"Best 1/3000ish WW1 range?" Topic

Haven't played a WW1 naval game in 30 years but fancy another go. I'm out of touch – who does the best minis in the 1/3000ish range? I'm aware of Navwar but are these the same, slightly dodgy moulds of 30 years ago? I have looked at the photos of the GHQ Micronauts and while nice I am not ready to spend £10.00 GBP on one ship.

Something in the 1/2400 to 1/3000 range would work, but what is there? 1/6000 would be no good, at that scale thEy all look like those bits of flash you find hanging off 28mm metal figures sometimes.

I have some 1/2400 C&C WWI that's been languishing for many, many years, but if I were to start back into the whole thing, I would get a bunch of Panzerschiffe resin. We're SO not talking about Dystopian Wars-grade stuff, but all you have to do is slap some paint on them, and get gaming. You can't beat the price at $4 USD each. And there's no fiddly-ass barrels to deal with.

Then I could add to /replace with prettier minis later, if I wanted.

link

Order a sampling, see what you think (that's what I did, before going with them for my predreads). A great company to deal with, I've always come away happy.

I looked into 1/3000. I found it a good fit when dealing with battleships…anything smaller, not so much. But then, bathtubbing it doesn't bother me. YMMV.

A 1/6000 game with "bits of flash" on the table. Small, but not as bad as you think (DDs removed from bases):

Closeup of HMS Lion, the first ship in line in the previous image:

Closeup of HMS Badger, one of the 2 painted DDs in the first image (others were only primed when photo taken). I clip funnels on the limited selection of Figurehead British DDs in order to approximate (!!) the particular prototype. Color distorted as was taken with film camera, digitized by Jewel Foods, etc. Is actually very dark gray with highlights on upper surfaces (darker than the big ships). At this point in time, I was representing British WWI DDs with 1 model for every 4 game-ships, and rules effectiveness adjustments to compensate.

MH

1/3000 WW1?

Navwar link
apparently the WW1 and WW2 lines are in the same catalog

Davco/Skytrex link

I prefer the Navwar

GHQ has been expanding their 1/2400 WWI range lately:

ghqmodels.com/store/military-models-great-war-micronauts.html

Obviously these have the most detail and are the easiest to see. On the other hand, you need a very large gaming surface for any sort of fleet action. That's why I switched to 1/6000 from my old Davco/Navwar 1/3000 for WWI. I am still willing to use GHQ / CinC 1/2400 for smaller WWII battles, however.

MH

War Time Journal wtj.com might also have soem stuff. There's is 1/3000 predread mostly but some would have still been around in WW1. Lovely models with much nicer detail than Navwar

Cheers
Kieran

I love my 1:6000, and they look a lot nicer painted up than one might expect. They are however tiny! So tiny that I have been thinking of up scaling as well.

Navwar are very nice, and have the most comprehensive range.

I always say Navwar.
Navwar has almost every ship ever done from 1860 to 1950, so you donīt have to have "generic" ships to act as others.
They have literally hundreds of ships types so you can for example get the 1904 USS Connecticut, an italian Indomito destroyer or my personal favorit, the swedish cruiser Fylgia!
The detail is not perfect but enough for armlenght gameplaying on my table.
Love them!

My second choice is GHQ, they really are the nicest looking ones i think. But then you have a very limited shipyard.

You get TEN Navwar battleships for one GHQ.

I have a fairly extensive collection of Panzerschiffe 1:2400 models, and though they can't compare to GHQ or CinC for detail I'm quite fond of them and they are sturdy gaming models.

Some examples of their WWI ships here.

I'd go with Navwar esp. if doing both sides.

Regards,

J. P. Kelly

thevikingforge.net

Ahhh…forgot about Viking Forge-good models, good price.

Regards,

J. P. Kelly