What a Tanker - Dashboards

Another part of my "Colours Stash" that I found on the "Shelf of Shame" was two mdf WaT Dashboards produced by DarkOps (https://www.darkops.co.uk/products/what-a-tanker-mdf-dashboard).

I bought these on a whim from a third party vendor using my last £10 at Colours '19. They retail at £5 each, but buying in multiples from the manufacturer gives you increasing generous discounts!

No assembly instructions are included, but there are assembly photos on their website which you can follow. To be honest its not rocket science!

I started by separating all the components from their mdf "Sprues".

First step was to glue the middle piece to the plain back sheet of mdf. I used PVA and clamped it overnight, but if you're in a rush you could do this with superglue.

While this dried I assembled the two dials and four sliders. Care is needed with the sliders, as they are easily damaged (well by someone as ham-fisted as me, anyway). Obviously leave the two "Gear" shaped pieces off the assembled dials as these go on after everything has been assembled with the dials and sliders sandwiched in the middle!

At this point I thought I'd give the areas of the rear sheet that I thought would be visible after assembly a coat of matt black paint.

As well as the sliders and dials. I later had a rethink and repainted the dials in white.

While all this dried I tackled the two top sheets. I sprayed them both using PSC Spray cans - one in Olive Green the other Dark Yellow. Then I set about painting in the pre-engraved wording. This was a mistake...... talk about soul destroying. I stuck at it and completed the Olive Green version with matt white paint and a small brush. But when I came to the Dark Yellow version I cheated and used a Black Sharpie. Both were given a quick spray of matt varnish to protect them and dull down the Sharpie ink.

The dials had their numbers hand painted in with Red paint and the symbols on the sliders were picked out in Red or Green.

When everything was dry the top sheet was glued to the back two sheets with the sliders and dials sandwiched in between in their appropriate slots. Once again, these were clamped until the PVA dried over night. The two "Gear" shaped knobs were added to the dials (this time with a little superglue).

And that was it, finished. I produced some paper templates to fit into the right hand section, using PowerPoint, and I will eventually laminate these so I can write on them with wet wipe pens.

I rather like these. The recesses for the Command and damage dice are welcome as using the original plain paper versions was problematic if you knocked the table! The sliders provide unambiguous evidence of your tank's status but I'm not so impressed with the armour & strike dials as the windows are little too big and you can see bits of the numbers either side. At £5 (or so) each, they represent quite an investment if you are playing larger games, but if you were just buying one for yourself to take to a group game not nearly so bad.

Well worth a look for any WaT players.