MTH VIETNAM

Vietnam War STL Miniatures: 15mm and 28mm Forces for 3D Printing

Vietnam is one of the best-served periods in military history for books and film and one of the worst for miniatures. Ranges appear and vanish, coverage of the NVA and Vietcong is thin compared with American forces, and getting both sides of a firefight from the same manufacturer at the same scale is harder than it should be. That gap is what this collection is for.

March to Hell: Vietnam covers the conflict in 15mm and 28mm, supplied as digital STL files.

A war that plays unlike any other

Most twentieth-century wargaming assumes two forces looking for each other and then fighting. Vietnam rarely worked that way. One side chose when contact happened and could break it off; the other had firepower it couldn’t always use and a mission that depended on finding an enemy who didn’t want to be found.

That asymmetry is what makes the period interesting on a table. A US force has helicopters, artillery on call and overwhelming weight of fire, and none of it helps if the contact lasts ninety seconds and the enemy is gone before the support arrives. A VC or NVA force is outgunned in every straight fight and wins by choosing which fights happen.

Most Vietnam rulesets build their scenarios around that tension rather than around objectives and casualties, which produces games that feel genuinely different from a WW2 table.

The forces

US Army. The regular infantry who fought the majority of the ground war, with the equipment and organisation of a mechanised, air-mobile force operating in terrain that suited none of it.

US Marine Corps. Operating largely in the northern provinces, closer to the DMZ, and fighting a war with a different character from the one further south.

NVA. The North Vietnamese Army, a conventional regular force with uniforms, artillery, armour and the capability to fight set-piece engagements when it chose to.

Vietcong. Irregular forces operating in the south, fighting a different kind of war with different equipment and a completely different set of tactical assumptions.

Having all four from one source matters here more than in most periods, because a Vietnam scenario is almost always asymmetric and you need both halves to work at the same scale and in the same sculpting style.

Terrain does more work than usual

You can play a WW2 game on a sparse table and it still functions. A Vietnam game on open ground is not a Vietnam game. The whole tactical character of the period comes from vegetation that blocks line of sight to a few metres, paddy fields that channel movement, tree lines that conceal a position until somebody walks into it.

Budget for terrain accordingly. Jungle, elephant grass, hooches, bunkers and tunnel entrances do more for a Vietnam table than another squad of infantry would.

Choosing a scale

28mm suits the squad-level actions that dominate the period, where a game is ten men against an unknown number and every individual model matters. It’s also where the equipment detail reads: helmet covers, webbing, the difference between a grunt and a machine gunner.

15mm suits larger operations, helicopter insertions across a bigger table, and anyone who wants the scenario to include the ground between the LZ and the objective rather than starting at contact.

Printing

Around 0.03mm layer height on resin covers gaming figures at either scale, tilted 30 to 45 degrees for drainage. Bases are not included. Rifle barrels and radio antennae are the fragile parts, and antennae in particular are among the thinnest things you’ll print in any modern range, so check support placement on those specifically.

Frequently asked questions

How do I build a table that plays like Vietnam?
Cover, and more of it than feels reasonable. The defining feature of the period is that engagement ranges collapse to almost nothing because nobody can see anything, and a table with clear lines of sight across it produces a game where American firepower simply wins and the scenario has no tension. Dense vegetation is the priority, and it needs to genuinely block sight rather than decorate the edges. Paddy fields, tree lines, streams and dense undergrowth do the work. The good news is that jungle terrain is forgiving to build and print, since it’s organic rather than architectural and nothing has to line up.

How should the two sides differ in play?
Fundamentally, not marginally. American forces should have better equipment, more firepower and access to support that irregular forces can’t match, and none of it should guarantee a win. VC and NVA forces should be able to choose whether a fight happens, use terrain the other side can’t, and break contact when the engagement stops favouring them. Most Vietnam rulesets model this through asymmetric victory conditions rather than through unit statistics, so check how yours handles it before assuming a points-balanced game will feel right.

What’s the difference between NVA and Vietcong forces?
More than people often assume. The NVA was a conventional regular army with uniforms, formal organisation, artillery and eventually armour, capable of fighting set-piece battles and doing so at Khe Sanh and elsewhere. The Vietcong were irregular forces operating in the south, with varied equipment, local knowledge and a tactical approach built around ambush and dispersal rather than pitched engagement. On a table they play differently and most rulesets treat them separately, so building both gives you two distinct opponents rather than one force in different clothes.

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