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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

  • 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:



    (Heavily modified FAI-M armored car converted to a "Creeper", left, posed with a 1/72 Fennek converted with 28mm driver and gunner; painting is not finished yet on either, and I still need to add windows to the Fennek.)

    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:



    ("Type 16" Model kit as designed, "Boxer" reference photo, and model converted to APC, staged with Ooh-Rah guys by Wargames Atlantic and power armor figure by Reaper Bones; painting is not complete yet but I'm most of the way finished.)

    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!

  • Yronimos Whateley

    Well, I've got a LOT of painting ahead of me, NOTHING is done except forone vehicle which is about 90% painted, and i haven't completely assembled most of these vehicles yet, so there's a couple vehicles held together with scotch tape for photographing, and my photography skills are dreadfully bad, but here are som pictures - anything in white is probably scratch-built from Evergreen styrene sheets and rods: :

    • 1/72 "Fennek" armored car; technically too small, but if you can handwave the fact that it's about the size of a civilian compact car, it's not too far out of line with similar vechicles closer to a 28mm scale.  The driver (unseen) an dgunner are WA Cannon Fodder, the min-gun was built from some 1/48 scale minigun barrels I found somewhere (intended for mounting in model aircraft), fitted to the receiver of a 1/35 WWII machine-gun of some sort, with a scratch-built shield mounted on it.  The Cannon Fodder guys are just a dash too tall for the car, and legs and arms had to be trimmed down a little to fit, but I don't think anyone would notice if I didn't mention it.  Though small, the best things about 1/72 scale are that they are common, and cheap (generally 12-15 US$.)
    • 1/56 M8/M20 Greyhound armored car - it's a bit small and a WWII era vehicle, but with a little scratch-building to disguise the original vehicle, and a lowered floor in the cargo area to accommodate a machine-gunner, it works as a sci-fi vehicle.  I haven't painted the interior or driver yet, so I haven't finished gluing the top and sides down - this is the one held together with tape,  and it (hopefully) won['t be this sloppy when finished!  The machine-gunner is a modified Cannon Fodder guy,.
    • 1/48 Japanese Ground Defense Force armored car.  This will end up being a "COBRA" jeep-thing, if I ever get around to finisheding it (I started the project a year or two ago!)  The gunner and driver are Iron Core guys (the windows are translucent, not sure why they look foggy in the photo, except that I can't take a photo to save my neck!)

     

    • ACE 1/48 Soviet armored car, heavily modified into a "Creeper" delivery truck; the original top and sides are assmebled next to it for comparision.  The kit included the hood/bonnet and front grill  I used here (there was actually a total of three front grills, apparently this kit did triple-duty for three completely different vehicles, but didn't include all the optional parts to completely build the other vehicles!)  It probably would have worked just fine for Death Fields purposes if constructed as the original armored car.  The driver is a modified Reaper Bones undead outlaw in duster and cowboy hat.  I swapped the crude original wheels out for some spares from a cheap 1/72 scale WWII Soviet truck, since these looked better.  My (admittedly weird) conversion was very labor- and time-intensive:  the various bits are not easy to scratch-build due to the odd, curvy shapes of the fenders, grill, etc.

    • "1/48" scale M-8 howitzer carriage, heavily modified into Korgull the Exterminator, a post-apocalyhptic android ghoul.  I replaced the original gun turret with the smaller, unused Greyhound kit's turret, modified with a few other spare bits.  Wargames Atlantic skeleton arrows and spears provided the spikes, WA Boxers provided a few other spikey greeblies, a WA skeleton torso was used for most of the driver, with an Oathmark Goblin head, and a WA WWI Russian helmet.  I scratch-built a cyborg arm, reaching hungrily out of the hatch to grab a little fast-food on the run....

