Zvezda 1:100 T-34/76 Mod. 1940

A closer look at the T-34/76 (Mod.1940) modelkit produced by Russian manufacturer Zvezda for their "Art of Tactic"  strategy game. This tanks comes in 1:100 scale as all Zvezda "Hot War - Battle for Oil" and "Art Of Tactic" tank kits, what makes it suitable for being used with any game which supports the T-34/76.

The kit comes in a single olivegreen sprue and is casted pretty sharp, with some detail like towrope and track spareparts moulded onto the hull. 

Neither flash nor sinkholes can be found and mouldlines were only recognized on the tracks. The plastic used for this kit feels different to the plastic of other Zvezda kits I already built, almost like "real" modelkit polystyrene, and it can be glued with normal modelglue like the Revell glue I use.

Maybe Zvezda changed their recipe for this stuff.

While the roadwheels are ok, the tracks show the same issues as with (almost) every Zvezda kit, simple detail on the outside and no detail on the inner side of the track.

The turret is casted in one piece, but is is ok, I have seen worse. The only thing which worried me was that there was no hull machine gun, there is emough room on the sprue for that part.

The instructions can be found on the back of the box, and after some cleanup and the use of some modellers cement (this can also be build without any glue) my w.i.p. T-34/76 looks like this:
(I am out of Red Stars at the moment, but I am going to order some decals from Skytrex, but that will be the topic of a future post)

This kit is ok for its price, but there is the usual issue with the grade of detail on the tracks, and the exclusion of any decals is annoying as so often with these kits. Also, there is no machine gun for the hull, what is bad, but this should be easyly built from scratch.

Compared to the 15mm BFM and PSC T-34s this kit is very simple, personally I prefer the BFM T-34 which will be seen in a post coming soon. For that I will take some comparing pictures of the 3 different T-34 I have.

On the other side, if you need some reinforcements for your ww2 Soviets and you want to save some money, or/and you are not willing to spend much time on constructing them, then these should be yours. There are some more T-34 made by Zvezda for "Art Of Tactic", while I still have to get them, they all seem as easy to build as this one.

While today we are at Soviet hardware, this will continue til the end of the week. As you may have noticed, this weekends "TANKS" expansion will be the T-34, for this Saturday I will have a Soviet plane to show to you.