Soviet Quad Maxim AA Gun

One of the latest offerings from Peter Pig is the soviet Quad Maxim AA gun of which 12,000 were produced from 1931 until 1942.

Lacking the stopping power of its counter part (12.7mm Dshk), its service life was cut short but an interesting model none the less. For FoW, I am expecting to see them in the forthcoming Barbarossa Book. As to any stats, we can only guess at the moment, but RoF of 6 with a FP of 6 is looking favourite. This only puts them on a par with a single HMG when firing at ground targets, so a high RoF is not outside the bounds of possibility albeit unlikely.

On to the Peter Pig version.
In an unexpected move, these guns are sold without the truck and you get two guns and four crew for the price of a standard 8 figure infantry pack.

Components ready to go

Being the cheapskate that I am, I immediately thought of pairing them up with a Zvezda truck. £5 for two trucks plus the guns gave me a pair of AA trucks for a smidgen over the cost of a single AA truck by other manufacturers. Bonus!

The figures are well proportioned although a little thinner than BF figures. I know from past experience that although you can not really mix them on a base, there is no problem with them being on the same table. Casting was nice and crisp with no mould lines to clean off and just a little bit of very thin flash to clean out from between the barrels.(I cleaned mine out with my thumb nail ... must get that nail trimmed - it is getting a little long). Glueing the gun together was pretty straight forward but I did have to google a picture or two to make sure I was getting it correct.

The one concern I did have was the tripod and the fact that it had been cast solid. Checking the image return results carefully did ease my fears somewhat as there seemed to be all sorts of configurations for the tripod from solid cones to a 'fin' type structures so I guess a half cone type configuration is OK but I can always be corrected on the forum (link at the bottom of this article, just click the wwpd banner) 

Downsides
They may take you some work to get ready. I decided to take the bases off the crew completely so they looked right in the trucks. I did contemplate just covering the bases with stowage etc but decided against it as this would increase painting time.
No clear construction images but google is your friend

The other downside is of course making those damn Zvezda trucks - but at £2.50 each it keeps the wife happier.