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  4. [resource] Sourcing affordable vehicle kits for Deathfields army building

[resource] Sourcing affordable vehicle kits for Deathfields army building

  • M

    So this thread is meant to be a collaborative one where we share the various vehicle sources we've run across, which can be combined with the Deathfields figures to create more interesting armies in whatever ruleset you are using the WGA kits for. especially cheaper and less well known sources, like historical model kits or converted toys. (most gamers already know about GW, mantic, Rubicon, etc, in my experiance)

    i'm not going to include links to specific sellers, since i'm not sure the board's policy about them.

     

    one kit that comes to mind to me, especialyl as we get closer to The Damned coming out, but also useable for Bulldogs if painted up in a steampunky fashion, is the 1/48th scale Tamiya BA-64B armored car kit, which can usually be found on Amazon for around $10.

    the BA-64B was a russian scout car from ww2, little more than a 4WD car chassis (taken from their Jeep clone) fitted with some armor for protection from rifle rounds and an open topped turret with an LMG. the kit is very simple, and from reviews i've found, fairly easy to build.

    it is very likely that a bit of plasticard and a spare Machinegun bit could convert the turret into a closed one, and give it a weapon that fits the visuals of your army. (and IRL it wasn't uncommon for the crews to replace the 7.62mm light machinegun with something heavier, like a 12.7mm heavy MG or a 20mm antitank rifle.)

     

    another Tamiya model that can be found affordably on amazon most of the time, is the British 7Ton Armored Car Mk.IV, also in 1/48th scale. better known as the Humber armored Car MK.IV. another scout vehicle, albeit a heavier and more well armed one that IRL could fill infantry support roles, it ought to look good alongside most of the Human deathfields factions (and probably would do well alongside the SpaceNam as well!) on amazon you can usually find thise for about $19-20.

     

    an the last one for this post, another Tamiya 1/48th scale option, the "U.S. Howitzer Motor Carriage M8". this one is an actual light tank (a modified M3 chassis in fact) fitted with a short barrel howitzer. on amazon this one can also be found for between $18-20. IMP this one would fit well alongside the Rumjager and cannonfodder.

     

    anyone else got any suggestions? (while i filter through my amazon wishlists looking for more)

  • DH

    Aside from Plastic kits. (1/48 too large, perhaps look at 1/56 scale ?)

     

    Look at other materials (mosy of these trade on EBay/Etsy) 

    Mdf kits :

    Warbases

    Sarrissa

    Bespoke Resin:

    Paragon Star

    Butlers Printed Models

     

    On day thay Damned truck will appear ...... ;)

     

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  • ADC

    On Internet you can find various paper models, not as good as plastic, but there are various options, such as AFVs & IFVs, with a bit of patience and some greeblies, they could be a decent (& cheaper !) alternative to plastic kits.

  • DH

    Free Such as 

    Dune Buggy from Genet

    Sand Geko and from sirrob01

    I've made up 3 of the former,  XR stats of soft, T5, slow, unarmed SMU gives you a 5 man squad transport element useful for transporting slow support elements into position.

    My photo capacity is off line at the moment otherwise I'd demo.

     

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  • Andreas Mayrhofer

    The tamyia 1/35 Pzkpfw II makes a pretty good battle tank when outfitted with a bigger gun. They come fairly cheap for around 10-15 bucks 

    Badgers are tough. They dig in and hold the line. They don't give up and they aren't afraid. I wish we had more Badgers. #Gwelf

  • GB

    @Mithril2098 I bought the British 7-ton Armoured Car a while back. It's definitely close enough for Death Fields, especially when you put your dudes on bases. It was a nice build, and it's going to look great with my Bulldogs!

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  • Miyuso

    Was thinking about this. I've seen some interesting options from dollar stores that can be modified. The other thing is, what other designs could work rather than what looks like old Earth models? I know other "grim dark" games like to use WW1 looking designs, but that doesn't mean that Deathfields would do the same 

  • M

    @Miyuso this is true, and if i find any I'll definstely point them out. But non-historical based designs are a lot rarer, especially in the more affordable price ranges. My selection from the first post was mostly just focused on some kits I'd found that i felt matched the aesthetics of the infantry figures enough they'd look good alongside.

    I have found a few more modern real world vehicle kits in the more affordable price range, which I'll try to post soon

  • BVD

    @Mithril2098 Well, that is not totally the case, there are a couple of really cheap options for cool looking SciFi that are not really historical at all:

    Firstly you can actually build pretty good SciFi vehicals out of deodrant bottles (the oldhammer grave tank), floss boxes (I recommend Oral-B for grav buggys or buggy cabs) or other trashable but durable plastic containers:

     

    Outside of trashbashing there are other non-WW1 options for sci-fi vehicales that don't cost too much.

