Kit Review

Review of 1/72 scale kit

The Plastic Soldier Company Sherman Fireflies in 1/72 Scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 3 Comments

Finally finished the other two Fireflies in from a box of three I bought a while ago. The Plastic Soldier Company models are very simple kits, easy to build, but have a nice level of detail, and are good and solid. I do like them for knocking out a few quick tanks, like Armourfast but better on the detail side. They also respond well to some tarting up with a few bells and whistles. These two have aerials added, AB figures crew men, a bit of value gear stowage, and plenty of random decals stolen from other kits.

Olive drab spray can, gloss varnish and decals, dark wash, matt varnish and plenty of European earth and sand powders on top. Easy formula for my British Army vehicles.

Lockdown has definitely increased my hobby output. I would highly recommend PSC kits if you want to build a good looking force nice and quickly. Much easier than fiddling with link and length tracks or dreaded Esci vinyl ones. You can smash out a few troops of tanks in quick time. I have not tried the figures from PSC as I am firmly entrenched with my favourite metal ranges, and will never go back to plastic.

 

IBG Otter Light Reconnaissance Car in 1/72 Scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 9 Comments

otter_01.jpg

IBG Models make great little kits of all sorts of vehicles, especially some lesser known ones. This Otter Light Reconnaissance vehicle is one of those. Everyone knows about Humbers and Daimler armoured cars, but this little guy is a treat. IBG kits are always a real pleasure to make and this one is no exception. I loved it. To begin with its a fine looking little armoured car. The casting is super clear and everything fits together perfectly. The kit comes with some excellent PE parts for mudguards and a cool plank for getting out of a bogging situation (not sure what that is called!).

So building this car was a lot of fun. The interior is also fully detailed so you can leave a side door open and have a look in. If i build another one I will do that with maybe a crew man stepping out. You get a choice of decals to use, so I went with a Canadian unit which would be relevant for Normandy.  I liked the white star mainly.

Olive drab paint work plus a bit of a dark wash, followed by some earth and sand pigments. I added my own aerial as usual just to finish it off. I can never recommend IBG model kits highly enough. I have a Bedford QLT ready in the queue for my next build.

 

Esci Sdkfz 250/3 and 250/9 in 1/72 scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 6 Comments

Another two old Esci kits I bought on eBay for not very much. They were both pretty old kits and I managed to buy two of the 250/9’s and one 250/3. As usual with Esci kits of this age the little tracks were wonderful vinyl that would not bend, but rather snap into little pieces at the slightest hint of movement. So the first step was to find replacement tracks as none of my lessons for Esci vinyl tracks I have previously learned could be applied here. Luckily on eBay again I found a ready supply of rubber track for this little armoured car, so I picked up four sets for only $10 or so. Its amazing what you can find these days. If you need it, you can almost always find it, and have it delivered to your door. Very lucky in the current climate.

So onto the kits themselves! I cannot say that I enjoyed making either of these little vehicles. The plastic is old and brittle and did not take plastic cement at all well. They are not complicated but so bits didn’t fit well and didn’t glue well. The wheels especially were very tricky to get square. Even super glue did not really cope with the plastic. So I would recommend avoiding these particular old Esci kits if I were you. There must be plenty more versions these days that are a million times better!

Once I had managed to build them I added some aerials and a bit of stowage here and there and painted them in a two tone camo scheme. The original decals were long gone so I used replacements. They came up OK after all the painting and basing, but there was a sigh of relief when I finished them. You get what you pay for sometimes…….

Revell King Tiger in 1/72 scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 3 Comments

Ooh so as working from home continues, working on model kits also continues at a feverish pace, if you will excuse the term in the current pandemic. I bought this Revell King Tiger from eBay for not much as it was missing a box and decals. No box means cheaper postage anyway I guess too. Win win.

Boxart Tiger II Ausf. B Production Turret 03129 Revell

This is a great kit. So much in a tank kit boils down to their treatment of tracks. This monster of a tank has excellent link and length tracks. They are nice big track links to begin with, but very easy to put together. I always start with multiples of two and around the sprocket wheel. The running gear and tracks you can make as two units before attaching them both, left and right, to the lower hull. Wheels are individual but are easy to get nice and straight. You can model the hatches open or closed which is always nice when you want to put in a couple of AB figures tank crew like me.

