Civilian Vehicles

av8rmongo · Post by **av8rmongo** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 6:41 pm

I'm pretty sure they're all 1/20" but I'll double check my invoice.

Paul

modwar64 · Post by **modwar64** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 8:15 pm

Does anyone know were I can see pictures of the civilian vehicles produced by Irregular Miniatures. Especially the Fire Engines. When possible I like to look before I buy.

Also, Will (ComOps Ctr) where can I purchase the 1/240th scale Artsupply Cars you mentioned in your recent post?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Tony

jpo · Post by **jpo** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 10:24 pm

Sorry, I don't have any pictures, yet.

The irregular miniature fire engines are pre-1960s. they have a curved nosed cab rather than the current flat front ones. Strangely, they seem smaller than 1/300 scale, esp. when put next to the cars which are on the big size.

1ComOpsCtr · Post by **1ComOpsCtr** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 10:37 pm

Sorry, the old "ARTsupply" company went out of business a few years ago and I don't know if their products were purchased by someone else to market. I have not found them anywhere. They were the only manufacturere of lead cars close to our scale after In Service Miniatures went out of business. I know the name "In Service" is not supposed to be spoken in polite company in the 1/285th business, but they did do lead copies of Kibry 1/220 scale sedans, pickup trucks, and other civilian vehicles. They marketed them as their own 1/285th scale, which they weren't, but that's part of what got them into trouble I think...

Pick up a Walthers N/Z Scales Catalogue from you local model train store. There are many 1/220 vehicles available through Walthers. Including a set with a European Fire Engine and 2 other emergency vehicles (prepainted with a working ladder). We use a couple of dozen trucks in various configurations purchased through Walthers for our convoy training exercises. As I have said previously, they are painted, lettered, and ready to roll. Some will think they are expensive, but in my opinion they are worth every penny.

The Armoured Train and track in the picture is by H&R. The tractors came from a local "Charm" supplier, which is also a good source if you don't mind "close" scales. The wagons being pulled by tractors are GHQ or H&R. The people are from Preiser, from their large boxed set of unpainted "Z" scale people (note the horses) which fit really well with the GHQ scale individual infantrymen. The road itself is also available pre-lined from Walthers in "Z" scale. As you can see, it works great. They also have "cobblestone" from the same manufacturer. Note the different colors...

Quite frankly, most scales from 1/220 through 1/350 work pretty well together in a table top situation, don't you know!

Will
ComOpsCtr

modwar64 · Post by **modwar64** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 11:45 pm

To jpo and Will THANK YOU for your information it is very useful.

Tony

BattlerBritain · Post by **BattlerBritain** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 2:35 pm

Great Piccies 1ComOpsCtr - I love the terrain.

As an additional source of Civilian stuff Irregular Miniatures do a range of cars, fire engines, police, 'rioters', camera crews and reporters.

You find them on their 6mm page at:
http://www.irregularminiatures.co.uk/

Be warned - the quality may not be as good as GHQ but I've got some of their 'infantry in foxholes' and terrain items and they are certainly acceptable to good.

I don't know what these civilians are like.

Cheers,

Battler

1ComOpsCtr · Post by **1ComOpsCtr** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 5:47 pm

Battler,

Thanks...

We use some of the civilians and a couple of the scenes for part of our refugee camp though after finding the Preiser (sorry I've misquoted the manufacturer before) figures from Walthers:

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/590-88500

We've gone to this set of unpainted 1/220 scale which really work well with the GHQ line because of the quantity and quality of the plastic castings, but I must point out they are rather delicate and should be mounted on a base that can easily be picked up. Recently I've started using a small nail mounted on the back of the base to make handling easier and safer for the figures. There are several "cops" included in the Preiser set as well as "hard hat" workers and civilians of all kinds including kids and teens. If you take a look at the link it shows a picture of half of the set (you get two of each figure as I remember).

I was not very happy with the lines of tents available so I worked up a tent city for our refugee evacuation simulations, along with the group of refugees you see in the picture above in their tractor convoy.

Here is a picture of the camp with GP Large US tents I made using sculpy for the master and casting them out of resin for a USMC exercise a couple of years ago...

The tent ropes were made using brush material from a commercial 2" paint brush. The water bufalo and generator are GHQ. The square mess tent to the left is by Leva from Canada who make an excellent line of buildings in our scale.

Will
ComOpsCtr

modwar64 · Post by **modwar64** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 6:34 pm

PING.

Also, I am working on adding civilians to some of my World War Two games.

