After spending much of the year going over fantasy miniatures, I finally have the opportunity to make an entry on modern armor. I saw the new 1/72 Unimax Bravo Team "diecast" toys at Target a couple of weeks ago, and had some reservations about getting them, since they were very toy-like. Unlike the previous Unimax metal diecast vehicles, these are made of plastic, and I also heard rumors that these new vehicles were 1/76 scale. After some thought I decided that at US$4.99 each, they were cheap enough that I could buy one of each vehicle for review. For the pictures below, most of the vehicles are compared against their Forces of Valor counterpart.
Left) FoV diecast M2 Bradley IFV. Right) Bravo Team M3 Bradley CFV. The tracks are made of rubber, and the chaingun is probably made of vinyl.
Left) FoV Abrams. Right) Bravo Team Abrams. The tracks are made of rubber and the guns are made of vinyl.
Left) FoV M113 APC. Right) Bravo Team M113 APC. The Bravo Team vehicle is clearly smaller than the FoV version, but I don't think it is 1/76. Some of the apparent size difference may also be due to the lack of stowage racks on the hull of the Bravo Team APC. The tracks are made of rubber and don't fit very well. The machinegun is made of vinyl.
Left) CDC Armour LAV-25 (3121). Right) Bravo Team LAV-25. The LAV-25 is the best looking of the Bravo Team vehicles. Probably because it is actually painted, whereas the other vehicles pretty much come in bare plastic.
There is also a M1126 Stryker ICV. I didn't have anything to compare it against, but I heard that it is smaller than the Easy Model/Trumpeter Stryker.
My overall impression is that despite being quite toy-like, with some paint, or just a dark wash, they can turn into some nice wargaming miniatures. Swapping out the vinyl machineguns, and adding some stowage would make them even nicer. They are quite sturdy, and just a bit smaller than the FoV diecast vehicles as seen in the comparisons (I think the size difference is somewhat exaggerated in the pictures due to barrel distortion).
7 comments:
Thanks for the helpful review. These havent hit my country's shores though. I hope it becomes available soon.
We've picked up some sets of these to use as well.
Any ideas on 1:72 motorcycles?
I'm not aware of anyone who makes modern military motorcycles in this scale.
For WWII era motorcycles, there is Italeri, HäT, and Atlantic in soft plastic; Hasegawa and Fujimi in hard plastic (with Kubelwagen/Jeep kits); Mirliton, SHQ, and Raventhorpe in metal.
This is an excellent comparison. Thanks for putting it together. I have put a link to this blog in the 93Studio forum (the Twilight 2013 RPG forum). We've been having a discussion for a while about which size minis to use for modern combat RPGs and this was very helpful.
I'm totally biased, but I think for modern and near future gaming, 1/72 or 20mm is the way to go.
Lots of choices, and relatively cheap.
I've tried finding some sort of contact info for you on this blog but can't seen to find any. Would you please email me at the Diecast 72 website.
Excellent review on the Bravo Team vehicles.
I guess I forgot to enable the contact information under my profile. It's now on though.
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