I was really hoping that with the release of the movie in Japan this spring that Dragon or one of the other model companies would produce pre-painted tank minis in 1/144 or 1/100 scale.  But since that didn’t happen, I’ve finally broken down and started purchasing and painting up 1/100 ones.  Sigh, doing WW2 figures in yet another scale (I’ve already got a good sized gaming collection of Americans and Germans in 1/87, Canadians in 1/56, and Afrika Corps in 1/285).

The 1/100 plastics are very nice and very cheap, so I’ve gone with those for the bulk of my GuP teams.  Metal and resin models filling in as necessary.  Photos will come in a later post when I’ve got some fully ready for photo ops.

My shopping priority has been to start with plastic kits for price and versatility.  Plastic Soldier Company are the first choice, they have lots of little extra bits which makes it easy to customise the models to look like the ones shown in the anime (stop action on the DVD helps a lot for those of us with the modelling disease).  I buy platoon packs of the PSC kits at my FLGS, and order single sprues direct from them when I don’t need 4–5 of a model.  Zvezda plastics are second choice, then Skytrex metal miniatures for the best quality and the best price for not-plastic options, and then whoever else makes kits that those three don’t.

And Company B has begun releasing 15mm decals!  They’re under the Pop Culture page (anything not labelled 15mm is for 28mm vehicles).

The rosters for training and tournament matches shown in the videos and manga were easy to compile.  Rosters for all the teams in the big tournament, and the outcomes of their matches were presented in the Japanese magazine, Gekkan Senshado an official publication of the series — fortunately their graphics are easy to interpret!  I came across scans of the pages showing the tournament info, and was able to work out the complete list of  rosters.  Additional information on all the schools can be found on the GuP Wiki.

Training matches were fought with 5-tank teams.  The first and second rounds of the tournament were with 10-tank teams, the third round semi-finals with 15-tank teams, and the fourth round finals with 20 tank teams.  Our heroines from Ooarai cannot afford to field a full roster and are competing with short rosters, but adding more tanks and improving on the ones they have as they go along.   The full rosters of the 63rd Senshado Tournament, related training matches, matches from der Film, and my shopping notes are all on this GuP Rosters spreadsheet.