Wednesday, 9 September 2015

Vroom, Vroom!

I've recently come back from holiday in Madrid, where I spent a few days soaking up the sunshine (and failing to get any kind of a tan) in celebration of becoming a year older. No doubt you are asking yourselves what this has to do with wargaming

Well, I think I had unrealistic expectation of how expensive the holiday would be, so I found myself with a decent chunk of change left over on the last day. This raised the important question of what it would be spent on.

There were the usual options of tacky souvenirs such as football shirts, 'Roy Bom' sunglasses and other odds and ends. I even scoured the local market for interesting items, picking up a few old GW paints (Enchanted Blue, Kommando Khaki and Red Ink) for a couple of euros, but I still didn't feel like I had hit the jackpot.

At least not until I properly looked in the window of a corner-shop just down the road from our hotel...

The Madrid motor pool.

In the end, I snagged them all for a mere 27 euros, which I thought was fairly decent for new die-cast vehicles. The civilian car was the only one with a given scale (1:43) and the rest were just toys of seemingly arbitrary proportions. There were a whole load of service cars as well but they were the same size as the vans, so far too big!

The brand for most of them is Playjocs, if you fancy snagging some of your own.

Fusiliers doing their best Trauma Doc impressions...

There are a couple of different ambulances, a standard and a Samur one. If you, like me, have no idea what Samur is, here's a brief overview from Wikipedia. It seems pretty ideal for Infinity settings.

"Samur is a specialized and highly qualified emergency system of Madrid, Spain. The name stands for S.A.M.U.R. (Servicio de Asistencia Municipal de Urgencia y Rescate). ... Samur also assumes the leading role in the management of terrorist attacks or catastrophe."

It's worth noting that I didn't have anything to compare the vehicles to at the time, so I was trying to judge by eye whether they were the right size or not. I was pretty relieved when I got home and they looked about right!

... and out on patrol with the local police forces...

All of the vehicles are specifically for organisations based in/around Madrid, which I think is a nice touch and should give me a fairly cohesive looking table. The one above is a van from the PolicĂ­a Municipal de Madrid.

The vehicles have just about the right amount of detail, and while the paintwork isn't always crisp, the text and logos stand out just fine and the casting seems good. All the windows seem fairly sturdy although the doors don't always have them (wound down, perhaps?).

There's also a fire service van (Bomberos), taxi, Civilian car and sweet-ass police helicopter.

... before finally taking to the skies!

The helicopter isn't really the right scale, but I might get away with calling it a single-seater (there's no moulded interior) or having it on a rooftop where a bit of forced perspective should make it look about right. For 4 euros I just couldn't bring myself to leave it behind.

So there you go, just quick reminder that you ought to always keep a look out for bargains and should keep a model with you to check for scale. I think I'll be carrying a Fusilier around with me from now on!

3 comments:

  1. very nice looking mate. I would recommend to go to pound land more often you can find great stuff there and also wilko - they sell buses and americans trucks and lorry's

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  2. Nice haul! I really must start playing Infinity!

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    1. Yes you definitely do! :D

      Do you have a faction in mind?

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