    Two of note were Tehnolong's Robogear and  Bronekorpus lines both of which while blocky did not have any clear historical influnce and they look good next to Deathfields stuff. The only issue is they where from Russia (what with current trade embargos), that said one can probably still get sets from both this side through indirct retailor warhouses in place's like China for still reasonable prices and ebay lots of both show up now and then.

    Then there are the 1/48 and 1/35 anime mecha and vehicle kits coming out of Japan. While there are many that cost quite a bit, some vary in cost from $30.00 to $15.00 or even less particularly if you shop ebay. I can recommend typing in takara models in your favorite online store (or ebay), in particular thier  Votom Armored Trooper kits if you choose to go that route.

    There are also plenty of starwars and starwars themed models Like Bandai's AT-ST or pocket models STL collection.

    Now of the actual model sets outside of mantic that probably would work best with Death Fields kits with a little work  (given they seem like they can built with Boltaction in mind just as easily as Wh40k) is probably MENG's Toon Tank line which is mostly WW2 themed chibi tanks (even the light smaller tanks like the Sherman look okay next to Death Fields figures).

     Another option is converting toys like Tim Mee Toy Pattons or the Doller tree Final Faction toys.

     

  • M

    @Brian Van De Walker true enough, i just haven't had a chance to go searching for scifi specific stuff. hobbylinkjapan would probably be the best place to search for the anime kits, but i've mostly just bought gunpla stuff from them. Bandai does have a 1/48th scale mecha line now that might be worth looking into i think? the 'Mailes' line i think it's called? and i know some of the 1/144th scale gunpla kits could probably be passed off as 28mm mecha. (and i know some of the macross kits can work.. have seen people use them and Dougram kits of various scales for 28mm scale battletech before.)

    from some more of my amazon finds though, some more modern 'historicals' kits in affordable price ranges.

    Tamiya is highly represented here too, since not many others have a 1/48th scale line that isn't just aircraft. (1/32nd and 1/72nd are more common. the former is a bit oversized, the latter way too small)

    the "Tamiya 32563 1/48 US Modern 4x4 Utility Vehicle" is basically a truck style Humvee, which could be used as a squad sized troop transport easily enough. around $34.

    the '32590 1/48 JGSDF Light Armored Vehicle' ($25) could be used as a small unit transport, or with the addition of a kitbashed turret turned into a light combat vehicle. (iirc kromlech and puppets war do resin 'not-40k' turrets, and etsy has a ton of 3d printed options. heck, you could probably fit some of the guns from the grognard heavy weapons box (or the upcoming Damned version) to it)

     

    and a trio of tanks.. perhaps a little recognizable, but some plasticard, bits, and maybe a barrel swap with some tubing could add some scifi flair.

    Tamiya 32592 1/48 M1A2 Abrams ($32-34), Tamiya 32598 Russian Medium Tank T55 ($27-30), British Main Battle Tank Challenger 2 Desert TAM32601 ($31)

     

    and this is one i'm not 100% sure about. i know Tamiya is good quality, but i'd never heard of this company. but it is worth a mention for the price. Atlantis models, the Atlantis M-109 SP Howitzer ($21)

     

    one downside of these kits is the use of rubber treads. i'm not sure how hard it would be to replace them with resin or plastic, if you want something more durable.

     

    edit:

    doing a quick trawl of hobby link japan (hlj.com), i'd say the votoms suggestion is a good one, though a lot of the affordable ones are in backorder. 

    but the "HG Burglarydog" from bandai is supposed to release in may and is listed for $29. 

    and the Bandai "HG Scopedog" is in backorder for $21.

    neither have a scale given but i found listings saying they're about 4.5 inches tall, making them similar sized to the gundam kits. so around 1/35th i think? not very familiar with votoms.

    there are various 1/35th scale ones by a company called 'wave', in the $30-40 range.
    "snapping turtle", "brutish dog", and "standing tortoise" are in stock, while "blood sucker' and "berzerga" are backordered..
    (not going to post pics of all of those)

     

    and there is a weird "MechatroWeGo Votoms Collaboration Series Vol.1: Scopedog & Kiriko" by hesegawa with two wierd 'potato' mecha for $21.

     

  • Miyuso

    When it comes to scale, is 1/48 the "best" option for Heroic 28mm?  I'm wondering, if we had a solid scale to work from, if Wargames Atlantic would consider doing some cool "accessories" for some of these kits to make them Death Fields? It likely wouldn't take much, especially if they took existing stuff from the Tribes. 

