Paper Tigers

 Well, not so much paper as cardboard. During Covid I did a lot of ordering from Amazon and I duly cut up the boxes for recycling. Then I thought it might be an opportunity to make some things out of this free bounty of cardboard. I made terrain, rivers, bridges and such, buildings and the like. But I got bored. So I was flipping through the “Marshall Cavendish History of World War 2” (in 25 volumes) and I had a hard look at the paintings of some of the equipment. They were accompanied by the dimensions, so I made a ship. Then some planes. Eventually I had a go at tanks. I had a look at my own 1/76 and 1/72 stock and soon realized that to flesh out the armies would be pretty costly . Models are $10 to $20 each now, or I’d have to go the 3d printer route. So I made blocky tanks in a smaller scale, roughly 1/100 or so. They went together quickly and I made several forces.

This is the start of my Italian forces. The M11 turrets are a failure, I have to find another solution.

And here are the tiny Tigers, and a lurking Panther:

I also made a roughly 1/72 Panther, just to see how it went together:

Not the prettiest, but doable just for gaming. I started in on some Panzer 3’s and 2’s:

Here’s an early Panzer 4 and a Nashorn:

I said earlier I had a go at some aircraft. No scale really, as I tried small aircraft but they don’t do well in cardboard. So these are roughly 1 inch to 10 feet. And round fusilages are tough in cardboard at this size, so I simply put a round wooden disk in front of the square motor.