"1:72 (20mm) Prepainted Model Tanks" Topic

I'm just getting into 20mm WWII and I'm looking for recommendations on prepainted armor/vehicles in 1:72…wondering whats the best options. I think I remember seeing 1:72 "forces of valor" in a model shop in Ireland and been impressed…

I've been looking around and I'm amazed at how reasonably priced painted stuff is in this scale…compared to what I'd expect to pay for a painted 15mm

I'm really interested in the better quality models …any advice is much appreciated

And do anyone use 15mm buildings for 20mm or is there a big difference?

Thanks a lot in advance…

John

Hi Grey Panda,

A large part of my 1/72 German armour and vehicles are pre-paints. I have found that most brands are fairly good but those by Dragon are best. Careful shopping of Ebay will supply you with decent pre-paints for quite modest sums of money.

Cheers, RR

Dragon aand Panzerstal are the best in quality with Forces of Valour, Hobbymaster and Easy model coming aftr that… The likes of Altalya bring up the rear, but repaint well and are often cheaper than kits.

Ditto,
You also have to remember to order that Horch model from the Czech Republic that's cast in resin with tiny fragile parts that need to be sawn off of thick casting blocks. The kit's instructions come on a blurry photo-copy written in Czech. The instructions show numbers but the parts are not numbered. On the upside it comes with a tiny photo-etched engine in case you want to leave the bonnet open and thin brass tools that you invariably bend and straighten three times before they finally glue on the vehicle.

Thanks guys, sounds like Dragon is the leader of the pack but I'll check out those other ones Piers mentioned.

Tim, yes "Wus R Us"…and while you do make it sound like a whole ton-o-fun methinks I'll leave the kit building to the "real masochis…"…I mean "real men"…

Any recommendations on 20mm/1:72 buildings?

link
link
link
Got this lot on my website dont know if its what your looking for.

Hi Panda
Another vote for Dragon. I don't own any pre-paints as the building and painting is the biggest part of the hobby for me, but one of our gang has hordes of Dragon T-34s and they are lovely.
For buildings, drop Kerr&King a line, check Pegasus Hobbies, Airfix resins and Italeri plastics.

Lancer, lots and lots of good stuff there… thanks…

Thomas I'd like to think that in the future I'll have a stab at the modelling side but somewhere between busyness and laziness and wanting to start in 20mm "yesterday"… I want to get some painted stuff :) (…. patience is another virtue I'm super-endowed with…)

Thanks again guys

Grey Panda,

Another fine source of buildings is Gamecraft Miniatures:

link

Also plastic model buildings by Italeri and Pegasus are very simple to build and quite cheap.

Thanks rvandusen i hadn't come across them yet cheers

+1 for Lancer and for Gamecraft.

Wish I lived a bit closer to Lancer, I would order more. Already own a village worth of their Eastern Front line and the stuff paints itself.

Gamecraft has a killer selection and enthusiastic service. Might buy in if I start doing Normandy.

Came here doing some research. I am generally not a necromancer, but some comments deserve to be reborn:

Wussies all! laugh

Real men curse and scream over nearly microscopic parts that fall into the carpet only to be found months later when looking for similar parts dropped from a new kit. They become mentally exhausted putting together 100 parts for a 37mm Pak 36 and replace perfectly good hand rails on an IS-2 that are a smidgen too thick with bent metal or specially purchased very thin plastic rods and they try and figure a way to lap or lathe the gun of a 45mm gun that's too thick for the scale. Real men pierce their skin accidentally and painfully with brand new #11 blades and bleed all over the table without blinking while using a magnifier to remove the last little bit of plastic and then collapse head down on their table to Adagio for Strings from Platoon when they realize they glued on the wrong springs on a road wheel suspension unit and will need to take them apart….

There you go. BTW, I have a whole bunch of Dragon pre-paints. I wonder why? laugh
--

That is probably the greatest thing I have read on the internet in a while.

Anyway, does the recommendation for Dragon still stand?

Thanks.

Sure, they are still very good, but with all pre-paints, trawl around several different suppliers- prices can vary massively.

I have crates of Dragon pre-paints though they were bought in the days when a pre-paint could be obtained for just £1.00 GBP more than the basic plastic kit. It was a no-brainer back then.

Now, at least in the UK, the kits are expensive and the pre-paints often command a premium price. The Tiger Is I play with could apparently be sold for £75.00 GBP each, and a certain Tiger II, that I have a few of, for even more!

Bargains on eBay UK are rare, but sometimes you can bag one. Shermans are expensive now and I just wish that I had stocked up on them when they were plentiful. All this said they are beautiful models and are finished better than I could ever achieve. I'm no Piers Brand!

Panzerstahl also make some very good models. I particularly like their Hetzers and SdKfz 234 series armoured cars.

From other sources I have some War Master, Altaya, DeAgostini etc. They are a mixed bag with some garish colour schemes and badly fitting parts, whilst others are pretty good.

For anything other than Dragon or Panzerstahl I would recommend seeing them in person before buying them.

And do anyone use 15mm buildings for 20mm or is there a big difference?

I quite happily use 15mm resin buildings for 20(ish)mm gaming. They don't really work that well with some of the larger 1/72 figure lines (often well over 25mm) but most of my stuff is pretty old with the majority of my vehicles being at the 1/76 end.

The big advantage of 15mm buildings is that having a much smaller footprint they go some way to balancing the large difference between ground scale and model scale inherent in most rulesets. Means you can have some big buildings like churches without them seeming to take up half the table. Not an issue though if you have a huge table of course…