  • M

    unfortunately it is often more of a personal preference thing. in my experiance, 1/48 tends to look best with 28mm, especialyl the heroic proportioned ones. the hatches and doors look big enough for the bulk of the figures, the vehicles tend to have enough height, width, length, etc to feel natural alongside based minis, etc. but a lot of 1/35th scale stuff works as well, it'll just be bigger. and sometimes smaller stuff like 1/72 or even 1/144th can work too (especially for stuff like robots or scifi vehicles). it depends a lot on stuff like recognizable details. that 1/35 Pzkpfw II that @Andreas Mayrhofer posted for example, looks just fine alongside the grognard figures, despite 'technically' being more than twice the scale. part of that is the Panzer II was a rather tiny vehicle IRL but a lot of it just stems from the fact that he's converted it to help hide some fo the more revealing details.
    (in a more extreme example, a HG Zaku model is about 5 inches tall. it's 1/144th scale ifgoing by the Gundam setting's info.. but you could easily run it in a 28mm game as a small piloted robot because there aren't any obvious hatches or handholds or whatever that make the scale obvious)

    with real world vehicle kits the biggest issue even with the 1/48 scale stuff when used with 28mm heroic tends to be how tiny the guns are, compared to the exaggerated gun sizes on the miniatures. thus why they usually need some converting to look 'right' even if there aren't size issues with the vehicle itself.

    technically speaking, 28mm 'truescale' is about 1:64th, and some historicals games (like bolt action) and minis makers like Warlord and Rubicon use that scale for their vehicles. but often those end up feeling undersized once you get stuff like bases involved, due to the added height and spacing gaps between figures. and once you get into heroic proportion sculpts, 1/64 really starts feeling excessively tiny.

  • DH

    Atlantis Models are re-issueing some of the old Aurora 1/48 scale tanks and vehicles. The M109 is one of them.                                                                             Rubicon and Warlord both list their vehicles as 1/56 scale not 1/64. Which still       looks small compared to most current 28mm figures.

     

  • M

    there are a lot of "28mm is [scale]" claims.. i've even seen some people sayingthey're 1/72nd.. and given i bought 1/72nd figures to play with like armymen toys growing up, that is way off.. (a 1/72nd human is about the size of a 28mm figure's LEG)

    which is the main reason i stick to 1/48th for the most part, it has the best balance of "big enough to look look right, but small enough it doesn't take up the whole game area"

  • ADC

    Look at this video:

    https://youtu.be/C3a0eksnzAM?si=GkQ2oa7hLu7yiZ5c

    Some of the bulkier models could pass for "Landmate" style mechs

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  • Miyuso

    Also, talking about vehicles, could you upside any of the models in Digital to make something into a walker?

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  • M

    @Miyuso i think that question would be better asked in the "atlantic digital" subforum than in here.

    @Alessio De Carolis the downside being that the "gundam artifact" line of tiny models has been OOP for half a decade, and weren't easy to get outside of japan even when they were being made.

    however he does do a few videos [ here and here] using some of the larger currently available kits to make combat robots, which could fill a "battle tank" or 'artillery tank' role. he was usign them as Tau Riptides, but for 40K they could easily count as Armigers or even Knights, depending on the kit.

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  • BVD

    Actually the best fit for "Heroic 28mm scale" outside of models made with heroic scale in mind are simple non-scale toyatic style stuff like MENG's Toon Tank line or the Buzz Lightyear toy vehicles since heroic isn't really a scale so much as a style of mini-sculpting (a rather cartoony style I might add that was designed to sell to kids originally 😆).  Basically if the hatches/doors it comes with or you have added look like they could fit the "heroic scale" bodies your working with believably to you, then it works. Vehicles can be anything from a sold as 1/24 car kits to a 1/144 mecha as long as it looks like it could fit in with your heroic scale figures, (and yes people have moded 1/72 vehicles into heroic scale ones😉).

    You can even use army men tanks and trucks, I will list these three that seem to be among the cheapest options outside of dumpster diving that I have heard “good things about” in my Facebook groups and elsewhere occasionally (I wanted to list them earlier but I could not find them for sale anywhere till after a long hunt).

    You will likely want was wash and do a ton of conversion work to these before painting them, and I will warn I am using Aliexpress  (which is not noted for safe shipping) for this because USA  Amazon and Ebay don’t seem to carry all of these by themselves anymore (UK/EU/AU/Canada/elsewhere might be a different story), anyway now for some blue links:

    First we have the highly recommended cheap Chinese plastic double barreled light tanks/tankette  (nicknamed  the Shoddy by some) they also seem to work for more historical scale VBCW gaming as well.  This is a 10 to a pack link here

    Then there is the armored APC based loosely on a real Chinese APC. It is rather large by 28mm standards (I have seen it billed as being 1/24), but I have heard of it being used for 28mm war gaming (my guess is as some larger more fantastical vehicles in 40k). Link here

    And finally there are these “not rhinos” that supposedly work as you guessed rhino tank proxies, they do seem to be big enough for that and at least don't look like WW1 tanks. Here is a link to those.