     

    • 1/48 Japanese Ground Defense Force gun carriage, heavily modified into a sci-fi APC.  This was another time- and labor-intensive project, since the roof had to be raised up to allow passengers.  I scratch-built the interior as well, with hinged rear and top hatches:  it'll seat a driver and up to 14 passengers (two 4 or 5-man rifle squads, an officer, and room for corporate "advisors") plus a comms/AI technician at a computer console, and there's also an armory (found another use for the spare rifles from an Iron Core set), and shelves/racks for helmets, flak vests, ammo cans, backpacks, sentry gun kits, water tank, and MREs for the team.  (I'll take some interior pictures later when I start painting - I haven't glued the top down yet, so the gaps visible at the nose and elsewhere shouldn't be visible after I get that done!) Most of the greeblies that weren't scratch-built (turret, hatches) were looted from a couple of spare BTR/BMP armored car kits (1/72 and 1/35) that I bought a couple years ago but decided not to use.

     

    • Included for scale are "The Damned Imps", kitbashed from a mix of Oathmark Goblin Slaves and Wargames Atlantic parts - generally WWI Russians' gas mask heads and Mosin-Nagant arms, with some backpacks from my bitz-box (I think they came from a Perry Napoleonic kit? I'd have used the backpacks from WA Italians or French otherwise.....)   The WA French and Russians use very similar helmets - maybe identical - and very similar gasmasks, so these guys are using a mix of French and Russian heads, some with scratch-built respirators.  A couple of the bodies are WA Cannon Fodder and Frostgrave cultists, both extremely versatile kitbashing sets!  I think there's a Perry(?) "Steppe Warrior" body and lance mixed in there, too.  A couple of the guys are armed with WA WWI Italian sub-machine-guns, mofified with AK-style magazines and bayonets to lend them a home-made post-apocalyptic look.  Scratch-built styrene bits include heavy-metal bullet belts (small-scale corrugated styrene sheets cut into thin strips), spiked shoulder armor, shotgun barrels (styrene rod glued onto 1/35 rifle stocks), etc.  I think there's a modified WA accessory sprue heaad or two mixed in there, too.  One Cannon Fodder body is joined to the arms and heavy machinegun from the WA WWI Italians kit, with an Accessory Sprue bayonet attached, and a scratch-built pintel mount. Oathark figures are shorter than WA figures by a couple millimeters, and Oathmark goblins are crooked and dwarfish by Oathmark standards, so these guys are generaally short, twisted little radioactive mutants dragged up out of the deepest doomsday vaults of their homeworld, wearing rags and rusting, decayed, antique gear that even The Damned rejected:  goblins by any other name, the Damned Imps are feral, vicious, cannibalistic, and repulsive even by the standards of the rest of their team:  perfect skirmishers, scouts, guards, rear-guard laborers, and all-around Cannon Fodder's cannon fodder.

     

    Next will be teh slow work of getting into the mood to finish/start painting....

  • BVD

    @Yronimos Whateley Nice conversions, by the way the only 28mm steppe warriors in plastic currently are Fireforge's Mongols (your model's base body), RGD's Scythians, and Victrix's horse mounted Scythians.

  • Yronimos Whateley

    Thanks!  Fireforge it is - I definitely chucked the box and stripped the sprues for parts as soon as I got it, then promptly forgot who made the set!   Fireforge's Mongols are a great theme, and some great little minis, too, for a variety of fantasy, sci-fi, and historical uses - I'll definitely pick up some more.  (Or, I'd gladly get them from Wargames Atlantic instead, if WA made a similar set!)


    Ooh-Rah! Colonial Marine APC interior:  (I definitely fought a fumble-finger war with CA glue and lost in a couple places, hopefully it'll be easy to cover up when I get around to painting.)


    1/48 COBRA jeep (mostly painted; the windows are transparent, honestly!)


    (1/72 and 1/56 scale vehicles vs. Cannon Fodder)

     

     

     

  • Battle Specter

    @Yronimos Whateley that Aliens inspired APC looks dope. I'm exceited to see it completed. Keep posting those pics.

