1:100 BM-13 Katyusha

Some pictures of my recently finished 1:100 BM-13 Katyusha rocket launcher from Zvezdas "Art Of Tactic" wargame range. I had built that kit before and used it as a base for this built. Some time ago I ordered it once again and made some simple modifications to improve its look.

First of all, for the windshield I built a simple armourplate from scrap plastic. Even when the armourplate is on the boxart of this expansion kit, it is not included in the actual modelkit as we saw in the closer look at the kit in the past.

I searched through my bitbox for the leftover rocketspart from the first BM-13 that I built. Since the Zvezda BM-13 has only an upper row of rockets, it was good to keep this bit for the bottom part of the second rocket launcher. Then I separated all rockets from each other and glued the single pieces to the rail.

The last thing I did was to add support stands for the rear of the truck. They were built from scratch using some scrap plastic. While they are pretty basic, they improve the look of the BM-13 a lot, just as the other two modifications do.

But no further words, let the result speak for itself:

Tomorrow I will compare Zvezdas 15mm SU-76 to the Plastic Soldier Company 15mm SU-76, and we will see, which of them I would recommend for platoonbuilding.

I am still unsure, what to post after that. Both Italian expansions for "TANKS" are on my desk, just as the Humvee expansion for the ww3 version of the game, there are still some unfinished "Art Of Tactic" reviews, and somehow keeps the list of custom units to make still growing and growing.

We will see. You can see the next custom "TANKS" unit on the picture below. When the KV-2 cards are uploaded, this beast is next.

More Aces Of The Autobahn

Just saw this car on my way to work and wanted to share these two pictures with you. First I tought, nice, the driver had a P-40 Warhawk as model, but with those black U.S. emblems, this should be post-ww2. Maybe the sharkmouth design was taken from the Cobra Helicopter or the A-10, many pictures of them with a painted mouth can be found on the web.

A funny coincidence since I made a picture of this some weeks ago.

At the moment I am finishing the BM-13 post, it will go online in some minutes.

Done.

15mm Planecrash Scenery Pieces

After the Soviet forces crossed the inner German border, big parts of Germany were conquered and sucessfully defended by them, while their allied Warsaw Pact forces rushed forward to reach the French border.

It is still unclear, what happened to F-WTMD. NATO and Warsaw Pact accuse each other. An small East German unit was near while the crash happened and reached the crashsite first.

It seems the Eastern forces concentrate in the Rheinland, ready to attack France. Then it is time to get these into service to defend their homeland.

You may know this kit from a previous post, it is the Master Modell 1:100 Dassault "Mercure" which got a closer look in this post. Pictures of the built modelkit can be found in this post.

This was built in a typical manner, some sand, paints and flock, and voila, it was done. Of course, this did not went fast, I spent the whole Sunday on these pieces. Two pieces were already started and two more were built from scratch.

But I wanted something more. I had some flickering LEDs and wanted to install them into some of the wreck pieces. I improvised the LED holders using some metal and LEGO parts and much glue and brought them into place with my trusty hotglue gun.

These things look creepy but they do their job well.

The the rear "smokepiece" is removable to reach and change the battery of this thing. LEGO pieces are used as connectors and this works well. Also a switch was added.

When everything was in place, I added some "smoke" using cotton. This made a little mess, but in the end it works as supposed. Then I gave the cotton pieces a fat layer of clear varnish to add some strenght to the cotton followed by some black to darken the smoke.

How this thing looks now, when it is finished, can be seen in the video below:

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Originally I planned to post yesterday, but I was in the mood to continue the work on these pieces and to prepare them for today. I hope I will be able to finish and upload the BM-13 and Katyusha posts tomorrow, since they are roughly finished it will not take too much time.

Todays roguish Montagmaler session was nice. While my mate Olli gave one of his tanks a fine paintjob, he painted a very nice German camouflage pattern, I built the electonics for these scenery pieces.

Even when I was sceptical while I worked on them yesterday, the result has a pleasing appeal, and I can not wait to see them on the battlefield.

Meanwhile In Sassnitz...

Work in progress, maybe I will finish the diorama this weekend.

Zvezda 1:100 SU-76M Self-Propelled Gun

A closer look at the 1:100 Soviet SU-76M self-propelled gun model kit. This kit is produced by the Russian manufacturer Zvezda for their "Art Of Tactic" wargame range. But as all 1:00 Zvezda model kits, this model could be used for any 15mm world war 2 wargame.

After we too a closer look at the Plastic Soldier Company SU-76 model kit in a previous post, today let us see, what Zvezda has to offer with its SU-76 kit:

The kit comes in two green sprues made in the same plastic as all other Soviet units for Zvezdas ww2 and ww3 wargames. The casting is without any flaws, there is virtually no flash to remove. The absence of any sinkholes and visible ejectormarks is a very nice feature, and the only mouldlines you would have to remove can be found on the tracks, the barrel and some smaller parts.

The tracks on this kit are made well, it seems that the newer Zvezad 1:100 tank kits do not lack as much track detail as their first released kits.

What was most surprising, is the grade of detail of the crew compartment, as you can see on the picture below. Please note that the gunsight was not installed on the picture.

As usual, this kit can be built without the use of glue, but the plastic takes normal modelglue well and binds fast

With the SU-76 Zvezda offers a nice modelkit with a good amount of details. I could not find any negative points on the kit itself, but the addition of decals and crewmembers would have been nice.

But for its low price and the quality of the kit, I only can recommend this kit as an addition for your Soviet ww2 army.

This kit was built pretty fast and I had no issues with this, but you should carefully read the included instruction leaflet, since the construction of Zvezda 1:100 kits sometimes can be a little, ahm, special (?).

The picture shows, how it looks, when this thing is built and painted:

In one of the next posts, the Zvezda SU-76 will be compared to the Plastic Soldier Company SU-76, which of them would I rather recommend ?