    There is also this truck which you can get on ebay still in 10 packs , but they seem to be better for more true to life historical scale minis.

    Now, those are not the best options clearly, but they are among (if not) the cheapest, again meng toon tanks and Technolog are probably the best inexpensive with decent quality options for most Death fields force needs outside of STL land though both have issues (one is chibi WW2 tanks and just the chibi WW2 tanks except for a rare Chibi APC kit based on a Chinese SciFi film, while the other  is Russian based meaning you can’t get them except by lucky ebay  finds). 

    For slightly better quality that is still cheap I have seen people convert paw patrol, Buzz Lightyear and other action figure vehicles to satisfy their heroic scale motor pool needs. The Buzz Lightyear truck and drop ship in particular have been making the rounds in conversion circles, the truck even has tutorial on the Malstrom Edge website blog.(by the way you should really check that blog out).

    There is also a sea of 1/50 to 1/24 diecast vehicles ranging from cars, construct and normal army vehicles to things such as the tank like Batmobiles. Some work, some don't, some work better for historical scale 28mm stuff like the Ironcore line. 

    Now there are a couple of "made for heroic scale model" sites that sell "cheap" parts in addtion to full models that would be useful if one is going this route.  I am going to mention Ramshackle Games and Zing Industeries, neither are the world's cheapest presay, but they are still good deals over all and Ramshackle has a wide selection of parts and vehicles that would work great with the upcoming Damned theme wise.

    I am going to list/mention a couple of other useful links  that lead to other forums and blogs, since we are far from the only ones that have talked about this before.

    Dakkadakka has at least two older threads  related to the topic of heroic scale vehicles. One is  focused on mecha kits/toys useful for proxying imperial knights, etc.. The other thread is more about detailing and general conversions (so not just vehicles),  this one has a lot of dead threads to companies that I know are still out there, so it might be wiser to cut and paste the names of the ones that interest you into a search engine. You can also check out the gallery on that forum, massive collection converted vehicles a good number of which have referances to where they got what.

    Chicago Skirmish is a long running blog that appears to be tied to a club, they have lots of helpful hints and suggests for doing your wargame hobby on the cheap.

    Oh, and somewhat unrelated to my comment but related to this thread, found this cool MDF kit maker called Minature Scenery that has a ton of SciFi vehicles.

     

  • jt

    Mantic's vehicle bundles

    https://www.manticgames.com/?s=battlegroup

  • D

    Nate Feyma offers free and incredibly customisable wargame vehicles for their custom faction. They also come in some premium options, but free catalogue is enough to cover most basic needs of small armies.

    https://www.myminifactory.com/users/natefeyma

    I had a friend to print me car Hevonen, APC Minotaur and Staghound walker for my CHWAT Reinharjar dwarves. I finished the walker only so far, but they're detailed enough to be pleasant to paint, but not a big bother as well.

    Other vehicles I got:

    Paintjob and photos provided by the model creator. I highly recommend them if you're not afraid of 3D stuff.

     

     

  • M

    Those do require a 3D printer though, not something that most people already own. And 3d printing services have fairly unreliable pricing. With quite a few of the bigger operations charging prices comparable to major brand name wargaming kits.

    My intention with the thread was to look at options other than 3d printing or buying the big brand name wargaming kits

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  • D

    I don't have printer as well, but wanted to share talented creator who offer great, painting-oriented (not overly detailed or just made to look good on presentation page in grey) models that fits Death Fields and other wargame Sci fi settings like a glove. I'm also iffy about printing and resin in general, yet I feel the creator deserves little credit  they can get from me,especially if someone will be browsing the topic later.

    May be a local thing, but 3D services 
    are fairly cheap here. If the models were premium I wouldn't bother, but as they're offered openly and free, it goes on par to plastic sets even if ordered from a prints hop. Miniatures are fairly small and total costs can be miniscule if you provide the model yourself.

  • BVD

    @Mithril2098 Actually while I don't have 3D Printer myself either I don't think it’s a bad idea to mention Nate Feyma with newer gamers in mind since if your just starting to think about making a motor pool for your SciFi army, getting a 3D printer is probably the most cost effective approach (particularly if you want titan style mechs, which can often cost as much as a 3D printer if we are talking GW) and from what I can tell Nate Feyma is probably the best free STL Digital option if we are talking vehicles (his vehicles look like they could work for so much more than WH40k, which is a plus).

