Zvezda 1:100 ZSU-23-4 Shilka

A closer look at the Soviet AA weapon system ZSU-23-4 "Shilka", produced by Russian manufacturer Zvezda for the "Hot War - Battle for Oil" wargame. This kit is made in 1:100/15mm scale as all other Zvezda "Art of Tactic" and "Hot War" tank kits. Some are good, some are not as good as they could be, what is the case with this kit?

Especially since the "Hot War" kits cost twice as much as their ww2 counterparts, I hope the quality of this kit does not suck, but no further words, let us take a look at the modelkit:

The kit comes in 2 green plastic sprues containing all parts to build the Shilka. The casting is ok, and I did not find any flash or sinkholes while this kit was built. The plastic seems harder than the stuff they use for their "Art Of Tactic" models, and it takes modelglue very well, but you will not have to use it, all parts sit and fit well even without glue.

The kit is casted very sharp, with a good amount of details. At a first look, the built may seem complicated, and you should read the buildig insturcions careful, but this is not the case with this kit and everything went together well.

There are no bits left over for the bitsbox except for the flagpiece which would be needed for the "Hot War" game only.

Mostly I complain about the quality of the tracks of Zvezda 15mm kits, but this time I was positively surprised. The tracks of this kit show a better detail than the tracks of their ww2 tanks. Sure, they may be a bit better, but for 1:100 scale I think their detail is quite ok.
Not to forget to mention that this is "only" a gamepiece.

The decals included in this box made a good impression. While I wrote about diferent styles of decals in my T-72B minireview, scrap that, as this is the 4th "Hot War" Soviet tank expansion I give a closer look, I would state that every box has different decals, see the decalsheets of the T-72B, the BTR-80 and the 2S1, while all boxes contain a set of generic Soviet numbers, they all are different.

All in all, this is a nice kit, even the tracks are ok. Building this kit should make no issues, but you have to take care of the barrels which are very fragile. The addition of a decalsheet is a fine extra.

As you read, I have no issues with this kit and I can only recommend it if you need some AA power for your Soviet cold war army.

How this kit looks built and painted can be seen in the following post.