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Cool! The turrets look so much better on that hull; just more proportional somehow.

Of course, you've done nothing to discourage me from getting a KV-1 for a Leman Russ and a KV-2 for a demolisher for my Valhallans

Just verify your scale before order syr. I used Wikpedia to get the dimensions and multiple them by the scale. I've been informed a 1/36 panther has similar dimensions to the 1/48 Tiger II I used.
KV's sound excellent.

A hasty and incomplete list of 1/48th scale AFVs

Zhengdfu/Kitech (my spelling almost certainly way off) do modern AFVs and APCs with a common motorised lower hull which throws the sizes out a bit and four axle motorised BTRs and LAVs on a common hull. Apart from the sizes and common hulls these are great kits. Pretty cheap and not too bad detail wise. A great basis for conversions.

AFV Club. They do a Tiger I and have an M4 in the pipeline. Superb detail and cheaper than Tamiya with no metal hull.

Hobbyboss. So-so M4s, nice enough unless you are a purist and amazing T-34s and an LCM.

Tamiya. Great apart from the metal hull. Also quite expensive but very well designed and accurate ? as if we care!

Academy. Some moderns and WW II AFVs. Oddly not a good detail wise as the cheaper Zhengdfu/Kitech ones. Adequate though.

Heller/Airfix Junior. Out of production and getting hard to find but very simple snap-fix wheeled armoured cars based on French prototypes. Crude but useful.

I think you can get away with using the Königstiger hull on this one because it's pretty much the biggest 1/48 tank model out there. Using my collection of models, I did a series of comparison shots between different model vehicles of various scales.

http://www.ageofstrife.com/gallery/Agamemnon23

As you can see, the Tiger I is too small when compared to infantry models, whereas the BT-7 is rather close to the Chimera (although the BT-7 is too ugly and ungraceful to be considered for an IG vehicle). The KV-2 is nice and beefy, but is too small for a superheavy and too large for a non-superheavy.

Actually I think that 1/48 Tiger I would work perfectly as a stripped down Leman Russ w/no side sponsons. I do think it would need a lot of work to 40k-ize it (like double wide tracks, scratch built shürzen side skirts, modified turret, and various sci-fi touches), but scale wise it's fine. We're just too used to GW's ridiculously proportioned kits & figures.

I'm sure the 1/48 KV-2 would also make a great Leman Russ stand in, also without side sponsons. I wonder if there is a T-28 in 1/48 scale, that ugly (kinda) useless tank would be even better AND it has five turrets (Russians + pre WW2 = lots of not so great vehicles, until the T-34 that is).

I've only seen T-28s and t-35s in 1/35 scale. 1/48 as a scale for armor, especially WWII, is really only coming into it's own in the last year or so...

Any idea where I could get a good model of a Brukenlegepanzer Biber got  a 1/72 from REVELL (way too small) but I want a bigger one

Posted By nyarlathotep667 on 01/18/2007 11:22 AM
Actually I think that 1/48 Tiger I would work perfectly as a stripped down Leman Russ w/no side sponsons. I do think it would need a lot of work to 40k-ize it (like double wide tracks, scratch built shürzen side skirts, modified turret, and various sci-fi touches), but scale wise it's fine. We're just too used to GW's ridiculously proportioned kits & figures.

If you're proposing doing that much scratch-building, I wouldn't recommend using the Tamiya kit as a base, since it's not particularly cheap (You can get a 1/35 Tiger cheaper than a 1/48). Also, the metal chassis makes making a completely new suspension like what you propose very difficult since the swingarms are moulded to the hull pan.

The Tiger also has the problem of being instantly recognizeable. Personally, I'd much rather to use something that's not quite as well-known.

Wait, I'd swear they're cheaper than GW kits! This evening I swung by the local Hobbytown USA and was ogling the Tamiya kits, the 1/48 Tiger and what nots were all $30 or less and I bet they could be found cheaper on the internet. Those are the same ones with the metal hulls, right?

Speaking of the metal hills, quite right about that. The good thing is while the running gear of the various AFV's is relatively recognizable, once one starts muddling around with the the hull's profile, adding skirts, reactive armor or other such stuff and puts on new turrets it gets looking like it's own thing than some WW2 tank with GW bitz tacked on. Especially when it's something as instantly recognizable as a Tiger, though jfrazell did good using the Tiger II hull with those FW turrets.

Back in the day one of the craziest conversions I ever saw was nearly two decades ago where someone smashed together a Sturmgeshutz, a M3 Lee and I don't know what else into this awesome Ork battlewagon. I also have seen a whole slew of conversions that used fruimodel (or some other company's) metal individual linked Tiger tracks attached to otherwise scratch built hulls that looked more akin to the APC in aliens than any AFV I've ever seen. Wonderful stuff. Can only imagine how many hundreds of hours he spent putting those tracks together though.

At this point, I've pretty sure there are full resin kits out there that are cheaper than GW.

The recognatiability issue is one that I can't really answer. I've spent so much time with WW2 tank kits by now that I can easily recognize parts. It's all to do with pattern recognition, some people do it easily, some don't. Your mileage may vary.

The Revell Biber bridgelayer is huge for a 1/72nd scale kit so the bridge and mechanism might possibly be usable. I have one but it is lost somewhere in the attic so I cannot measure it.
Failing that you could steal this from a 1/35th kit: surprisingly you can buy these in plastic as well as resin.

ICM
IT-28 WWII Soviet Bridgelayer Tank
A big ugly vehicle on the multi-turreted T-28 chassis. Once you steal the bridge the chassis looks very Guard in style.

Dragon
Bruekenleger IV B (Panzer IV Ausf.B Bridgelayer) Alas not out yet and sure to be relatively expensive ? ie. nearly the price of a GW kit. Also probably very accurate and relatively fragile.

Alternatives
There are numerous bridge kits out there from Dapol, Peco and numerous other manufacturers. Very possibly one of the German makers does one, I saw a catalogue from one once that had about 10 pages of bridges alone. Thee is bound to be one that is suitable. When it comes to girders and things some of the ancient Dapol crane and other model railway kits might be useful shortcuts. One at least of their crane booms has tapering side pieces that might be spot on but you would need at least two and possibly four of the crane kits to get enough pieces which starts to mount up despite the low individual price of the kits.

You can get truss beams in various sizes but these do not taper. Good for the launcher though if not the bridge side pieces.

I had been thinking about scratch building one with solid sides rather than lattice ones to put on a Chimera chassis, I know there are pictures of one on a GW website. This would not be very hard unless you wanted it workable. What I had thought of doing was to make two bridges, one folded and one extended.

I've always wanted to use the French Char B1 Bis as a LR stand-in

http://www.tamiyausa.com/product/item.php?product-id=35282