    Also I get the feeling it costs less to 3D print at one's library here in the USA than it does with folks like Only Games, particularly if we are talking smaller vehicles.  

  • Yronimos Whateley

    Tamiya's 1/48 modern armor kits are fine from what I've seen:  scaled pretty much identically to WGA's 28mm guys. That Tamiya Japanese armored car and Hummer look great with WGA's Iron Core and Death Fields figures!

    The Tamiya M8 mortar might be just a dash too big, if the included soldier figure is anything to go by (he's nearly a head taller than many 28mm figures - not very far out of the range or normal human height differences), but if you're pitching the figure and just converting the vehicle to sci-fi you'll be fine. That turret looks a bit dated, but with a little creative modeling you could probably scratch-build something a little more futuristic onto it, and replace the main gun and .50 calibre machine-gun with a Gatling-style mini-gun or something (there are 1/48 scale add-on mini-gun barrels made for C-47 gunship models available from Quickboost.)

    Your mileage might vary with other model companies, but from what I've seen of Ukraine's ACE 1/48 stuff, it's also pretty much spot-on, too, though I'm not very impressed with the quality of the sample I'm working with - the parts do not fit together well at all.  Still, ACE's FAI-M armored car is one of the few Russian non-WWII tank plastic model kits I've seen still available in this scale, and it wasn't very expensive, so if you don't mind a little patching-and-filling or scratch-building to get something from it, then you're in for a bit of an adventure, and the subject is visually pretty interesting:

    I'll be souping my sample up into something loosely inspired by the Creeper's "Vehicle of Choice for A-holes and Effing Serial Killers" from the horror movie Jeepers Creepers - since I'm going to scratch-build new side panels and rooftop anyway, it shouldn't be a whole lot more work to add on an enclosed truck bed and raise the roof a bit to accomodate the driver (he'll be a plastic Undead Outlaw from Reaper)... the post-apocalyptic mutant cannibal Russian hillbilly thing kinda runs perfectly with my vision of the Damned:

    This kit comes with a few optional parts that build a rounder hood and front that looks very similar to the Creeper truck, which is a nice touch, and I'll replace the front grill with a scratch-built thing made from styrene I-beams and grill, and I think I'll drop the turret and maybe try to find a way to bolt-on an old-fashioned supercharger/blower, and teach myself how to do the weathering and rust effects - it won't be a perfect match for the movie truck, of course, but it'll be fine for my vision of a broad-strokes, vaguely Russian alternate-universe version, as an command/ambulance/chuckwagon sorta thing.

    This ACE Russian pickup might have been fun (and probably shares some of the sprues with the FAI-M), but it was out of stock:

    This Tamiya Russian military truck is also out of stock, but looks like it could have been cool:

    If you want to do anything with T-34s or other WWII Russian tanks, you're in a bit more luck.

     

    The Tamiya Japanese Type 16 isn't a bad-looking modern vehicle in 1/48; with a little scratch-building creativity, some styrene sheets and other odds-and-ends, and a little work, I think the sides can be raised, the turret replaced with a remote machine-gun, and the back panel replaced with a door/ramp to convert to a Boxer or Vilkas-style AFV:

     

    I picked up an Italeri 1/56 M8/M20 armored car, it's not a very common sight and looks futuristic enough to disguise as a weird future combat vehicle of some sort, but I find this 1/56 scale vehicle to look just a dash on the small side compared to 28mm - the included driver figure is just half a torso that sits on top of the seat, and still barely fits in the vehicle!  Weird, and 28mm guys on plastic bases will dwarf this vehicle (the artist's painting of the vehicle doesn't really do justice to the kit contents), but if you can overlook that, the goofy half a driver figure can easily be head-swapped with a Death Fields head, and some creative kit-bashing can probably replace the old WWII style turrets and weaponry with something a little more space-age:

    There aren't many model kit options at all out there in 1/48 scale, and even fewerin 1/56 scale, I'm afraid.

    Beyond these sorts of 1/48 and 1/56 plastic model kits (most of them WWII era), I think you're stuck with four choices:

    1. 3D printing
    2. Cardstock projects (I've done this once before with a WWI tank that I printed on a bit of cereal box, it was a lot of fun, actually, and didn't look too bad)
    3. Raiding Games Workshop, Archon Studios, Manic, and other catalogues for 28mm sci-fi vehicles (including the new modular vehicle that is being developed by Wargames Atlantic for The Damned).  This isn't a bad option, and I think WGA's entry looks promising, but honestly I just don't care for the cartoony 40K style stuff from GW and some of those other manufacturers, and it's kinda what EVERYONE seems to default to.  (YMMV, of course!  You take what you can get, either way.)
    4. Taking your chances trolling the toy aisles of your local dollar stores or S-Marts for toy vehicles, some of which are roughly 28mm scale, and can vary from fairly realistic stuff to hilariously cartoonish toys, probably in cheap plastic and chrome that would need to be given a makeover to look a little more serious.  I can't make any recommendations here - good luck!