A few tow cables for the sides look good. There is also some spare track to put on the turret, but they don’t include hooks. So I added some of my own just by gluing small squares of plastic card where the hook would stick out. I left the spare tracks off until I had painted the turret so the rusty effects would not interfere.

For painting I loosely followed the plans in an excellent book i have called “How To Paint 1:72 Military Vehicles – The Weathering Special”. They actually use the Tiger II for one chapter so I went through the majority of the techniques in the book. Another guide to painting that I can really recommend.

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I chopped off some of the side guards for battle damage, like they had in the book, and copied best I could the colour schemes. Lots of chips, dirt, mud and grime using various sponges, powders and other products. AB tank commanders to finish him off. Great little kit and great fun to spend a bit longer on the paint job and all the weathering effects.

OTP Terrain Houses in 20mm

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 10 Comments

I think I am totally addicted to making buildings and creating a tiny world, rather than actually playing a game in that tiny world! I found OTP Terrain while looking for the great designs by Jens Najewitz. So they make a whole heap of Printed 3D terrain in a hard plastic. I bought three houses, the Normandy Hotel, Small Building and Town House. They each have removable roofs and floors perfect for your wargames. The detail is excellent and easy to paint. The only additions I made were chopping off the chimney stacks and adding my own metal ones. It has become a thing, I need to replace every chimney pot on any bought building model. I get mine from S&D Models in the UK. They do not cost much and are way better than any of the attempts at chimney pots you get with kits or ones you can make yourself.

These houses are not cheap compared to their MDF counterparts, but they paint up really nicely, have good detail, and they have a huge range. Check them out at OTP Terrain

Photos below. Check out the French Boulangere called Brien. Weird.

I have my eyes on a farm house and barn and bridge. But so much else to get painted first.…….. Good thing we are locked up at home………

Superquick Card Model Houses HO Scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 4 Comments

I figured I would need some more houses to build while the world goes into lockdown. These card kits from Superquick are just pure nostalgia. My big brother had built some for his railways in the 1980s and they were swiftly borrowed to be used on my ping pong table for battles. After 35 years they have not changed. I will get to build them this time. I am sure I can make them look a little more French and a bit less cardboardy this time around. My aim is to have enough buildings to have a full town on a 6 x 4 sized table.

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Heller Somua Tank in 1/72 scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 4 Comments

Boxart Somua 79875 Heller

I didn’t really need any French tanks, as I do not have any French forces, but I do like these Somua tanks. They were captured and used by the Germans later in the war and so I thought I would build a troop of them anyway. I think the only plastic model kit in this scale of the Somua is made by Heller, so I bought three of them on eBay from someone, somewhere. Loved the box art and attempted to base my camo scheme on the front action shot.

It’s a tiny tank and the kit is easy to put together. Detail is nice and there were zero construction issues. By the third build I was doing it with my eyes shut! Tracks are like a soft vinyl that fitted perfectly which made a nice change. I think I drilled out the gun barrels with a very tiny drill, but did not do much else. Camo scheme was applied using the blutack masking technique, which ended up coming out very nicely. The decals were a mixture of the supplied ones plus some other spares. I really liked the French red white and blue insignia and white numbers so I sourced some similar stuff from my decal files. I figure I can use these for either side, early war French or late war Germans.

Here is le Troop just wandering through a village.

Charlie Foxtrot Models Houses in 20mm

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 5 Comments

So I have painted up the first three of my new houses, starting with three kits from Charlie Foxtrot Models in England. The Brasserie, Dormer House and Shed. These kits are pretty reasonably priced and come in pieces in plastic bags with a stapled cardboard header and a single sheet of instructions. The main structures are MDF with other bits and pieces being plastic, like chimneys, and balsa wood shutters.

My first impressions were excellent with nice clean bits of MDF which all fits together well. But the instructions are terrible. They could easily write and print much clearer and precise instructions. It must be the smallest outlay of the whole kit, one sheet of paper, but they have not given the modeller much help. So you kind of have to wing it. Luckily most buildings are just a box so you cannot go too wrong.

