SG2 vehicles (was Re: Full Thrust...)

On Wed, 4 Nov 1998 ScottSaylo@aol.com wrote:

> I've been creating some roughly 25mm sci-fi vehicles for Stargrunt and
2300 AD
> by kit bashing Hot Wheels, friction toys and model kits. We all know
how few
> and far between white metal vehicles in that scale are (not to mention
how
> d****d expensive they are). A 99 cent (US) friction toy tank has been
changed
> into a hover fighting vehicel.
>	What I did roughly was remove the tracks and build up the sides
with
> cardstock, put plastic hosing from a ventilator hose (my wife is an
Registered
> Nurse and I can scrounge all sorts of things from unused medical
disposable
> gear), The stubby little gun was not to intimidating, so I extended
the barrel
> with nested different diameter soda straws to provide the gun tube and
cooling
> sleeve. An MG from the ROCO Mini-tanks line provides the commander
with a gun,
> two boxy missile launchers made from polymer clay provide missile or
decoy
> launchers and a rubber stopper from an injectable med bottle provides
a drum
> shaped phased array targeting system. Looks sharp! I have three of
them to
> provide a hover tank platoon.

I've done roughly the same thing to four Roco Minitanks Marders and an
Airfix Scorpion light tank. The tracks come off, hover skirts are added
-
I use air-drying clay. the Marders make big (size 4) IFVs - 12 infantry
spaces, a GAC/2, and 2 SAWs. They're very mean vehicles - they put so
much
fire downrange that infantry sometimes just dissolves...The Scorpion,
with
hover skirts and some bits and pieces added, makes a very nice light
tank.
(size 2, HKP/3 TU, 1 SAW). It's an Airfix kit, so it had to be
assembled,
but it went together quite well.

The various 1/72 1/76 1/87th scale kits are good sources - I'll probably
buy some modern Japanese MBTs for modification into SF MBTs sometime
soon.
Using 'foreign' vehicles is the way to go - it's not going to be
instantly
recogizable the way, say, M1s or M113s would be - here in Canada,
foreign
means 'anything not US or Canadian'...Others would vary that, of course.
(and of course, US vehicles are very, very recognizable - stick a hover
skirt on an M113 model and the comments won't be 'What's that?" but
"What
did you do to that M113?")

What scale would be suitable for 25mm gaming? 1/48 or 1/35 or...?

I've also got a toy truck that I found somewhere, with a coat of paint
and
bits added it looks very good.

>	Hot Wheels toys makes a wierd six wheeled vehicle with a radar
dish. I
> removed the dish built up the sides of the vehicle with card stock,
provided a
> flat deck, cut card stock and folded it to provide egress doors for
the
> infantry squad, added a round coupola and gun mount for the vehicle
commander
> and I have a nifty six-wheel APC (three of them now) From a Zodiac
style boat
> in that rough scale I created a larger Hover APC for the armored squad
of
> battle suits, another six wheel vehicle is a RAM arty SP guise and yet
another
> with a multi-barrel gun mount provides AAA and CFS for the company. A
couple
> dozen infantry and six battle suit infantry and I have a well-rounded
> StarGruntII company ready for the table.
> 
> Scott
> 

Very cool. I'm looking for some APCs for the rest of my company. The
Minitank Marders are very nice, but a bit expensive for me to want to
buy
another eight or ten of them...I'll have a look thru the Hotwheels racks
at a toy store sometime, and see what I can see.

there's even less Science Fiction vehicles in 15mm scale than in 25, I
think...Irregular makes some, but Irreg's quality is quite low often,
and
their styling odd - I've got some of their 'star marines' in 15mm.
Tabletop Miniatures makes half a dozen different vehicles, but I haven't
ordered any of their stuff yet. Aside from those two, 15mm SG2 players
are
SOL. GZG had, 8 or 10 years ago, a couple of vehicles. I only know this
because a friend has some catalogs of Jon's from that long ago - those
vehicles are, I think, long out of production. (Jon, that's correct,
right?)

Anyone else know of any other sources of 15mm vehicles for SciFi?
There's
WW2 and moderns ranges in 15, which could be modified, but what else?

Sometime soonish (in a month or so) I should get around to taking some
gaming photos and posting them to my site, including photos of my sg2
forces, and maybe an illustrated how-to article on how I make modern
vehicles into SF ones. 

 Brian (burger00@camosun.bc.ca)
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