"15mm 20th Century Tanks for Sci-Fi Use" Topic

Anyone converted or simply just repainted any modern era tanks for their sci-fi games?

Yeah, these were made from 1/72nd Airfix Saracens
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I have 3 Strykers and a Merkava that I will be doing something with soon.

West German stuff is pretty futuristic looking, as is the M60A2 tank (nicknamed the Starship).

Leave as is, or remove the tracks and convert as desired.

QRF has some rather cool looking obscure modern stuff I have considered doing a little conversion work on. The south African stuff is really cool.

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Brazil

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Why not South African armour in SF? There's a lot of Buffels and a Ratel series armoured car in DISTRICT 9 . . .

I'm using Bradleys as my main APC for my fast response light infantry force in TW.

You can find them quite cheap on E-Bay around the £1.50 price mark and they make the basis for a great looking sci-fi APC/IFV, what I am talking about the old Airfix battle set plastic M113's. By simply adding a rear hull turret with a fictional weapon you can create a military vehicle that would look right at home on the battlefield in the near future, or by adding some plastic strips to lower the side armour and adding some side exhausts pipes and you have a wannabe GW Space marine Rhino variant. I've been meaning to pick up a couple for myself but never seen to get around to doing so when they are readily available.

I used an old Airfix poly M113 as the basis for a stand-in Capitol Imperialis for Epic 40K, but the plastic isn't a great substrate and it regularly shed bits regardless of glue. For a similar price you can pick up JB Models/Airfix M113 or M113 fire support, which are hard plastic (the chassis is also the same as that used for the original 40K epic Imperialis). The following turret from Oold Crow sits quite nicely on the JB M113 Fire support.

I'm using more or less vanilla Saracens and Saladins from JB/Airfix for my Colonial's. Though I'm planning to sci-fi them up a bit with GZG-bits. Airfix is due to re-release the JS III, which I have slated to provide neo-soviet armour. I probably won't put too much effort in to changing its look seeing as it doesn't look like a JS III anyway.

I have Strykers and Merkavas as is.
AMX13 hulls with BMP2 turrets.
AMX13 Hulls with GZG manned auto-cannon turret
GZG hover tank hulls with BMP2 turrets
1/87 Marder 3 with tracks removed as Grav MICV
15mm T80 with tracks removes as Grav MBT. Always planned to do the same with Airfix Sheridan but never got round to it.
1/87 West German Weasals as is.
1/72 French Leclerc as is.
1/87 M114 as is….. even left on the 1980s US Army MERDC.

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Most of these have been surplanted by the wealth of dedicated Sci Fi vehicles that came on the market over the past two-three years.

Cheers
Mark

I use a couple of Peter Pig Bufels as troop carriers for the town militia.

I used some Bravo Team 1/72 M113s to make ersatz Space Marine vehicles. They're available still on e-bay, but have gotten more expensive. I also used Old Crow turrets. Here's a link if you're interested.
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How about the Swedish Stridswagen tank from the 80's?

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1/72 but not too common a sight for modern tank fans. Perhaps add some greeblies?

The modern 8-wheeled, Italian armored car/tank would be a great one. Can't ever remember the name of it, but it is very cool looking.

A shame no one makes a nice 15mm model of it.

I forgot about these guys, the bargain basement option, cheap, Chinese, plastic toy tanks picked up off ebay very, very cheap – roughly around 1:100. They're mainly crude renditions of post-war vehicles. I just added a few bits (with 2-part epoxy), painted and based – probably less than $1 USD/tank

There are lots of fairly simple modifications that you can do to make a modern vehicle into a futuristic one. Some ideas:

-- Turret and barrel swaps can go a long way towards sci-fi-ing a common tank
-- Adding a small radar dish (Lego ones work well in 28mm scale)
-- Use micromesh across the rear of the turret or in place of track skirts
-- Add a Hydra rocket pod from an Apache or Cobra helicopter model kit
-- Offset the turret slightly to one side instead of having it centered, or slide it rearward
-- Gatlings look futuristic. Replace the coax with a Gatling or replace the loader or commander's cupola gun with a Gatling.
-- Remove the road wheels and tracks entirely and replace with plasticard slopes for a grav-tank look
-- Add small computer consoles to the rear of the chassis (sort of like the old field phones on the backs of M48's)
-- An Aegis/CIWS-style sensor dome could be added using a rounded pen cap
-- An AWACS-style radar emitter could be made using any number of wooden discs from the craft store
-- Explosive-reactive armor helps break up a tank's outline; for added futuristic swoosh, make the blocks hexagonal instead of rectangular (probably using hex-shaped beads from Michaels)
-- Sequins are very sci-fi looking. For a mini-radar dish or as ERA blocks, they would work pretty well.
-- Outriggers could be made using the arms from Clicky mechs and mounted on the rear corners of the tank for added stability when firing
-- Drones, mini-UAVs, or RC helis will probably have a place on the battlefield of the future; mount a small rail launcher with a 6mm or PicoArmor aircraft on it on the back deck for the tank to have its own UAV support
-- Wrap some wire around the main gun tube to resemble a railgun's power supply (Armorcast's AFV has a great example: link )
-- A sensor package made using a small dome and some beads or puppet eyes

I'm working on some 15mm sci-fi/ultramodern accessories in Sketchup which I'll eventually upload to Shapeways.

@ Luckyjoe your M113 / Space marine Rhino convertion looks seriously cool, good job well done.

My Merkavas are all pound shop purchases as are these hovercraft:

A later batch came in a desert scheme as well.

Cheers
Mark

Used Plastic Soldier 15 mm T-34s, put engine top grills in centre and turret at rear, put hover skirts on them and sci fi turrets from various people.

I picked up some M113s from Old Glory. Then, I very nicely asked Jon at GZG to sell me some turrets.

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I like the old Dinky Stalwart. Not sure what scale it is but a few bits of plastic card are enough to rescale it to 15mm…

More pics at link

ROUWetPatchBehindTheSofa, could you please give a few more details about the tanks and their manufacturer? For some reason I can't find something along these lines on eBay.

@ Golan2072

I found these Golan, which look close to what ROUWetPatchBehindTheSofa has:

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Thanks!

Does anyone make 15mm Soviet PTS or K61 amphibious tracked vehicle and/or US LVTP5?

(yes, I am thinking of using them as 2300AD Kafer vehicles!)

My hover T-34 conversions fwiw. Am now thinking of what a halfhover might look like :)

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@collins355

Peter Pig does a LVTP5 here peterpig.co.uk/range1.htm also a waterline one.

Thanks Dave, just what I wanted.

@JeffW75 & Golan2072
That's them, but the auction includes less types than I picked up specifically the T-54, which is probably the best of the bunch unfortunately. Size wise they definitely around 1:100 (the bases are exactly 40 x 60 mm) so they are a little small against a lot of current sci-fi vehicles and some of the larger 15 mm figures. GZG crew fit perfectly.

If I was doing them again I'd probably add mesh or solid side skirts just to further disguise them.