     

    Anyway, don't let hte 1/48 thing fool you - it's a lot closer to 28mm heroic scale than you might think, and works just fine for being modified into sci-fi projects.  (Wish I could say the same thing for 1/35 scale armor or 1/24 scale civilian car kits, both of which are available in a big variety of options, and both of which are way, way way too big to handwave for 28mm projects!)

     

     

  • Andreas Mayrhofer

    I just wanted to mention the swedish STRV-103 S tank.

    This tank screams sci-fi to me. Remove the main gun and add a turret: pa-chow sci-fi tank

    Badgers are tough. They dig in and hold the line. They don't give up and they aren't afraid. I wish we had more Badgers. #Gwelf

  • M

    It's a cool one, yep. Not sure if you can find kits for it at affordable prices though.

    Man i really wish Old Crow Models hadn't shut down, they had some awesome resin SciFi vehicles that would have worked very well.

    [wayback machine link]

  • GB

    As a general update regarding 3D printers: Consider buying a used printer, especially if you have a friend who knows what they are doing already. I picked up a 3-pack of used Ender 3's for $150 to split with a couple friends. I'll be devoting mine to cranking out terrain pretty much exclusively, but that's an absolute steal for the machine.

  • GB

    I want to give a specific shoutout to Scalehobbyist, a web store out of New Hampshire with absurdly good pricing on kits and paints. They are my go-to for most of my non-wargaming-vehicles-for-conversion.

    https://www.scalehobbyist.com

  • Yronimos Whateley

    Update on the 1/56 scale M-8/M-20 Greyhound:

    Now that I've seen one in person on the table mostly assembled, it's not a bad option for a near-future or other sci-fi armored car.  It's still a bit smaller than I would expect, but it's not hard to modify it in various ways to disguise it a bit for use outside its original WWII setting.

    And, for use with The Damned, if you want to aim for a vaguely Russian aesthetic, it's really not very far off from a Soviet BRDM-2 armored car!

     

    (Above:  an M-8/M-20 Greyhound, a US armored car from the 1940s...)

     

    (Above:  a Soviet BRDM-2, an armored car from the 1960s that could be fitted for nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare protection.  No off-the-shelf model kit in anything close to 28mm scale exists, to my knowledge, but that Greyhound is pretty similar!)

     

    The main divergence between the two vehicles, besides the number of wheels, would be dated, high, distincly mid-century US turret on the M-8 model kit, vs. the smaller, truncated conical turret on Soviet vehicles of this sort... the M-8 kit's turret would be mounted on an optonal plate that can be switched out for plasticard, and a picky modeler might loot a turret from a 1/72 scale Soviet BTR kit to replace it and give this vehicle a more late Cold-War Soviet look and feel,. 

    Switch out some other greeblies (such as replacing the M-8's dated headlights for something a little more "futuristic", and dropping the weird 1/56 antenna masts from the M-8's midsection in favor of something a little more streamlined, and of course leave out any WWII US military decals, and it's easily hand-waved as a broad strokes Death Fields sci-fi contraption in the spirit of the Soviet-style gas masks and weapons used by The Damned!

     

    I'll try to get some pictures next to some Wargames Atlantic Cannon Fodder for comparison of size - I kitbashed a Cannon Fodder guy's body onto the arms and gun from a WA WWI Italian machine-gunner, and a gas-masked head from a WA WWI Russian soldier, to make a sort of quick-and-dirty Damned turret gunner for the back of my Damned "not-a-Greyhound" BRDM-thing, and I think it would work just fine for a light scout car for these guys!

    I'm also in the middle of converting that 1/48 "Not-a-FAI-M" mid-war armored car into a Creeper Truck for The Damned, I might snag a couple pictures of that when I get around to it, it's looking pretty good so far.  I'm still a long way from painting, it needs a little filler for the seams, I need to figure out how to finish scratch-bulding the driver compartment, I still need to get around to finding a right arm for the Creeper driving it, and I havne't decided what to put in the back of the truck yet (if I keep going by the movie, there would be bodies back there or something, and I'm kind of inclined to role with the post-apocalyptic gothic cannibal serial-killer thing I'm envisioning for this version of The Damned, but I might try something a little different instead), but it's looking much better than I expected!

