Plastic Soldier Company 1:100 Leopard 1

A closer look at the Plastic Soldier Company 15mm Leopard 1 tank kit. As I wrote in the previous post, the PSC offers a growing range of 15 and 20mm tanks and other vehicles for ww2 and cold war wargames.

This is the third of their (at least for now) available 3 post-ww2 tanks. I already showed the US M-60 and the Soviet T-55 in other posts. Their official homepage lists more stuff coming soon, Brueckenkopf.de has some pictures of new modern stuff, you can find them here.

After that small introduction let us take a look at the model kit, which comes from the stash of my mate Olli:
 

The Leopard 1 comes in one sprue of the usual gray plastic which the PSC normally uses. As I wrote in the previous post, this stuff feels minimal softer than the styrene other companies use.

I saw that sprue only for a moment, but I do not remember any flaws with it. I think there were some mouldlines to remove but this is the case with almost any other model kit. The pictures show no flash and possible sinkholes should not be seen when it is constructed.

Except for the simplified tracks, the detail in general is good.

A very nice feature is the choice to have the driver and both turret hatches opened or closed, this is very nice because the PSC offers 3 tank crew figures with this kit for this. And that is not all, the kit offers the choice, either to build the German A3 or A4 version or you can also choose the Canadian C1 variant of this tank.

In general I would recommend this kit, even when I did not build it for myself, the general impression is fine. The choice of opened or closed hatches and the addition of 3 commander figures is a big plus.

My mate olli got a single sprue of this tank in which neither an instruction (can easily be found on the web) nor decals were included, I can not say if decals are included in the big box.
The overall price for this kit, as for most single PSC kits, is arround 5 Euros for a single tank and 20 to 25 Euros for a pack of 5.

If I remember correctly, my mate Olli had no issues building this kit while a past roguish Montagsmaler session, I think his w.i.p. tank looks fine, the basecoat is Revell Aquacolor Bronze Green, but do not ask which other colors he used.

Tomorrow I will take the opportunity to compare this thing to the Battlefront Miniatures Leopard 1 modelkit, as long I have some of his tanks here. Then we will see what differences there are and which of both kits I would prefer. Maybe I will add a picture of my modified Zvezda Abrams, my modifications got better than I tought they would get.

Plastic Soldier Company 1:100 T-55 / T-55A / T-55AM2

A closer look at the Plastic Soldier Company 15mm T-55 tank kit. The PSC offers a growing range of 15 and 20mm tanks and trucks for ww2 and cold war wargames.

This is one of their 3 post-ww2 tanks, there are also the US M-60 and the German Leopard 1, but their official homepage already lists more availble stuff coming soon. I found at Brueckenkopf.de some pictures of new modern stuff, you can find some pictures here.

But without spending more words, let us take a look at the model kit:

The T-55 kit comes in a sprue of grey plastic, it is the usual stuff the PSC uses for its kits, this plastic feels minimal softer than usual hardplastic model kits.

I did not find any major flaws on this kit, there are some mouldlines to remove, but I did not find any mentionable flash. The details are a littles softer than on the BFM T-55, what we will see in a future post.
The roadwheels are ok, but the tracks do not have much details, but they are still leagues above the tracks which Zvezda offers with their kits.

There are some sinkholes on some parts but they will not be seen, when the kit is built. Otherwise, the kit is nicely casted and offers the choice of  to build either the T-55, the T-55A or the T-55AM2.

I got the single version of this kit without any building instructions, but they can easily be found on the web. If you want to build the T-55AM2 version, you should look for some original pictures, the instruction do not show the exact position of some parts of the turret.

I had no issues building this kit, except for the unclear placement of some turret parts. Otherwise this is a nice kit which will need not much cleanup, when I built mine, I gave them Eastgerman NVA decals, as you can see below:

This is a nice kit and an good alternative to the plastic BFM T-55 kit. The kit is ok except for the stuff I mentioned above. The addition of a commander figure is nice, some decals would have been nice too, but none are included at least in the single sprue version which I got.

This tank is priced arround 5 EU for a single kit and 20 to 25 for a 5 pack of them, what is a reasonable price.

After we have taken a closer look at the "TANKS The Modern Age" T-55 expansion in a future post,  I will do a comparison of both different T-55 15mm model kits from BFM and PSC.

In the next post, maybe tonight, we will see another 15mm Plastic Soldier post-ww2 tank, since this is the second of the 3 available cold war kits I showed in this blog, there is only one left and it should be clear what is coming next. I think the next 3 or 4 posts will feature German Bundeswehr kitten, before I would like to show you the crappy Zvezda Abrams and how I improved its look.

By the way, the first batch of Zvezda reviews is uploaded and ready, I think the stuff I mentioned in the previous post will start next weeks Tuesday with the Zvezda 1:100 Panzerkampfwagen VI and then it will go on. Depending on my time, I will add here and there some little posts, but you may expect (almost) only reviews and closer looks for the next 6 to 8 weeks.

Maybe I will do an unboxing video of my next hobbystuff order, I already made one, but I have to dub it since I messed up the sound, this should be found next weekend on my Youtube channel, it will show a lot of Zvezda kits.

Update:
Ooops, I almost forgot, some while ago I took a closer look at the ww2 "TANKS" starterbox, now I edited it heavily, to fit into the scheme, you can find it here.

Blog Update November

I was watching a ww2 documentation and (just for fun) tried to find some more UHU advertisements from war time, just as the one on the upper right corner of this blog.
And as you can see, I did, and this thing is a good example for indoctrination and propaganda of totalitarian regimes. If you want to know what it is about, you have to go for yourself, I will not translate it, but I may integrate this picture into this blog.

