Modern Combat Tamiya 1:48 Humvee

After watching Sicario 2 - Day of the Soldado and enjoying that amazing Behind the Border scene with the HUMVEEs and mexican police, modern combat came strongly back to my head.

All pictures shown above were taken from promotional material and are copyright 2018 of Sony Pictures / Lionsgate / StudioCanal.

I like the modern combat setting, especially with skirmish rule sets. With Osprey Games' Black Ops there is a small entry fee to enter this kind of game. There are a couple other rule sets that cover that kind of scenario as well, I just didn't had the chance to get my hands on the books. Force on Force by Ambush Alley Games is supposed to be good, but played on a larger scale. As for the Spectre Miniatures rule set Spectre Operations, I missed that one on the last Crisis (but they had an amazing looking demo table).

More pictures of the making of that table can be seen over here, at Lead Adventure Forum.

So, you need a couple of matching vehicles for these kind of tables and games. I already have quite the selection of Die Cast cars in 1:43 to 1:48, which are a bit to large but work quite well with 28-30mm on a skirmish scale. Most of the cars are either from Matchbox Models of Yesteryear 1920s-1940s cars, working for Interwar and World War 2, or modern cars for Zombie Apocalypse settings. It is kind of difficult to get the proper cars for the modern combat scenarios, I managed to get my hands on two G-Class Mercedes and a more modern M-Class, working as an armoured VIP vehicle with two guard vehicles. I would love to get my hands on some 1970-1980 cars, especially european Taxis, as they'd fit the setting amazingly well. Same goes for some old Toyota pick ups. In 1:43 to 1:56 these can be incredibly hard to come by and / or will be expensive.

Coming back to the Sicario scene, I looked for some HMMWV / Humvees. And I got lucky, I managed to buy some Tamiya 1:48 scale kits for 9 EUR each. So I did the only reasonable and rational thing and bought three.

The kits are a bit older, but they still work incredibly well. Fit is nice, casting is properly done. But it is a model kit, so it is a bit more time consuming. But the amount of detail is incredible. I have to see what variants or conversion bits I can get my hands on, as I really enjoyed building the first one.

A couple of comparison shots with the mentioned M- and G-Class and a modern combat miniature by Hasslefree and Spectre Miniatures. Scale is a bit off, as the die cast cars are 1:43 and the Humvee is 1:48, but I think they still work quite well together.

If you have sources for W116, W123 or W201 Mercedes in 1:43, same goes for older Toyota Hilux, Chevrolet Tahoe or some french cars of the 80s and 90s in 1:43 to 1:50, please drop me a link.