     

    @Andreas Mayrhofer - good call on that Swedish gun!  It looks like a great platform to build a sci-fi vehicle onto, and for some reason I'm really loving the plow on the front of it!  If it were just me, I'd probably want to replace that main gun with something else - not sure exactly what yet, but I'd thinkof something - but that's just a small detail to disguise the original vehicle a little, the vehicle itself is great stuff!

     

    @Brian Van De Walker - I love the scratch-built stuff started in one of the pictures you provided back there, reminds me of the YouTube channel for "Bill Making Stuff",  he builds some great stuff out of household junk, broken toys, and plastic beads, and paints it all up with heavily weathered and rusted effects for an imaginary junkyard planet... seems like a perfect fit for "The Damned" to me!

  • BVD

    @Yronimos Whateley I am going to level with you 1/56 works best with historical "scale" minis, so it would probably work okay with the more realisticly proportioned Eisnkern particularly if your wanting to show case that they are in power armor, and it would likely work great with moderns in historical scale (I have some historical scale 28mm metal terroists that just from eyeballing I know would work with Rubicon and Warlord models if I wanted).

    That said 1/56 looks small, slim, cramped and out of place next to Boltaction "Cinematic/low heroic scale" and even more so next to chunkier classic GW IG "heroic scale"  (ie the proportion styles Death Fields is sculpted in), the same way high quality photo based realistic drawings of vehicles would look out of place in the older TMNT Cartoons from the 80's/90's.

    The best scale models to use with heroic are 1/48 to 1/35 depending on one's preferances probably, though I bet 1/50 with modifications can work for some, and modification is something your going to want to do anyways if your trying to make them SciFi.

    I personally have a 1/48 Hobbyboss Sherman I thinking of converting into a damned vehicle.  Overall though with heroic I personally feel that normally you want something with a slightly more toyatic than normal look to it for vehicles likely with some rounding not a exact scaled copy of a real world vehicle.

  • Yronimos Whateley

    I think I prefer 1/48, I've seen complaints about it being "too big", but I've only noticed a problem in one or two 1/48 kits that seem to have been scaled weirdly - for example, (that Tamiya 1/48 mechanized howitzer looks like it's surely closer to 1/35 than 28mm, and the soldier figure that came with it towers over 28mm figures!

    The howitzer itself is fine, though, for conversion to sci-fi - 1/35 probably depends on the model kit - those seem to run a little large even by Heroic standards!  But, smaller 1/35 vehicles with little involved to hint at the difference in scale (light tanks and armored cars, for example) could almost certainly get by, especially for sci-fi/fantasy stuff, and especially after disguising the source vehicle a little with sci-fi greeblies, scaled-down accessories (jerry cans, shovels and axes and other stoage, and that sort of thing!)

    I dropped in to add that, for the really adventurous, 1/72 scale kits are technically too small for 28mm figures, and you'll really notice it with most kits, but 1/72 can be relatively inexpensive, and sometimes you can find a kit that's "close enough" to work for sci-fi/fantasy, given a little of the same sort of disguising described for 1/35 scale - heavy tanks and armored cars are probably good choices here,.

    I'm in the middle of converting a 1/72 Fennek kit had in my Pile of Shame for a few years into a 28mm sci-fi scout car - it just barely fits a 28mm driver (squashed to fit a scratch-built driver's seat) and one or two 28mm gunners/passengers (who would look fine as-is standing up through the hatches to fire a pintel machine-gun - there's a lot more room inside that little armored car than it would seem!  This car is only a little smaller in size than the Italeri 1/56 M-8/M-20 Greyhound model ki, and though technically smaller in scale, it actually took less modification to fit 28mm figures!  The modifications to add seats and driver/gunner figures are entirely optional though - it's a quick-and-easy build on its own with no modifications, and will absolutely work fine as a 28mm sci-fi objective marker for a command vehicle, scout car, or whatever.

    Again, I'll try to get photos taken when I have a few minutes to find my camera and figure out how to take pictures with it.  I'm currently mostly finished with these vehicle projects:

