"Marking 1/285 tank turret direction" Topic

I live in a small house, so space is at a premium. Without having to rearrange the living room (and make it hard to maneuver), I am limited to a 4' x 4' table. For WWII gaming I primarily use 1/285 scale figures.

In order to preserve the barrels on my tanks (I have a number of CinC vehicles with very thin barrels), I glued the turrets onto the hull of the tanks. This works for the most part, but it's less than ideal when playing a game where you need to mark the direction the turret is pointing.

I have some plastic pointy stir sticks that I can use as arrows, but I'd really like to use something that looked better on the table.

Has anyone else run into this issue? How do you indicate the direction the turret is pointing in a way that is usable in a game while not sticking out like an obvious "gamey" marker?

Mount the turrets on micro-magnets.

I have done that successfully on 10mm tanks. Not sure about 1/285.

Leave them glued and use a marker to indicate direction. Eventually any barrel will be bent or worse as you rotate the turret (always by the barrel no matter how hard you try not to). Use small dice or other markers on the side the turret is pointing. I have 5mm dice which can be bought cheap on ebay. I was in the dollar store the other day and they had bags of wooden cubes about the size of a die (1/2" or so). They had both plain and coloured. I bought a couple bags of multi coloured ones. I think about 100 cubes for a dollar.

Or maybe a pebble. I presume absolute accuracy is not required?

Thanks, folks. That gives me some ideas.

Go to Michaels and buy some beads, the small ones.

I don't typically play rules that require turret direction to be indicated, and I don't typically glue down the turrets on my 1/285 – 1/300 tanks, so I can't say as I have much direct experience on this particular question.

But having other reasons to provide directional markers (like overwatch indicators), I have one suggestion. Try flat tapered toothpicks, painted in a military color that is more-or-less suited to the terrain (ie: OD or green for temperate zones, tan for dessert).

Example: link

You could even cut them down to 1/2 length, and use the wider portion for various scratch-building projects.

The advantage is that they are not obvious or offensive to the eye on your gameboards, and yet are very explicit and unambiguous in their game meaning.

Just my $ 0.02 worth. No cash refunds on returns.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I use Tacky Wax between the turret and hull top on my micro armor. It works great.

link

Wolfhag