Bolt Action - Review: Warlord Games M24 Chaffee

Judson recently got in a batch of stuff to review from Warlord Games.  Since I am doing the Americans, I took a swing at their M24 Chaffee.  Let's dive in!

  

Box contents.

As usual, the model came in a small box with some really good bubble wrap.  Everything survived the journey to my painting table very well.  The first thing I noticed was that the hull and the turret are VERY well cast.  There is a ton of detail and a small amount of flashing around some of the rear hull.  This turret was extremely smooth and the detail around the cupola is just very well done.  The tracks had some moderate flash inside the tracks and on the bottom, which seemed acceptable to me.

The .50cal was a different story.  It seemed that the mold shifted and caused a fairly big misalignment.  I could have gotten a replacement, but I decided to just shave it down a bit and go with it -- I was 100% sure I would not notice once assembled, painted and in the heat of battle.

In all, I spent about 5 minutes cleaning up the parts.

Tabs do not line up to hull.

The tracks were cast very well, but both tabs did not line up to the hull during assembly.  I just shaved off one of the tabs and glued it together.  I was happy with the end result below.

I did have to apply some pressure to get the tracks to stick to the hull due to some very slight bending - certainly nothing to get the heat out for.

I did notice that the mounted .50cal provided doe not match the image on the box or the historical pictures I researched.  The Chaffee had a metal tripod type mount and that is what is pictured on the box.  The .50cal provided was the same one I got with the M10 I reviewed.  Again, I decided that I did not want to fabricate anything or call Customer Service, so I just got on with it.

I sprayed this with Battlefront's US Armor, then heavily highlighted with Brown Violet.  I like to do two layers of medium-light highlighting in 28mm, so I did some in Green Grey, then finally in Khaki.  I custom mixed the rust colors.

For this model, I did use a fairly heavy wash with a new product from CGR Painters- Magik Mudd Wash.  I found it very easy to use - no unwanted pooling or weirdo change of colors on drying -- good stuff.

Conclusion:  8/10 

This model was easy to assemble and paint. I took off a few points for the incorrect and miscast .50cal and the tracks that do not align to the tabs.  I do not think the end results suffers from these mistakes.  I enjoyed putting this together and painting it and I see no problem dropping the USD$32 for this model.

Model provided by Warlord Games.  Wash provided by CGR Painters.