Roco Artillery

Self-propelled artillery takes a huge number of supply vehicles.

Artillery also needs communication vehicles and command vehicles.

A group of M577s fit together as the fire direction center.

Each M578 vehicle tows and M10 ammo trailer.

This is one of my modern US Army artillery battalions. Roco Minitanks make up all the vehicles in this collection.

VW Bug

Busch makes a military version of the VW Beetle. This is it! In HO 1/87th scale.

This little car is complete with panzer gray paint job and cross markings on the doors.

The VW was used by the German Army all during WWII. They were kept in production after the war and used by the Occupation Troops too.

Shown here with their Propaganda Car and a Roco Kubelwagen.

These are some nice little kits and I highly recommend them if you collect WWII German vehicles.

More Martians

Bag o' Martians! More Martians! Coming October 2010! There is also a rumor that they will release some other Martian item later this year, more if I find out more!


http://www.twilightcreationsinc.com/

I got an email from Twilight Creations that says their Martians figures will be sold separately. The figures will be out in October of this year! That's great news. These Martians figures are great for War of the Worlds scenarios and for Mars Attacks! games and even for other space related games.

Science fiction wargames is a great way to re-use your historical collection. Get a few of your favorite science fiction vehicles, a few hundred of the Martians! and have them fight your Earthmen historical armies. The interesting thing is your Martians can be weak, strong, easy to kill, hard to kill and their Earthling opponents won't know until well into the game. It is the not knowing that is so hard on the mind of the Earth player.

Devise hit rules for your Martians, but don't show the Earth player what they are. Don't tell the Earth man what kind of armor the Martians have because the Martians are an unknown quantity. Players play a very different game when they don't have any idea how good the enemy is!

Fulda Gap Traffic Jam

My Cold War collection would not be complete without a few Russian hordes to oppose my American Army. Here the Petner Panzer T-72 sits next to a Tomy T-34/85 II, the post war version of the T-34.

Time magazine ran an article a few years after the first T-72 tanks were displayed in public. They showed a low silhouette version with a self loading, unmanned turret, called the FST, the Follow-on Soviet Tank. I built one based on their artists conception drawing.

The venerable Roco T-44 sits here in the corner, and the bright green tanks are the Armourtec T-62 tank. The Russians never threw anything away and often older tanks were kept in service as Category Three units, police or just kept in storage. Sometimes they were pulled out of storage and placed along the border as bunkers, dug into the ground to provide a line of defense. Other times the turrets were removed and they served as towing vehicles for damaged tanks.

A few support vehicles round out this unit. Supply trucks, artillery towing tractors, fuel tankers, are all part of the needs of a modern army.

A pretty impressive line up of Soviet equipment. It's too bad that Petner Panzers and Armourtec never really got off the ground. Their products were not perfect, but were great first efforts. Fidelis Models probably has some of these gems in stock. When Armourtec when out of business the models passed on to Petner. He spend some significant amount of money to improve the kit, and there are a few of the new ones in my collection too, but that's another box.