Even though I already own a small quad mecha force in the form of my Heavy Gear Caprice mechs, and a "Mad Max" style force in the form of my Dropzone Commander Resistance force, I have always wanted a Cold War era style mechanised force with tanks and IFVs.
I looked around for a long time, and eventually I decided that the best way to get the models I wanted in the smallest numbers of deliveries was to get a ZOD tank company off ebay and two packs of Pendraken's sci-fi marines.
The ZOD models are cheap "scale-less" models sometimes advertised as 15mm, but as you can see from the photo above they are closer to 10/12mm, with the vehicles being much wider than they should be "in real life", although the aspect ratios look fine for tabletop models.
For the camouflage I used a "bands and wedges" pattern, which I created by spraying the models with brown primer, then putting masking tape over the models, and then spraying a sand colour, and removing the masks. They are obviously not practical in real life, but at this scale, when looked at from certain angles, they do break up the shape of the vehicles.
Years ago I saw a tank design chat on youtube.
ReplyDeleteI learned that aspect ratio is important for driveability.
Very square tanks are very good at neutral turns and tight manoeuvres, but require constant attention to maintain straight line driving.
They're also prone to pitch a lot on rough terrain (some excellent illustrations with Universal carriers making emergency stops).
Very long tanks are prone to shedding tracks during tight turns, but are far better t maintaining direction with less driver fatigue.
Another advantage now occurs to me for the square tank.
Quick changes of angle for big gun adjustments.
Important for a Stug / S-Tank.
Useful for a big tank with slow traverse like a Tiger.