JOIN OR DIE WW2 COLLECTION

Join or Die WW2: 28mm Second World War Miniatures for 3D Printing

Most WW2 ranges make you choose. You can have the Western Front or you can have the Pacific, you can have the major powers or you can have the ones nobody sculpts. Join or Die WW2 covers both ends of that, from US Airborne dropping into Normandy to Imperial Japanese infantry on an island nobody could pronounce.

Our largest 28mm collection, supplied as digital STL files for printing at home.

Why 28mm for the Second World War

WW2 at 28mm is a squad-level game, and that’s the right size for the war most people want to play. You’re not manoeuvring divisions. You’re moving ten men across a hedgerow while a machine gun team covers the road, and every one of those models matters individually.

The scale also earns its keep on detail. Webbing, helmet netting, entrenching tools, the specific pattern of a smock or a field cap: these are what separate a British paratrooper from an American one at a glance, and at 28mm they’re all visible enough to paint. Uniform detail is most of what makes a WW2 army read correctly, and smaller scales simply lose it.

The armies

American forces. US Army infantry for the European theatre, US Airborne for the drop, and US Marines for the Pacific island campaigns.

British and Commonwealth. British Army infantry and British Airborne, covering both the line and the parachute formations.

German forces. Heer infantry as the backbone, plus Fallschirmjäger with the distinctive smocks and helmets that make German airborne troops unmistakable.

Soviet Red Army. Eastern Front infantry, where the fighting was on a different scale to everything happening in the west.

Italian Folgore. Italy’s parachute division, and one of the more interesting forces of the war precisely because it fought as elite infantry rather than in the airborne role it trained for.

Imperial Japanese Army. Pacific theatre infantry, facing the Marines across the island campaigns.

Each army covers infantry, command models, weapon teams and specialists, so you can build a playable force from a single nation rather than assembling odds and ends.

Building a force that works

The useful thing about a range this size is that both sides of a scenario come from the same sculpting style. Marines against IJA, Fallschirmjäger against British Airborne, Heer against Red Army: whichever matchup you want, the two forces sit correctly next to each other in proportion and detail level, which mixed-manufacturer armies rarely do.

It also means you can start small. A squad, a command group and a weapon team is enough to play most skirmish systems, and you expand from there once you know how the sculpts print on your machine.

Printing WW2 infantry

Around 0.03mm layer height on resin covers gaming figures. Tilt 30 to 45 degrees so resin drains and you avoid suction on the base. Rifles are the part to watch: a slung or held rifle barrel is a thin projection running across the model, and it’s the most common thing to snap during support removal.

FDM is viable for rank-and-file troops with a 0.2mm nozzle at 0.06mm layers, though webbing and facial detail soften. It handles vehicles and terrain genuinely well, which is why plenty of people print infantry in resin and everything else in filament.

Frequently asked questions

How large a force do I need to start playing?
Less than you’d think for most skirmish systems. A rifle squad of eight to ten figures, a command element and a single weapon team will get you into a game with almost any WW2 ruleset written at this scale. The advantage of printing your own is that you’re not buying a boxed set sized to someone else’s list, so you can print exactly the squad your rules want and expand later. Start with one nation rather than splitting your first print run across two, because a complete force on one side is more playable than half a force on each.

Why do rifle barrels keep breaking when I remove supports?
Because they’re the thinnest part of the model and they usually run diagonally across it, which is the worst orientation for a resin part under stress. Three things help. Let the model cure fully before you touch the supports, since resin is noticeably more brittle when it’s still soft from the wash. Cut supports rather than pulling them, using flush cutters right at the contact point. And check the model’s orientation before printing so the barrel isn’t spanning a long unsupported gap. If one does break it glues back invisibly once painted, so it’s an annoyance rather than a disaster.

Are these compatible with the WW2 rulesets I already play?
They’re sculpted to standard 28mm wargaming proportions, so they work with any ruleset written for the scale. Basing is where you should check your rulebook, since skirmish systems typically want individual round bases while some larger-scale rules use multi-figure elements. These aren’t official products of any game publisher and aren’t endorsed by one, so compatibility here is a question of size and basing rather than licensing.

Subscribe and you may receive coupons and discounts