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Re: Diorama v Wargamming in Today's 1/72 Scale?

Thank you Minute Man!

Night Fighters From Mars
https://bunkermeister.blogspot.com/2021/06/night-fighers-from-mars.html

Today I posted photos of a new set from Mars.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

Re: Diorama v Wargamming in Today's 1/72 Scale?

From an historical point of view, the 1/72 scale was born by the allied during world war two, model of planes were made in 1/72 scale to train pilots with tactics as well as to recognize more easily enemy or friendly planes. DCA crew were trained as well with such models.

Also commandos or infantry were prepared in their mission with dioramas representing their target with scale models, it was mostly for officers.

Wargames during WWII used such 1/72 models (and others scale for warships)


Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz explained to a Naval War College class in 1960 that, "the war with Japan had been reenacted in the game rooms here by so many people and in so many different ways that nothing happened during the war that was a surprise - absolutely nothing except the kamikazes towards the end of the war."



The 1/72 scale is perfect for wargames, that's for sure, but can be used in plenty of other ways, it's my favorite scale. It's still the best way today to learn tactic and strategy, better and more realistic than computer simulation.:sunglasses:

Re: Diorama v Wargamming in Today's 1/72 Scale?

TheBabylonian109
Hello everyone! Another curiosity question from myself concerning the state of collecting in the 1/72 scale today. So based on what I have understood over the past 20 years of collecting, the general reputation of the most common scales of plastic/metal soldier collecting can be summarized as thus:

15mm- Mostly for tabletop wargammers.

25mm (1/72)- Mostly for collectors who either grew up or have experience with Airfix 1/72. Since Airfix is for the most part a modelling company, this has tended to push the scale toward diorama building throughout its history.

54mm (1/32)- Mostly for collectors who either grew up with or have experience with Marx (USA) or Airfix 1/32 (UK) company toy soldiers. The former was targeted toward 1950s kids, so tends to have a reputation as an informal "play in the backyard" scale at least in the USA.

So my question is this: can the 1/72 scale today still be considered primarily a diorama based scale, or do wargammers (or somebody else) tend to be strongly considered as well? Naturally it is a subjective question on a certain level, as people will basically do whatever they want with these figures regardless of what they were probably originally intended for. Despite this, I am still curious to hear thoughts along these lines.

P.S.- If my personal context helps in answering such a question I have been a 1/72 scale collector since childhood (started with Airfix/HaT in the late 90s), but my father is a HUGE Marx 1/32 scale fan and has collected them for most of his lifetime. I have very limited experience with 15mm outside of some Jean Valiant (I think?) sets I bought at Yorktown Battlefield in 1996. I still have those Grenadiers and Continentals, tucked away in a mass of 1/72 scale figures. :joy: :grin:
Believe or not but Airfix marketed their first figures for "wargames"...

Theres always been a sort of snobbery around plastic figures, but only really for non WW2... since most models would have been 1/76 etc in the early days and many WW2 WW1 wargames were done in this or a similar scale often using compatible plastic figures from Airfix etc...