    • Tamiya 1/48 modern JGSDF light armored vehicle (looks beautiful alongside Wargames Atlantic sci-fi figures like the Iron Core, Cannon Fodder, etc.!)  (I've started assembly of this kit just to see how well it would work with 28mm figures to satisfy my curiosity; it's about half-built this morning, waiting on some wheels and windshields to be added, a gun and gunner to be mounted, and any final greeblies I want to add to disguise the source vehicle.)
    • Tamiya 1/48 Hummer (looks like it'll probably work just fine alongside WA modern and sci-fi figures, but I've done the least amount of work on this project so far.  (Half-built with work stopped last year from lack of motivation.)
    • 1/56 M8/M20 Greyhound - looks like it's surely closer to 1/72 scale than 1/48, but I'm fine with it, given a little modification:  the inside detail is weird and couldn't possibly fit 1/48 figures without a lot of chopping and scratch-building (which I've done!  The driver's seat still required me to chop off the lower half of a Cannon Fodder guy to use as a driver, there's NO room in that seat any other way!)  (Nearly complete except for minor assembly and painting.)
    • ACE 1/48 FAI-M WWI(?) era armored car:  as I suspected, this converted beautifully into a bizarre monstrosity of an old-fashioned "Creeper" truck, given a lot of scratch-building for the cab and cargo area!  The results of my modifications look like something out of an alternate-universe "Diesel-punk"/noir/pulp 1930s-1950s, and it looks great with WA 28mm heroic figures. (I plan to use ith with The Damned.)  Unmodified, the armored car would work fine with WWI or WWII historical figures, and could certainly be lightly modified into a Death Fields sci-fi vehicle of some sort (I'm not too happy with the way the parts fit together, but otherwise I'd recommend it as-is or with light modifications for the Raumjager, Eisenkern, or Damned teams!)  (Nearly finished, except for whatever I decide to put into the cargo compartment, and painting/weathering.)
    • Tamiya 1/48 US WWII Howitzer carriage - as mentioned, its scale seems a bit wonky and the figure looks aboutr a head taller than a WA 28mm figure, but the vehicle itself will pass for a sci-fi project pretty easily.  I'm planning to use it for The Damned, and removed the stock turret to be replaced with the M8/M20 turret, and I mounted spikes all over it and other little greeblies to give it a post-apocalyptic Heavy Metal look; to my vague amusement and dismay, the more I tried to disguise the source vehicle in spikes and bolt-on armor and the like while trying to avoid a Warhammer 40K aesthetic, the more it started looking like something from Warhammer 40K.  It's mostly faithful to the the Voivod RRROOOAAARRR album cover I was using for reference art in any case, so I'll just role with it.  As-is or with light modifcation, I'm sure it would work just fine for 40K or Death Fields gaming (perhaps with the Bulldogs or Ooh-Rah teams?)  (Nearly finished except for scratch-building armor plating for the top of the turret, and painting/weathering.)
    • Tamiya 1/48 Type 16 JGSDF Maneuvre Combat Vehicle:  Another project I heavily modified from the original kit, to turn it into a GTK Boxer-style infantry fighting vehicle/APC instead of a tank-like turreted gun carriage, for use with WA Ooh-Rah 28mm figures as a rough equivalent of the APC from the Aliens movie.  The vehicle is pretty big compared to the other vehicles I'm working on - these tank-sized vechicles take up a lot of real-estate on the tabletop!  The carriage is a bit low to the ground for an APC though - not really any headroom in there for passengers.  This required me to lift the roof up a bit, along with some additional modifications to make that look a little more natural.  I enjoy modeling vehicle interiors in this scale, so I've also taken the trouble here to model a pastiche of modern IFV interiors updated to a "20 minutes into the future" sci-fi setting; it's a lot of work, and I don't really recommend it for casual modelers.  As-is or with ligher modifications, the kit makes a fine sci-fi heavy tank, and might be hand-waved as an APC/IFV with minor modifications short of raising its roof.  (Nearly all done except for mounting a computer panel and some external armor plating and greeblies, and painting.)

     

    Over all, these plastic model kits in 1/72, 1/56, 1/48, and 1/35 scale are a nice source of relatively inexpensive base materials to build 28mm vehicles with.  The least amount of work would come from the 1/48 and 1/56 scale kits, with the downside behing that there are relatively few kits in this scale out there (though I take it the Bolt Action game supplies a bunch of 1/56WWII era kits for their games that might work great here!)

    No matter what kit you want to build, It's probalby not a bad idea to just grab a 1/72 or 1/35 scale modern armor kit or two on sale if you can find some irresistable prices, just to loot for little "greebly" bits to disguise your main project with:  hatches, turrets, pintel guns, jerry cans and stowage bits, headlights, mirrors, and so on are some go-to bits here, and late Cold War era Soviet and modern armored cars, trucks, and tanks are great sources for this sort of thing.

    I do wish it were easier to find a one-stop-shop sprue for modern, post-apocalyptic, and sci-fi stowage bits, though - stuff like axes, shovels, picks, hammers, jerry cans, pintel gun mounts, automatic/remote turret gun mounts, periscopes, ammo cans, gun barrels, engine bits, spikes, etc. I can scratch-build a lot of this sort of stuff, and loot other bits from other sources, but a shortcut sprue would be really handy!

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