(By the way, it took some time to restore the picture to its actual state, the original was an old and faded piece of newspaper. Using this as template I could eventually "upgrade" the original UHU advertisement from this page to a higher resolution.)

But back to topic. I went through several struggles and changes in the last weeks, and I did not find neither the energy nor the time to write new postings, since writing them takes more time than you may think.
What does not mean, that I did no models. The Montagsmaler are still busy and we may get another (third) member. Also, in the past few weeks I collected lots of new material for this blog, but I had more important things to do than  writing for this blog.

I can not say, how much time I can spend for blogging in the next few weeks, but in the next days I finally have some time to spend exclusively for blogging.

What means, that I will use the autopublishing function exessively because there are lots of kits which will get a closer look, but my time to write will be rare.
At the moment I have more then 40 minireviews in the make, cosisting of lots of Zvezda kits and ww2/ww3 TANKS expansions. And then there is the usual content like 3D prining, both "TANKS" games and Rügen'46, whenever I may find time I will post about this stuff.

To give you a rough number, I am preparing the posts for some PCS models, more than 10 TANKS expansions and 30+ Zvezda ww2/ww3 kits, like the new Brummbär, the Abrams, the Tiger and lots more, which resulted in almost 300 pictures I would like to share with you.

(I may have mentioned it, I want to give all available Zvezda 1:100 tank and each 1:144 and 1:200 plane model kits a closer look and according to my list, there are arround 80 kits in these ranges, and I already own a little more than the half of them.)

Due to my limited time, my plan is to use the autopublishing function for all these new posts which I will write the in next days, the schedule should be:

On Tuesdays 20:00 a closer look at a Zvezda Axis 1:100 tank kit.
On Thursdays 20:00 a closer look at a Zvezda Allies 1:100 tanks kit.
On Saturdays  15:00 or 17:00 a closer look at a Zvezda 1:144 or 1:200 plane kit.
On Sundays 15:00 or 17:00 a closer look at an expansion either for ww2 "TANKS" or "TANKS The Modern Age".


Following this schedule there is a lot of content to come over the next 2 or 3 months. Some of these posts will contain comparisons with other models, so I hope this will not get to dry.
But before this will come, I will continue where I stopped, the next posts will be dedicated to German cold war tanks before I will start with all that reviews.

Beside that, the new custom units for the games will come whenever I will find time for it. Not to forget to mention the plane expansion for ww2 "TANKS", of which I am writing for a long time. I hope that I will finish the work on it this year.

Finally, on the first or second weekend of next month I am going to shut down the blog for at least some hours. After the first 10 years it will be time to change the layout of the ww2modelzone.

TL;DR So many models, so little time.

Update:
I updated/changes the scheduling for autopublished posts.

15mm T-55AM2 Squad

Some pictures of my NVA 1:100 T-55AM2 squad. These models were made by the Plastic Soldier Company, the kit offers the choice to build different versions of the T-55 (we will see that in a future post), I decided to build the AM2 version from this kit(s) just because I prefer its look compared to other versions. 

The flag in the background above was bought at a fleamarkted 20 years ago, and I think it fits pretty well in todays post, not only because these kits got the East German national insignia as all other non official units (coming soon) and proxie or 3Dprint hybrid models I use for "TANKS The Modern Age".

The East German forces had a lot of these tanks in their arsenal, this website shows all T-55 versions which were used by the Nationale Volksarmee.

As you may see, here and there are some little bits which I may redo, but basically these tanks are ready for future battles. The already served at the Easter front, one of them shot down a German PAH. At the moment they hold postion near the French border and wait for further commands.

In a future post we will take a closer look at this modelkit and then it will get compared to the Battlefront Miniatures T-55, but before we will do that, the next posts are dedicated to tanks of the West German Bundeswehr.

Rügen'46 Gangs Of Sassnitz (3) In Nomine Domini

For last years "Rügen'46" game, more on that in this post, I build for each player an additional squad of troopers. The other minis I built and painted and more from that game can be found in this and this post.

Sister Mary (this post) represented what was left of the Roman-Catholic Church. The Vatican saw in the Sassnitz incident the beginning of the endtime and gathered lots of poorly armed Christian fanatics who would give their life for god in the final battle between good and evil.

These cultist were built combining some Mantic zombie- and ghoulbodies with the robed cultist heads made by Tabletop Art. Their arnament came from my bitsbox. It made fun to build these strange minis, if I find the other 8 (?) cultist heads in my bitsboxes, I may build more of them.
This was the only squad with 8 figures, all other players had only 5 men squads.

The sixth and final Squad I built represents the new Germany, reborn when the war ended with the victory of the allied forces. Since there are not many industrial capacities left after the zombie outbreak, the army of the reborn German nation has to rely on Wehrmacht equipment.

These minis were taken from the German Infantry box from Warlord Games, the mini in the middle may came from Wargames Factory German Infantry box. They were built out of the box except for the heads, where I used heads from the SHS range from Westwind Productions.

This is the first batch of those minis, last Sunday I built 10 more, but I do not think I will paint them soon. But when I do, the mouldlines on the already painted minis will be removed. But I did not care for this when I painted them, I did not have time for that, because I had to hurry.

This Squad was led by an unknown female officer.

This mini was taken from the "Ilsa and the She-wolfes" set made by Pulp Figures. The mini got a new SHS gasmask head and a hairpiece from the bitsbox.

I can not remember in detail which colors I used on the Germans from this post, but the uniform color is Revell Aquacolor Olive Gray, what not only fits for most German uniforms (including the early monocolor Bundeswehr uniforms) as a substitude for Feldgrau, also it is a good first layer of drybrush color for most greens I use for my 15mm tank models.

I can not say if I will find some time for posting tomorrow, but Thursday is the 29th anniversary of the German reunification, and for that reason I will post about German post-war stuff for the rest of the week only.