15mm Sci-Fi Traffic Report

Posted On November 20, 2015
Scatter terrain.  You’d be hard pressed to ever have enough of it on your urban table.  Mine was sorely lacking in viable vehicles.  Matchbox cars are passable, but they just don’t tie together with the rest of the terrain.  There are a couple in this old shot, and you can see what I mean.
It’s hard to put your finger on, but the paint is a little too glossy, the scale a little too large, and the style just slightly off.  Some of the construction vehicles work great with a full repaint, but for my money there’s no beating vehicles specifically manufactured for gaming.
Like these:
Flit cars and trucks from 15mm.co.uk
Now I know what you’re thinking, “Ohmergerd, Warren, those flight stands are just like, totes the coolest.  Like, how did you do that?”
First off, stop thinking like a 15 year old ditz.  Second off, I made them from these:

The clear hooks come in a variety of different styles.  These happened to be the perfect for all of my vehicles.  They may be a bit large for the cycles, but we’ll find out later.  All you have to do is clip off the hook, leaving roughly 5mm of plastic in place:

Sand it down to create a broad, level surface for the vehicle:

And add a drop of superglue to the top.  If you want a little more stability, you can pin the vehicle in place or glue a washer to he underside of the vehicle and put that peg inside the washer.  You’ll want to dull coat your vehicles before you glue them to the stand – spray varnish will make the flight stand cloud up.

This isn’t a particularly cheap way to build flight stands – they cost about $1.50 each, which is comparable to the price you spend at most wargame specific retailers.  You will also have a hard time making all your vehicles hover at the same height above the tabletop.  You can see mine are all over the place.  On the other hand, it is still cheap and dead easy to prepare.  So if you ever find yourself needing some flight stands on short notice, this makes for a good looking and readily available alternative.

2 Comments
  1. Don M

    Nice idea! Oh there are some nice sci-15 mm cars by Darkest Star :
    http://www.darkeststargames.com/spec-sec.html

  2. Chmeee

    That's a great idea! I need to try it out.