opinion I suppose, whilst FOW does take up a large part of the 15mm market I think find it obvious that PSC intended for these IS2 to be used with their in house rulesets, so discussions of the tank's usefullness in the former game are not really on topic.

 sing your life wrote:

Matter of opinion I suppose, whilst FOW does take up a large part of the 15mm market I think find it obvious that PSC intended for these IS2 to be used with their in house rulesets, so discussions of the tank's usefullness in the former game are not really on topic.

Given that PSC seems to view 20mm as the preferred (but not required) size for Battlegroup, I have to disagree.

Eumerin wrote:

 sing your life wrote:

Matter of opinion I suppose, whilst FOW does take up a large part of the 15mm market I think find it obvious that PSC intended for these IS2 to be used with their in house rulesets, so discussions of the tank's usefullness in the former game are not really on topic.

Given that PSC seems to view 20mm as the preferred (but not required) size for Battlegroup, I have to disagree.

While the original intention of PSC was an 20mm game 15mm appears to have become the prefered among players, of which many migrated from FOW which is exclusive 15mm.

 sing your life wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
IS2's, do you want them anyway?

They seem awful expensive for what they can do. I suppose it's about having them for fluffy Guards lists.

It may upset you to know that some people will be buying these tanks to play them in Batttlegroup or other ruleset other than Flames of War. In fact, there are some people who are enjoying 15mm without a single Battlefront product! Can you believe it??

No I can't. BF's Universal Carriers are the best on the market.

In other news people on the Flames of War forum are somewhat disposed to discussing things with a heavy bias towards Flames of War. Can you believe it??

In other other news. Orlanth is correct, they're not very good in FoW. With the exception of the IS-85.

I thought it was called the 'Flames of War & 15mm WW2' forum here...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sing your life wrote:


While the original intention of PSC was an 20mm game 15mm appears to have become the prefered among players, of which many migrated from FOW which is exclusive 15mm.

Not sure on that...

The game was designed for 15mm & 20mm since we started designing it. While we do have alot of 15mm players, the majority are 20mm gamers, and so far all our campaign weekends have been 20mm based. I can only base that on our customers I have conversed with of course, but the slight majority are 20mm, then 15mm with a few 28mm and 10mm gamers.

Of course the books are only illustrated with 20mm, apart from a few 15mm painting guides, as that's what Warwick and I play with.

Big P wrote:
I thought it was called the 'Flames of War & 15mm WW2' forum here...

Personally I'm not sure why Dakka can't just drop the 'Flames of War and 15mm' bit...

Let me fix that for you:
Flames of War & 15mm WW2

FoW forum is on the BF site. As a 15 mm IS2 model is an IS2 in any rule set this is a good place for them.

Big P wrote:
I thought it was called the 'Flames of War & 15mm WW2' forum here...

Are you really going to attempt to drag out a forum title pedantry debate?

No good deed goes unpunished. I should have just applied the yellow triangle of friendship to Sing's obvious troll post and moved on. My bad.

 George Spiggott wrote:

Big P wrote:
I thought it was called the 'Flames of War & 15mm WW2' forum here...

Are you really going to attempt to drag out a forum title pedantry debate?

Well ye did kinda bring it up to be fair...

But hey, I wasnt being pedantic, just pointing out that the forum title isnt exclusively about FoW and just taking the mickey. Dont take it to heart.

 George Spiggott wrote:

 sing your life wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
IS2's, do you want them anyway?

They seem awful expensive for what they can do. I suppose it's about having them for fluffy Guards lists.

It may upset you to know that some people will be buying these tanks to play them in Batttlegroup or other ruleset other than Flames of War. In fact, there are some people who are enjoying 15mm without a single Battlefront product! Can you believe it??

No I can't. BF's Universal Carriers are the best on the market.

In other news people on the Flames of War forum are somewhat disposed to discussing things with a heavy bias towards Flames of War. Can you believe it??

In other other news. Orlanth is correct, they're not very good in FoW. With the exception of the IS-85.

I've had a lot of fun with them in Berlin games. Pretty good unit and I welcome the opportunity to buy proper versions for a cheap price rather than proxying T-34s!

Big P wrote:

 sing your life wrote:


While the original intention of PSC was an 20mm game 15mm appears to have become the prefered among players, of which many migrated from FOW which is exclusive 15mm.

Not sure on that...

The game was designed for 15mm & 20mm since we started designing it. While we do have alot of 15mm players, the majority are 20mm gamers, and so far all our campaign weekends have been 20mm based. I can only base that on our customers I have conversed with of course, but the slight majority are 20mm, then 15mm with a few 28mm and 10mm gamers.

Of course the books are only illustrated with 20mm, apart from a few 15mm painting guides, as that's what Warwick and I play with.

Funny, I see a lot of people talking about how they joined Battlegroup from FOW and the 15mm version of a tank places higher than the 20mm in your website's bestseller list most of the time, so I guessed more people were using 15mm to play the game.

 George Spiggott wrote:

 sing your life wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
IS2's, do you want them anyway?

They seem awful expensive for what they can do. I suppose it's about having them for fluffy Guards lists.

It may upset you to know that some people will be buying these tanks to play them in Batttlegroup or other ruleset other than Flames of War. In fact, there are some people who are enjoying 15mm without a single Battlefront product! Can you believe it??

No I can't. BF's Universal Carriers are the best on the market.

In other news people on the Flames of War forum are somewhat disposed to discussing things with a heavy bias towards Flames of War. Can you believe it??

In other other news. Orlanth is correct, they're not very good in FoW. With the exception of the IS-85.

