RE: 15mm AFVs

One idea, is 1/72 scale Armor, another is Matchbox and Hot Wheels (Hot
Wheels 
does a M-113 Variant, and Matchbox does a Bradley, M1, Hummer and
Missile 
Truck).  And last is scratchbuild a master and home resin cast more. 
Could be 
done with some of the OOP (Martian Metals, Laserburn) stuff too.

Michael Brown

-----Original Message-----
From:	John Crimmins [SMTP:johncrim@voicenet.com]
Sent:	Monday, July 05, 1999 4:36 PM
To:	gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
Subject:	15mm AFVs

After running my first game on the table at my apartment, I have been
contemplating breaking out the few 15mm figures that I still have and
getting them painted.  Friday night's game was a lot of fun, and very
bloody, but fitting 80+ 28mm figures, along with all of my terrain,
strained things to the breaking point.	25mm would be a little bit
better...but not much.	And so, those 15s seem better and better.

I have two forces of about 70 men each (both Parthas), and a handful of
other forces numbering between 20 and 30 men each (Laserburn, Aslan and
Marines from the really nice Traveller line, some Martian Metal robots,
and
some Simtac Bug Guys), but I'm kind of short on vehicles.  What I do
have
is a set of a ten Roco minitanks that were modified and painted by Stan
Johansen himself -- 8 tracked, two hover, all made from the SPz-Lang(?)
--
three Laserburn APCs, and a matched set of a HUGE tank and APC, made by
I
don't know who.

I've decided to scratchbuild some new stuff, but I am hampered by severe
budgetary restrictions.  A quick check of the local hobby and toy stores
found nothing of any real use, except possibly for the crawler from Lost
In
Space -- three for $5.00.  Nobody in the area carries Roco,
unfortunately.
I'm going to hit Toys R Us tomorrow, and see if there are any useful
Matchbox or Hotwheels toys.  Plus, there's a line of Star Wars toys that
have the early versions of some of the vehicles packaged with a larger
"final" version.  The early Snowspeeder is very nice, and seems to be in
scale.	If I can only find it on sale....

The other idea that I had is based on some tanks that a friend of mine
built many years ago.  He took an old die-cast "Stealth Bomber", from
the
days before anyone know what they looked like, and put turrets on them.
The planes had a simple, delta shaped body, with a pair of small fins at
the rear, and the turrets looked surprisingly natural on them.	You can
see
a sadly blurry picture of them here: http://www.voicenet.com/~rjfrantz/ 
at
about the center of the picture.  I am sure that they are long out of
production, though.

Are there any other toys that I can look for?  Preferably cheap ones? 
I'm
actually looking forward to doing the modifications, so I don't mind
pieces
that need a good bit of work to be made useful.
John X Crimmins
johncrim@voicenet.com
  "...is one of the secret masters of the world: a librarian.
They control information.  Don't ever piss one off."
  --Spider Robinson, The Callahan Touch.