     

    Mike Uher II
    Battle Specter Blog (www.battlespecterblog.com)
    Rambling Devil Podcast

  • Yronimos Whateley

    Glad you're enjoying those conversions, they're a lot of fun for me to make!  I'm slowly making progress on painting starting this last couple weeks, breaking out some Rust-oleum Camouflage rattlecans to get started.  The two 1/72 Fenneks are almost done, needing only windshields to be added and the crew/drivers to be painted, and the APC needs a few internal details and the driver to be painted so I can glue its top down and finish.  The creeper truck has a coat of paint that I though would turn out a rusty red but actually came out more like an OD green... it sort of works for a military truck, but I'm going to work on rusting and weathering it more like what I'm imagining, and again, the undead outlaw driver is waiting for me to start painting him,


    (APC interior WIP, staged with Reaper Bones power armor, Archon Studios Dungeons & Lasers sentry guns, and Wargames Atlantic Ooh-Rah.  Painting is nearly finished within limits of my failing eyesight and shaky and unpracticed painting skill, aside from some finishing touches, decals, and that sort of thing.)

    I've found a few more plastic model kit candidates for inexpensive Death Fields usage (under US$25 is what I consider "inexpensive enough".) 

    First, these Glencoe Models civilian classic cars from the early 20th Century in 1/56 to 1/48 scale might make entertaining conversions for those Death Fields teams that tend toward the Victorian or even Napoleonic, and perhaps WWI as well - just add armor and guns:

    I've got a shoe-box or two full of 28mm Cthulhu investigators and monsters somewhere that these cars would look great with, too, some of the investigator/cultist guys were made with Warames Atlantic's Partisans and would go great with these cars as-is!


    (1914 Stutz Bearcat, driven by a modified Wargame Atlantic French Resistance fighter.)

     

    This Airfix 1/48 scale Land Rover pickup truck looks like it would make a brilliant "Technical" - paint it in camo and mount the heavy machine guns from a 1/35 stowage kit or one of Wargames Atlantic's world war kits (like the Italians), and maybe tack on some styrene armor to protect the gunner, and you're set to go for something from the 20th century to the near future:

     

    This Tamiya 1/48 British scout car might go brilliantly with the Bulldogs team as-is, or converted into a "Technical" with a gun mounted in the back:

     

    And who wouldn't love to find a use for this Tamiya 1/48 WWII German armored "tractor"?

    It's begging for some sort of post-apocalyptic Weird World War conversion to drive through a zombie-populated wasteland in The Forbidden Zone!  The Raumjager Team in particular might appreciate one or two of these, as might the Einherjar....

    I also spotted a couple retro sci-fi spacecraft that caught my attention, in classic "rocket-ship" and flying saucer designs, which are begging me to use them somehow - this picture of Wargames Atlantic's Cannon Fodder look like they'd go nicely with this sort of thing:

    1/35 Pegasus "Apollo 27", and 1/144 Polar Lights flying saucer:

     

     

     

  • Yronimos Whateley

    This 1/72 scale "WWII Ground Vehicle Set" by Academy Plastics was about US 12 so I picked a couple up for parts:

    Technically too msall for 28mm figures, I figured there might still be some useful stuff mixed in there, such as the wheels, machine buns, and accessories.  The tracked "Kettelkrad" chain-bike is especially diminutive compared to 28mm figures, and combined with the pintel gun from the jeep in the same set readily converted into some armed robot/drones:


    (The shifty arms dealer says "We will try to meet the needs of your limited exchequer."  Former Kettelkrad vechicles in lower-left corner; other items include some Ramparts and Dungeons & Lasers bits from Archon Studios, a converted bit of Hasagawa aircraft crew field accessories converted into a wheeled drone, a modified "mule" type robot workhorse from an old Iron Core accessory set, an unpainted 1/35 scale .50 machine-gun converted into a grenade launcher, and a chrome-domed arms dealer made from Wargames Atlantic Cannon Fodder and Stargrave mercenary or scavenger bits.)

     


    (Reference photo that I used for the conversion work.)

