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.

1:100 ZIS-6 With 3,7cm Flak

I recently finished this crude hybrid which was shown in a previous post (this picture). This thing is a combination of the ZIS-6 truck from Zvezdas BM-13 Katyusha "Art Of Tactic" expansion, a 3D printed flakgun and various parts from my bitsbox.
Some pictures from this website were the inspiration for this built.

I did not take a closer look at the 1:100 Zvezda BM-13 Katyusha modelkit but you can find reviews on the web and youtube.

After I removed the rocket launcher from the truck, I added a freightbed made of thin cardboard and some other bits to improve its look.
I did not find a matching Soviet gun for that truck that I had to improvise again. Originally the flakgun is a British 40mm Bofors but after a quick comparison with the Soviet 3,7cm Mod. 1939 AA gun I did not find too may differences between them, that I took the Bofors which can be found at Thingiverse.

The barrel of the gun and its gunsight were printed improperly and I had to replace them. I used parts of a broken 1:72 Zvezda Soviet 3,7cm flak for this.

The crew figures came from the Plastic Soldier Company M3 halftrack kit, they are US minis, but since I do not have any 15mm Soviet minis, once again I had to improvise and used them. But I think this will not be seen from a distance.

I painted this thing with the same colors which I used for the KV-1 and KV-2 from the 2 previous posts and added some decals from the 28mm Rubicon T-34 kit.

I am happy with the result, but to be honest this is an ugly thing which looks very crude on close sight.

Next up is to paint this thing, after I found a matching figure in my bitsbox to operate the (scratchbuilt) gun on its freightbed.
When this thing is done, there are only 3 planes to finish before I can start to create the needed custom unit cards and write the plane expansion for "TANKS".

By the way, I added this picture of the (almost) finished kit to the Zvezda T-72B review.

Update: I mistakenly wrote 3,7mm gun, this was corrected.

Zvezda 1:100 KV-2

A closer look at the Soviet KV-2 1:100 model kit by Russian producer Zvezda. This model belongs to Zvezdas "Art Of Tactic" wargame. A a lot of tankmodels in 15mm scale are available for this game, but the level of detail and the general look of the models from that range, as also from their other wargame "Hot War  - Battle For Oil", is not always the best.

Let us take a look at the plastic to get a clue about this:

The kit comes in 2 green sprues with all parts included to build a KV-2 tank model. Basically I could copy-paste most segments from the closer look at the KV-1 Mod.1941 in the previous post, this kit is generally good but should have better tracks.

There are some mouldlines to remove but except for that, I see no issues with this kit. Building it may be tricky, but while I built this kit, everything went fine. I like the way how Zvezda solved the barrel, but the piece for the barrel tip was hard to clean from any residue.

As also for the KV-1, I only checked the dimensions of the hull, 67,8x33,5mm, and compared to Wikipedias data of 6,75 x 3,32 meters, the difference is minimal and this fits in scale.

Everything fine except for the tracks which are pretty basic and lack of greater detail.

By the way, this kit uses the same hull and track parts as the KV-1 Mod.1941 which I reviewed in the last post, and I would say, that the same 4 parts are used on the KV-1 Mod.1940 too, you may look for yourself in this review at Modellingmadness.com.

All in all, this is a nice kit, which was built pretty fast without issues. I painted it the same way than the KV-1, and for the two on the picture below, I had to take decals from the sparebook, since Zvezda does not include decals in their "Art Of Tactic" 1:100 tanks expansion.

You can see the result below, 2 KV-2 are finished out of the box and they look fine. I got them to have a chance against future custom units, since there are some big kitten on the way, but I still have to order decals for them.

Since the KV-2 will become a custom unit for "TANKS", you may expect its unitcard after the weekend.

Zvezda 1:100 KV-1 Mod. 1941 With F-32 Gun

A closer look at the Soviet KV-1 Mod. 1941 1:100 model kit by Russian producer Zvezda. This kit belongs to Zvezdas "Art Of Tactic" wargame, which features a lot of 1:100 tankmodels. The overall level of detail differs from kit to kit.

