Today Mark takes a look at the latest Battlefront plastic offering – The BTR-60 wheeled APC for use with your Team Yankee Soviet and East German forces
The Model
The first thing you will notice with the BTR-60 sprue is that, like the new T-64 kit, it’s a Soviet green colour, not the typical grey. I’ll be interested to see how this changes the undercoating spray process. I may skip my black primer go straight to my green primer; really live life on the edge!
The BTR is very quick to assemble, with only ten compulsory parts and three optional stowage pieces. I managed to assemble ten BTR-60s in under an hour, that’s how quick they are. For someone like me that hates assembling plastics, this was fairly painless; albeit not as painless as the resin Skytrek ones which have zero assembly.
Not bad for less than an hour!
I encountered two issues in assembly. The first is clipping off the cannon. Be very careful. It’s attached by 4 points and under a lot of strain; it risks snapping during the process. A few of mine bent but luckily didn’t snap. I imagine some newer modelers may have issues. The second is working out where a part goes. There is a grill that the construction diagram says goes under the front of the hull. However there is no obvious place and it can’t be seen in any picture. For now, rather than be wrong, and because you can’t see it I have just left them off.
What I really like is that there was some stowage on the sprue. You don’t always get some and in this case you get a tire, crate and fuel cans. I cut them all out into a pile from all the sprues and spread them out for variety rather than religiously using all three pieces on each tank.
Cost
The BF BTR-60s come in boxes of five at a RRP of £30.00, so £6.00 each. Whereas Skytrex sell resin ones at £6.50 each as well as Armies Army (reviewed previously). However each company offers discounts when you buy a platoon or company’s worth. While these are resin and don’t require as much assembly, you do need to factor in decals and commander models that come with the BF box. Really it comes down to preference rather than cost.
You get both the Soviet and East German cards .
In-game
The BTR provides a cheaper option (point wise) to the BMP-1 and certainly to the ‘-2, which is perfect if your aim is to get cheap infantry because you want more points for armour or support to do the heavy lifting. The BTR is lightly armoured so even 50cals can cause it issues and I should add that its top armour 0 so vulnerable to ‘proper’ artillery. It’s cannon is stationary ROF3 and FP5+ which is actually quite useful when digging out infantry (actually as good as a BMP-2). Interestingly ROF3 FP5+ is actually better at digging out infantry than a single main gun shot at FP2+ (Eg T-55). Unfortunately it doesn’t have the anti-helicopter rule so some dedicated AA is certainly needed to keep those Harriers and their BL755 at bay (I don’t even want to think about that template on TA0)!
I am using a BTR mounted company in my Grand Tournament List. For me, at 10 pts, its perfect to squeeze in another platoon of infantry with 14 stands. The BTRs are really a bonus, to be honest!
Conclusion
The BTR-60 is another great plastic kit from Battlefront. The down sides being value for money given that you will need to spend £60 (two boxes) to get a mid-sized company worth and they really aren’t worth many points in game. However the price is comparable to other company’s resin options.
In game they are very much infantry buses, as they should be. However, their cannon should not be discounted for hitting light vehicles and suppressing/digging out infantry where they can saturate the target with a lot of fire.