1:43 Scale Vehicles For Gaming

A long while back I purchased some paper-craft terrain packs from WorldWorks Games and Fat Dragon Games to make buildings and scenery for my miniature gaming. I've only built a fraction of stuff from those purchases, and the pieces that get the most use are the buildings. There are various car models in there too, which I have used from time to time. The biggest challenge with them is that they're rather time consuming to build.

The vehicle options from them are varied in what's available so I started looking to toys and model kits to supplement my collection. The big discovery for me was the EagleMoss collection of Batmobiles that some folks were using for the Batman Miniature Game. Since finding out about those I have acquired a substantial collection, and I think they're really great looking. My only complaint about them is the lack of working wheels, but it's a minor thing. I'll post up some photos of my batmobile collection another day however.

My city streets were still in need of generic cars and trucks and the like, so I started looking around on eBay for a few things. 1:43 scale seemed to work perfectly, so that was what I focused on. I was able to find a few things like a generic hatchback, and some emergency vehicles that will end up as SWAT vans and a news van. You can see the van in the middle here.

On my last trip to Japan my friend showed me some neat little motorcycles. They look pretty small, but are actually quite realistic when it comes to scale. During the summer Walmart had a nice serious of police cars, of which I bought several. My personal favorites are the 80s style RCMP cruisers, but most of the games end up seeing the modern squad cars on the table instead. I think they've all shown up in a few BMG game shots last year.

With Christmas coming up more toys were on the shelves and I grabbed a ton of cars from the "Adventure Wheels" line. These are licensed cars like Porsche, Lamborghini, Mustang and the like. These look great for $5 a pop. They also had a few different big rigs for something like $12, so my collection really grew when I found these.

There was a line of trucks which I believe are a slightly larger scale called "Just Trucks", but are quite nice. I grabbed two of those, but wasn't able to find the Dodge Dakota that I really wanted. Inexpensive themed packs are common during the holidays too, a few of which have provided me with a ton of emergency and construction vehicles.

I've also been able to pick up some movie-related vehicles like a set of DeLoreans from the "Back to the Future" movies, a "Green Hornet" Black Beauty and a few cars from the "Fast and Furious" franchise. They're very pricey compared to the generics, but I'll probably make games or scenarios around them, or at least feature them in some way to make me feel like I got my money's worth.

A lot of these, especially the cheaper ones, will need weathering and in some cases some conversion or full repainting in order to get them in the shape I want. One of the main things I've got planned is turning a few of the cars from the theme sets into taxis, as generic taxis seem difficult to find for a reasonable price. I also still want to pick up a city bus and a maybe a school bus somewhere along the way, but will likely have to resort to eBay for those.