During my recent research on this subject I found that many of the staff cars, trucks, bicycles and motor cycles, offered by NAVWAR(Heroics/Ros) and Scotia, would be adequate for civilian vehicles.

I found some images of the above-mentioned on the Fort Wargame "Database" page located at this link.

http://warweb.homelinux.net/modeldb/modeldb.html

Thanks,

Tony

VonTed · Post by **VonTed** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 7:45 pm

That is a nice little site, some great links and images

Mk 1 · Post by **Mk 1** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 12:55 am

modwar64 said:
Also, I am working on adding civilians to some of my World War Two games.

During my recent research on this subject I found that many of the staff cars, trucks, bicycles and motor cycles, offered by NAVWAR(Heroics/Ros) and Scotia, would be adequate for civilian vehicles.

I very often inject some civilians into my games. Modern and WW2 (only been playing WW2 for the past few years...).

For WW2 civies, you are correct that there are some military vehicles that fit civilian purposes well. But ... don't go overboard. One or two trucks (the Soviet GAZ-AA is good -- a license-built copy of the Ford "Model A" truck of the early '30s), one or two staff cars (the French Renault staff car by Navwar is good), and if you get some bicycles where the riders don't obviously carry guns, that would be good. But for the rest of the civie population I would recommend horse-wagons.

Most of Europe was not yet motorized in 1940, and the rate of motorization went down REAL FAST during the war as civilian vehicles of all types were appropriated for military use.

This is a Belgian / Northern French style farm cart which I scratch-built (kit-bashed?) from two 25-pdr turnstyles, two pieces of pulled styrene, and a square of balsa. Add a horse and rider from the extras bin, and some ditrious and shavings from the waste bin, and there it is. (Sorry if the pic isn't very good -- best we got.)

This puppy showed-up in a game I had with CG Erickson and Thunder at KublaCon last year. It was a France, 1940 scenario played on Thunder's game boards. We used our hidden movement rules, so all playing pieces were represented by paper chits. I was French. This cart was in my units, but I moved it with a simple "automaton" algorithm, which was:
1) Move TOWARDS the French baseboard whenever possible
2) Turn and move AWAY from any firing guns for 2 turns

Thunder spend half the game trying to get into a position to spot that one chit, which kept going back and forth, back and forth. It seemed withdraw, then it would turn and charge back at him, then turn around and withdraw again.

I've played games with police in the middle (one traffic cop stopped a modern US task force for 2 turns).

The cop car is the blue-and-white hatchback parked near the 'copter. A kit-bash from a jeep, with some judicious clipping and applications of putty.

I've also played games where one of the defending player's got victory points for civilians who survived and got to safety. In one modern scenario the U.S. player (me) had to evacuate the civies in a small village. I had figures (ugly old Russian and U.S. WW2 infantry, re-painted in civie colors) mounted 1 or 2 to a stand spread around the town, that activiated on random roles. There was a convoy in the middle of town with a couple military trucks, a civilian ambulance (the red-and-white kit-bashed van in the middle of the pic above), and a couple of military police jeeps as escorts.

I had to decide when to pull out, balancing the loss of points for those civies not yet on the trucks vs. the risk of loosing the whole shebang if the BM-27s opened up on the town.

All this as background noise while I maneuvered my M60/M113 infantry-heavy company combat team to try to defend against a Soviet BTR-mounted re-inforced motor rifle battalion attack.

Civies can indeed add a considerable interest to wargaming.

modwar64 · Post by **modwar64** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 1:19 am

Thank you Mark 1 for the useful information.

You have given me a lot of food for thought.

Tony

jpo · Post by **jpo** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 9:10 am

Who makes bicycle troops? I didn't see any at Fort Wargame. I am looking for some good figs to represent Critical Mass nonviolent protesters.

modwar64 · Post by **modwar64** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 8:18 pm

Hi jpo,

I think Navwar(Heroics/Ros) still makes WW II German Cylists #G103.

A US retailer who should still carry this item is The Last Square:

http://www.lastsquare.com/hindex.html

If these are not available I think motorcycle figures could be reworked to look like bicycles. This is what I plan to do if the Cylists are unavailable. I feel pretty secure doing this because 1:300th scale figures viewed at two to three feet away would look very close.

I hope this helps.

Tony

jpo · Post by **jpo** » Sun Aug 20, 2006 9:17 am

Posting to keep this thread around.

av8rmongo · Post by **av8rmongo** » Thu May 31, 2007 9:23 pm

Here's the previous thread discussing civilian vehicles. In it there are pictures of primed Microform models civilian vehicles next to a Humvee (which I just noticed is one of the other guy's, oops!) for comparison.

Paul