But no further words, let us take a look at the modelkit from this box:

This Zvezda kit comes in 2 green sprues, including all 6 parts to build the KV-1. You have the choice of 2 different guns, but only one of them is mentioned in the instructions. It seems that the other barrelpiece may come from the KV-1 Mod.1940 kit, but I can not say this for sure.

As in all other Zvezda 1:100 tank kits, also a flag (which can be attached to the tank) is on one of the sprues, but since this is for use in "Art Of Tactic" only, it will be unused.

The overall quality of this modelkit is good. The used plastic is pretty hard, just as the stuff they use for their newer 1:100 kits.

Neither sinkholes nor visible injectormarks can be seen, but the grade of detail could, while in general it is ok, be more distinct. I did find only minor mouldlines, except for the tracks, which will need some work. As usual, the tracks lack of detail, especially the inner side of them, what is sadly shared among all other 1:100 wargaming tank models of Zvezdas various wargames.

I only checked the dimensions of the hull, 67,8x33,5mm, compared to Wikipedias data of 6,75 x 3,32 meters, the difference is minimal and this fits in scale. And while I am at the lower parts of this model, this kit shares some parts with at least 1 other Zvezda kit.

This kit uses the same hull and track parts as the KV-2 which I reviewed in the next post, and I would say, that the same 4 parts are used on the KV-1 Mod.1940 too, you may look for yourself in this review at Modellingmadness.com.

The building instructions are on the back of the box and clear to understand. Actually, cleaning the parts took more time then building the tank. While glue would not be needed to built this tank, I used some Revell modelglue and the plastic took it without issues and binded very fast.

I added decals from the sparebook, since decals are not included in this box, and this is what I got as final result:

Building this kit went without issues as I wrote above. After it got primed with the Russian primer by AKinteractive (great stuff), I painted it by hand before it got its matte varnish seal, again via airbrush. May be I will make it dirtier, but it is already a nice proxie unit for "TANKS".

By the way, yesterday was another productive Montagsmaler session, somehow I managed to assemble my crude interpretation of a Soviet truck with a 3,7cm flak, but look for yourself:

1:100 M36 Jackson Bitsbox/3D Print Hybrid

When I built the Achilles tank hunter from its expansion for "TANKS", I had an unused spare M36 Jackson turret that went to the bitsbox. Since I had some time ago the idea to combine leftover parts with 3D printed parts, you may already know what I did.

This chimaera is the result of combining the Battlefront Miniatures M36 turrets with a 3D printed hull from Thingiverse.com, if I remember correctly, I took it from this collection. The last indegrent were the tracks, taken from a 1st generation BFM plastic Sherman. 

The tracks are a little oversized what clearly can be seen when this tank is compared to his British comrade, the Achilles.

While the lenght and the height of the printed hull do not differ much from its plastic counterpart, the printed part should have been 2mm wider, what clearly can not be seen on this picture. Except for that, I am pleased with the print.
Sure, since the machine which made it is, ahm, let me call it, ahm, pretty basic as also the overall print quality is pretty basic and would be better with a better machine. But I am still fascinated with this relatively new technology and what is possible with the cheapest printer we got.

I do not want to get too enthusiastic about 3D printing, I think you can see the endless possibilites of this stuff, not only for modelling purposes but on a bigger level, for yourself. As I may have written sometime in the past, I compare 3D printing to the replicators of "Star Trek", even when these are completely different technologies.

But back to the Jackson, then there are the tracks.

The scavenged tracks are the reason for the height differences of both tanks, while they look ok, they are way to big and I may change them in the near future. This would be the oppurtunity to get some "Art Of Tactics" Shermans, to see if their tracks could be used.

Sunday, funday, and since the next Montagsmaler meeting is on close sight, you may not expect another post for today except for the case, that I will get motivated to drop some lines about another Zvezda 1:100 kit. But at the moment, the chances for that are pretty low.