    Other than parting them out as "greeblies" to add interest to other vehicles, I'm not yet sure what I'll do with the rest of the stuff from the Academy Plastics WWII vehicle set. The kit does include a bunch of thigh-high little oil drums, smallish jerry-cans, and some nice wooden ammo crates that  could probably be used as stowage or cargo in  28mm vehicles or dioramas/scenics, but the jeeps and kubelwagens are just too tiny to use for any practical 28mm vehicle, and would be unsuitable for "futuristic" drones, even assuming the Death Fields aesthetic of historical stuff given a sci-fi spin.   (Any ideas or suggestions on what to do with some WWII vehicle frames scaled down to about 2/3 the size of 28mm Death Fields figures?)

  • M

    you might be able to use the chassis as more robots, cutting down some of the more noticeable parts and using plasticard to make some superstructure. perhaps some cargo bots like this: (which could easily be a way to use some of that stowage)

     

    or you could convert them into small 4x4 ATV utility vehicles with some plasticard and plastic rod? like a smaller version of this?

  • Yronimos Whateley

    Good calls!  The robot would be very easy to scratch-build around some of those wheels - I've done it before with only a little more material than that to work with (there's something very similar to that reference photo in the middle of the group photo of random battlefield equipment along side the kettelkrad drones.)

    One of the great things about robots or drones is that no human driver figure is needed:  there's something of a shortage of inexpensive seated 28mm figures out there to use for vehicle drivers and passengers, and my work-around has been to cut Wargames Atlantic figures down at the waaist and then hand-sculpt seated legs, which isn't much fun to do.  Robotic vehicles are a great work-around to that limitation!

    The ATV you found absolutely does look suspiciously like a small jeep - I might try converting one of those jeeps into an ATV to see how well it works out!  I could scratch-build some larger seats from styrene pretty easily, and move the seats back enough to provide 28mm leg-room (the original jeep had minimal leg room as it was, so 28mm guys would need a lot more!)  That shouldn't be hard, and  I'd want to drop the iconic jeep front grill to replace it with something a little different to sell it as something other than an actual undersized jeep, but it looks like it would be relatively easy conversion work!

    (The jeep grill is easily recognizable, but shouldn't be hard to disguise!)

    I've been seeing some in a similar price range for German and Soviet WWII anti-tank guns and rocket artillery that might come in handy, for this sort of thing, too.  Speaking of artillery, I'm thinking some of the wheels I've parted out from this ground vehicle set would be pretty easy to rebuild into anti-tank guns or other artillery using plasticard and styrene rods or tubes.  Or, some of the less expensive 1/72 aircraft missiles from the accessory kits by Hasagawa, which seem to be begging to be converted to towed or self-propelled missile launcher platforms.

    I'm pretty surprised how much sci-fi mileage one could get from these little, inexpensive 1/72 kits - I think that most of the contents of the WWII Ground Vehicle set  can be repurposed almost by beginners with little or no trouble!

     

  • M

    i'll have to remember that kit. those kettenrad-drones look a bit like the early MALP drones from Stargate, and the two types of jeep look like they could be made into version of the later MALP (the chassi of which often got used as a cargo carrier or weapons platform), and/or the FRED cargo drone.

    MALP Version 2 on the right, version 1 on the left

    the FRED (Field Remote Expeditionary Device) (only got used durign the first two season, and was eventually replaced with a version of the MALP Mk2 chassis)

    and the "MALP MG mount" seen a few times in season 3 (this one from "forever in a day", where it first appeared)

    i've been building a Cannonfodder based force with a lot of stargate influences, so being able to build some MALPs would be nice.

  • Yronimos Whateley

    For those curious about the Bandai Gundam snap-together mecha model kits, my usual online hobby shop is carrying some for as little as US $10 or less right now - these kits seem like an incredible bargain, at that price! 

    Theoretically, they're only 1/144 scale - they should be nearly three times taller than this to match 28mm figures at ~1/56 scale! - but there's really nothing in the kit that ties these mecha to that scale, and they look great alongside 28mm figures and vehicles, towering over both, with a large chest and head that could comfortably seat a 28mm figure inside with room for gyros, engines, heat sinks, armor, actuators, and all the other guts you should expect to make such a machine work.

