For a couple of years, I've been trying to get a few WWII naval miniatures to use with the game General Quarters.  Well, I'm not that serious about naval wargaming, and I didn't want to get into some of the really "fiddly" GHQ models, but neither did I want to get those super-tiny 1:6000 scale ships.  A destroyer only a centimeter long or so is just too short!

It turns out there's a company called "Panzerschiffe" (German for Armored Ships) that makes 1:1200 scale ships in "Battleship Gray" resin.  They're not very expensive, VERY sturdy and ready to use as-is.  Panzerschiffe recently added a PayPal shopping cart to their site, so I grabbed a few ships.

I got the Admiral Graf Spee and its foes Ajax, Exeter and Achilles for the "Battle of the River Plate" (a classic match up of a "pocket battlecruiser" and 3 smaller ships).  I also picked up Bismarc, Hood, and the other ships that took part in their battle.

The ships have nice, clean lines and enough detail to recognize them and what guns they are toting, though they won't please any serious naval modeller.  But as I said, I'm looking for GAME pieces, not display pieces, and as such they're perfect!

I've played the River Plate scenario a few times with GQ using blocks of wood, and it's a fun and fast battle.  I can't wait to try it with the actual ships.  I really hope I can get Christy to play, but I know she doesn't believe me that a naval game can be fun, so we'll have to see what happens.  Who knows?  Maybe I just need to find the right game.  GQ is a great game though, and at over 30 years old, it's stood the test of time.  Most games of that vintage are so dated that they're unplayable to the modern gamer, but GQ was really ahead of its time in many ways.  We'll see.