Armed with PVA glue everything fits together and the kits can be built quickly in an evening. Now as always with MDF kits i have to add and amend plenty of things to get them up to scratch. First up is a layer of plaster over all the outside walls. I did this on the Brasserie and the Dormer House. For the shed i coated in textured plastic sheet to look like stonewalls. You will need to sand the plaster to get it smoother. It covers up all those annoying MDF corners. I also added some tiled roofing, some pantile, some slate, as I really cannot deal with the MDF roof that comes 100% flat. You could also use cut up cardboard for the roof tiles. My last pet hate for MDF kits is the chimney pots. So i added all my own metal chimney pots I had purchased from an excellent model store in the UK.

Once I had made all these additions the buildings came up a treat I think. One last tip for doing gold letters for the Brasserie was to buy a gold paint pen from the newsagent. This made it much easier than trying to paint with gold paint which does not cover very well.

Even with all the additional work I think these Charlie Foxtrot kits are very good and measure up with other MDF producers like Sarissa. If you need buildings quickly and not too pricey check out Charlie Foxtrot

 

Armourfast Stug IV in 1/72 scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 5 Comments

You always know what you are going to get with a Armourfast kit. Two tanks in a box for something like seven pounds. Great value at about seven Australian dollars a tank for me down here in the Southern hemisphere. There are only a few parts to each tank, so they are super quick to build. Nothing wrong with a fast build tank. The detail is good enough for a wargame, and if you want a large number of tanks in quick smart time, then these kits are for you. You cannot beat value for money to bulk up an army.

I had a lot of fun doing a lot of weathering to my two Stugs. I really wanted to try the hairspray chipping effect on these two to add a bit more interest to them. So after building, and leaving the side skirts off, i sprayed everything with a red oxide and a dark brown spray can. Then i gave it three thin coats of hairspray, letting it dry in between each layer. Oh and do this outside….. It can get smelly. Once this was all dry i did the usual dark yellow dunkelb  spray over the top. Once that’s all dry you can grab a stiff brush and a toothpick, wet a small surface of the tank and give it a rub and a scratch. The trick here is to do this in areas that would get worn out, like hatches etc, and also not to over do it. I was impatient as usual and went overboard. It’s a fun process and can look really good but you need to remember less is more. Next time i will take it easy.

I gave it all a gloss varnish and a dark wash. Plus some decals. You don’t get decals with the tanks so you need to source elsewhere. I added my favourite AB figure crewmen plus a home made aerial and also some camouflage foliage. These Armourfast tanks really do improve greatly if you take a bit of extra effort and make some modifications!

Esci Pz.Kpfw.IV in 1/72 scale

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 5 Comments

Esci German Tank pz.kpfw.IV ausf.g 1/72 Scale Model Kit Tank NEW

I picked two more Panzer IVs on eBay just like this one. Costing less than $10 each, such good value, even if they are the kits with the nasty vinyl tracks. I am now confident I can defeat the horrible things with a good dose of super glue and patience. I needed a couple more Panzer IVs to go with my Zvezda troop that I built previously. These Esci kits still hold up nicely, you just need to give them a bit more love than more modern kits. These two I made quite a few alterations to get them up to scratch.

First up is to sort out the tricky tracks. I managed to totally snap one of the tracks trying to wrap and glue them around the running gear, leaving a missing section. My solution for both vehicles was to scratch build side skirts to cover up the top section of the tracks. This gave me free reign to use wire to connect the tracks to the top return rollers, knowing it would all be covered up by the schurtzen. I used thin plastic card and the Zvezda skirts as a template. I also needed to build turret armour using the same plastic card superglued to thicker wire so it would retain its curved shape around the turret. This worked out quite well as I basically just tried to copy the Zvezda tanks.

One of my old Esci kits had a malformed gun barrel, so i bought a nice new metal one for a few dollars and replaced it. This was a great improvement too. I also picked up a tow cable to add. I drilled some holes and glued in aerials as usual. These kits let you leave the turret open so I did that on one tank ready for my AB figures crew man.

Paint job was a black undercoat followed by a Tamiya dark yellow spray. I then hand painted the green camo which was followed by a light overspray of dark yellow again. Gloss varnish and decals is followed by a MIG dark brown wash to pick out details. I did some chipping and scratching to make it all look nice and work, using a sponge and even just sand paper to leave some marks on the paintwork. After a matt varnish i used plenty of dusty pigments for the weathered look. My AB commander was painted and added and you can see him relaxing in his hatch below.

I was happy with the end result with all my additions and they fit in nicely with the two Zvezda kits i had made previously. Overall these Esci kits are great if you can be bothered to give them a little more love and attention.