    This one is a "Zaku Warrior" posed with a 1/56 Greyhound and a "Not Destro" guy biult from Cannon Fodder and Stargrave bits.   It would snap together pretty easily in an afternoon, and is manufactured in multi-coloured plastic such that you could build it right out of the box without painting and it'll look fine, but Ispent the extra effort to paint mine up in subtler camo colours; it still assembled and painted easily in around 24 hours. 

    This mech is fully posable, I started to glue it into a single pose just to make sure it doesn't come apart later, but I can always do that later, for now it seems sutrdy enough to stand up to light tabletop gaming abuse.

    I like this particular model - it's sturdy, graceful, and mean-looking (I'm not incredibly familiar with the anime and couldn't read the Japanese description in the instructions/box, but I get the impression this is one of the anime's bad-guy mechs).  I think it might go especially well with Iron Core figures, but Bandai apparently makes dozens or maybe hundreds of different Gundam model kits for those looking for something just a little different..

     

     

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  • M

    the Zaku Warrior is from the Gundam Seed series, and yep it's one of the badguy mecha. one of their cannonfodder designs. the Seed series was a sort of 'reinvisioning' of the classic Gundam setting, and the Zaku Warrior was basically a reimagining of the classic Zaku.

    not every Gundam series gunpla kit would work as a 28mm scale unit, but a fair number of them would (especially many of the badguy units), and they certainly would add a lot of flair as a 40K Armiger equivilent or as a 'walking tank' if the ruleset doesn't have specific mecha rules.

     

    and they're not uncommonly pretty cheap. certainly cheaper than most GW kits.

  • ADC

    @Yronimos Whateley This particular Zaku Warrior seems more in scale with 28mm minis, its torax could easily allow an human pilot in, so it isn't out of place near these scale's figures. Others Mechas that are done in the same scale of Stargrave's ones are those of "Full Metal Panic !", they are perfect for them, such as this :

    https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10563277

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  • BVD

    @Yronimos Whateley Link please and yeah they have at least made hunderds of diffrent Gundam kits over the years, and thats not the only mecha/scifi franchise they make models for either😆.

    @Alessio De CarolisHmm, if those 1/60 fullmetal panic mechs work with chunky stargave figures, I wonder if the 1/60 Patlabor German army mech I have would work with my Iron Core stuff (got to get to building those mech kits😆).

    @Mithril2098 Hmm, I wouldn't say revisioning so much as reusing similar formula (Wing had many similarities to the original one year war verse as well, and I bet you can make the same arguements for almost everything else except SD digitial cartoon meant for kids, Build Fighters and maybe the time travel multiverse manga since crossovers are there own thing, but hey thats Gundam fandom🤣).

     

     

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  • M

    @Brian Van De Walker actually i was referring to the statements by the studio and producers made about the show when it was released. it was to be "the 21st century Gundam", an updated and reimagined retelling of the classic story elements, along with some stuff added from the other shows that had come before. in a sense, it was meant to be to the original UC Gundam what Yamato 2199 was to the original Space Battleship Yamato.

  • BVD

    @Mithril2098 Ahh, so thats why there are so many memes making fun of it, I will leave it at that😆.

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  • ADC

    @Brian Van De Walker I've an old 1/60 Patlabor's Helldiver, and it fit well with std 28mm minis, its cockpit could seem a bit tight, but generally these pilots seems always being a bit on the short side.

    Recently I saw this : 

    https://heresyminiatures.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_130&products_id=510

  • BVD

    @Alessio De Carolis yeah my labor kit is a 1/60 Brocken, have no idea how it will work out. Also have a few  big 1/48 mechs kits from Martian Successor Nadisco and some small practical 1/48 Votoms, those would likely work for a lot, in fact I sort of got the Votoms for the Damned.

  • Andreas Mayrhofer

    I just built a 1/35 Tamiya Stug IV to use it as a heavy sci fi Tankhunter. Here is it pictured next to a Ironcore Stormtrooper. I think it works as a 40k style superheavy 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

  • D

    Looks pretty well and detailed honestly. I think a few details to close it's scale to 28mm like accessories, switching barrels to smaller ones and other tidbits (Night Shift on YT is pretty good at this) so it really comes there. Please share when you finish this one!

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