I've made a recent discovery (to me at least) about the compatibility of 1/72 or 20mm miniatures and GZG's 25mm power armour. Interestingly enough, the GZG miniatures are small enough to work fairly well as large battle suits with 1/72 miniatures. There are some comparison shots on my blog:



http://172minis.blogspot.com/2009/11/sc ... scale.html

I hope this can be useful to people thinking about getting both 25mm and 20mm stuff.

I was thinking of doing the same thing as sort of a Modern Superscience type of thing.You wouldn't happen to have any GZG 25mm figs(non power armor) to compare to the 1/72 stuff would you?

_________________
Hawkins: Leary, you got that missile. You might wanna think about using it.
Leary: I would if I could figure the damn thing out.
Rexer: It's a one shot deal.
Leary: What?
Hawkins: You miss, we die.

Hi, here's the comparison. As you can see, the size mostly matches but the proportions don't look quite right:





More here:

http://172minis.blogspot.com/2009/12/sc ... power.html

Thanks for this.

I do wish there was more team selection in 1/72 sci-fi at the moment.

I'm totally teetering on the edge of going 15mm, but would love to build up 20mm forces if the selection and opponents were there.

_________________
Peabody, Here!
Bullwinkle: This is the amplifier, which amplifies the sound. And this is the preamplifier, which, of course, amplifies the pree.

Yes, 1/72 sci-fi is pretty much non-existent, and the 20mm metal offerings are also slim. You know it's bad when the most comprehensive range is 20+ years old!

In truth, for sci-fi I'd recommend people go the 15mm route, if they don't have the same bigotry against 15mm men that I do. I happen to game 1/72 sci-fi mainly because I have all the modern/WWII plastics already for other purposes.

Greg,

I'd like to game 1/72 sci-fi mostly to build / convert cool plastic kits.

Picked up two Merkavas cheap on eBay with that in mind just last month, so nothing stopping me from kit-bashing nifty plastic kits I suppose.


But, yah, I've had an order for a nice pile 15mm sitting on my desk-top for the last few days now. Just have to commit and send it off to GZG.

_________________
Peabody, Here!
Bullwinkle: This is the amplifier, which amplifies the sound. And this is the preamplifier, which, of course, amplifies the pree.

Are these the S-MARS Merkava kits? If so, how are they? Please show pictures anyways. I've never tried actual kit-bashing of 1/72 models, but I'm curious what sort of things you're planning to do.

Why, yes they are! I'll go open a box directly... Just put them on the pile as they arrived in the mail....
The S-Mars Merkava MK
[It's a "Mystery Merkava" 'cause that's all it says on the box, but I'm thinking it's a Mk IV ]

The kit does not exceed expectations: No decals or extras. Moulded in grey plastic with a slight texture, or tooth to it, no flash. There are 28 pieces to the main part of the kit. This is not counting the sprue of two-part road-wheels or the deeply detailed soft black rubber tracks.
Bogies are moulded onto the one piece lower hull.
Detail is fairly good. All hatches are open, so you could perhaps crew this beast.
The Main Gun is one-piece and looks plain odd, probably the biggest weakness of the kit that I can spot straight out of the box. Also the Skirts lack detail that is otherwise apparent elsewhere on the kit.

All in all this looks like a perfectly fine quick build gaming kit and an excellent starting point for a bit of Grav-Tank Madness. I have two of these so I opened the other box just now... This one is moulded in whitish plastic, the detail is less crisp and some flash is apparent as are some broken details.

Dirt cheap from China. Caveat Emptor, as usual.

_________________
Peabody, Here!
Bullwinkle: This is the amplifier, which amplifies the sound. And this is the preamplifier, which, of course, amplifies the pree.

Thanks for the quick review. I was wondering how good these are - On the Way says that these Merkavas are poor copies of the old ESCI kits. Henk of Holland's page has pictures of sprues, but those are for the Galaxy ones, which should be the same, but I don't know how representative they are.

The Merkava definitely has sci-fi conversion potential, with its futuristic looking turret. I think the LeClerc is another one with good potential, with its turret.

BTW, in case you didn't know, On the Way is a great source of reviews/previews for 1/72 scale vehicle models.

http://www.onthewaymodels.com/

Henk of Holland has a good list of both 1/72 vehicle models and figures with pictures.

http://henk.fox3000.com/index2.htm

Ah, so it's a MK II, not a IV, that explains somewhat the weird looking gun.

_________________
Peabody, Here!
Bullwinkle: This is the amplifier, which amplifies the sound. And this is the preamplifier, which, of course, amplifies the pree.