1. You think the BF UCs are the best on market. Other people may choose to disagree.

2. As Big P has said, this sub-forum is for discussing 15MM WW2 in general, not just Battlefront product. Whilst the latter does attract a majority of attention here discussing the merits a tank in the FOW ruleset on a thread about another 15mm game in not appropriate for this sub-forum.

3. I don't know the rules for the IS-2 in FOW so I can't comment on that.

Was that good enough for you kid?

Not our website... PSCs website. They sell the book but its written by Ironfist Publishing.

PSC Sell a lot of 15mm tanks to anyone! Especially FoW players who I suspect buy the majority of them.

 sing your life wrote:
1. You think the BF UCs are the best on market. Other people may choose to disagree.

It's an answer to your question directed "can you believe it" answered with "No I can't". What part of that made you think I was trying to speak for anyone other than myself?

 sing your life wrote:
2. As Big P has said, this sub-forum is for discussing 15MM WW2 in general, not just Battlefront product. Whilst the latter does attract a majority of attention here discussing the merits a tank in the FOW ruleset on a thread about another 15mm game in not appropriate for this sub-forum.

The thread is about tanks at 20% price discount. It isn't about another rule set at all.

Two wrong answers and a pass. You must try harder.

Back on topic. So even at 20% off there's no real incentive for me to buy these as they're not great in FoW. I'd be interested to hear how Berlin alters this. Is is the improved support or the bed spring armour?

 sing your life wrote:
It may upset you to know that some people will be buying these tanks to play them in Batttlegroup or other ruleset other than Flames of War. In fact, there are some people who are enjoying 15mm without a single Battlefront product! Can you believe it??

Back in the early days of FOW I knew a lot of people who played FOW with non-FOW miniatures simply because they already had large collections of 15mm WWII miniatures from playing other WWII games. Even now, a lot of people use minis from other manufacturers beacue they find them more acccurate or just less expensive. I was thinking about buying a couple boxes of the Plastic Soldier Co. StuG G's myself, to use for FOW simply because their tanks are less than half the cost of the Battlefront Stug G box sets.

 mdauben wrote:
I was thinking about buying a couple boxes of the Plastic Soldier Co. StuG G's myself, to use for FOW simply because their tanks are less than half the cost of the Battlefront Stug G box sets.

The PSC StuG III F8/G box has an MSRP of $28.99

The Battlefront StuG G box has an MSRP of $45.

So no, they're closer to a third cheaper and not over half unless you have a retailer providing a bigger discount on PSC product.

Getting back to the IS-2s...

I have one bit of constructive criticism to offer. The back of the box shows one hull top for the IS-85 and IS-1, and another for the IS-2. Wouldn't it be more accurate to differentiate the hulls between IS-2 model 1944 (or IS-2m, if you prefer that nomenclature), and everything else - including the IS-2 model 1943?



Edit -

Oh, wait. I get it now. PSC is claiming that the IS-2 model 1943 is the IS-1. And now that I think about it, most of the sources I've seen give the IS-1 an 85mm gun, which would effectively make it an alternative designation for the IS-85.

 Ghaz wrote:

The PSC StuG III F8/G box has an MSRP of $28.99

The Battlefront StuG G box has an MSRP of $45.

So no, they're closer to a third cheaper and not over half unless you have a retailer providing a bigger discount on PSC product.

Cheapest PSC StuG box (5 tanks) on ebay right now is $20US. Two boxes plus shipping is $45US.

Cheapest BF StuG box (5 tanks) on ebay is $40 with free shipping. Two boxes is $80US.

So, yeah, not less than, but still close enough to 1/2 the price for me.

You can't make a general assertion that PSC product is half the price of Battlefront just because you found a deal on eBay. On average, a one-thirds savings will prove to be true for most more often than not based on the MSRP of the two kits.

There was me thinking a 33% saving was good anyway!

 Ghaz wrote:
You can't make a general assertion that PSC product is half the price of Battlefront just because you found a deal on eBay. On average, a one-thirds savings will prove to be true for most more often than not based on the MSRP of the two kits.

Whatever. I made a (perhaps overenthusiastic) statement that one brand was significantly cheaper than the other, I provided a specific example that (generally) supported my statement. I'm not going to sit here argue the semantics of consumer cost, sale prices and MSRP on tiny plastic tanks with you.

Being as these are non-IP protected models (unlike some very specific items from GW :-) ) any 15mm Stug/IS2/whatever is the same as another 15mm Stug/IS2/whatever - so if one manufacturer is generally cheaper than another, rational decision making tells you which one to buy....

 eddieazrael wrote:
Being as these are non-IP protected models (unlike some very specific items from GW :-) ) any 15mm Stug/IS2/whatever is the same as another 15mm Stug/IS2/whatever - so if one manufacturer is generally cheaper than another, rational decision making tells you which one to buy....

Execution of said designs is a major factor. Not all plastic kits of the same tank are equal.

 Ghaz wrote:

 eddieazrael wrote:
Being as these are non-IP protected models (unlike some very specific items from GW :-) ) any 15mm Stug/IS2/whatever is the same as another 15mm Stug/IS2/whatever - so if one manufacturer is generally cheaper than another, rational decision making tells you which one to buy....

Execution of said designs is a major factor. Not all plastic kits of the same tank are equal.

Agreed,i have both boxes of the PSC and BF Stuarts. AS for me the psc models seem to be more of a proper scale,the bF stuarts are under scale. where as i have BF models to be either to large or small.But not all models are created equal by companies.
Like me for example of infantry,i dislike and will not use plastic ones,I also prefer the BF models vs some of the other companies models.
Also for us old timers remember we used to considered HIstorical?