The photos I have posted here only include about 70% of the kit. The kit itself comes with lots of extra bits, including the wheel mounts, ammo, create, barrels and a tent. These piece will be utilized in future projects. This left me with more than enough extras to create a cool diorama for my new gun.
The kit came with eight crew members, but I only mounted seven since it only needs seven crew for Bolt Action. Crew included a gunner, a loader, a radio operator, an officer (who looks like Rommel) a grenadier, and two other crew men. The missing crew was another grenadier with a rifle. I also generously littered the ground with empty shells and gave the crew a sandbag emplacement to take cover behind.
You'll notice I added three slots on the base for dice. One for orders, one to track pins, and for tracking hits. I had contemplated single bases, but like basing my fixed teams together on the base. I think it looks cooler and allows me to have fun making a mini diorama.
This kit is a true 1/48 scale kits, so the figures are much skinnier than my Black Tree and Bolt Action 28mm figures. It took me about 2 hours to assemble the whole kit, most of the work being put into the 88mm Flak 36. It could have taken longer, but I opted not to build the wheel mounts, which likely would have added another hour onto the project. You also probably noticed the shorts. This was a North Africa kit, but I am not collecting a North Africa themed army. I made the assumption that Germans wore shorts in Russia also. I just hope I have historically represented the use of shorts on the Eastern front on my 88mm Flak 36. ;)
I didn't notice it during assembly, probably because the plastic was a light color, but I missed some of the mold lines on the crew. This did not become apparent until after I dipped the diorama. However, the spurs were easy to navigate and the directions where easy to follow. Very little clean up was required and piece fit together very well.
I absolutely love this kit form Tamiya. It was easy to build and came with a lot of extra bits which makes this kit really stand out.
I give this kit 10 out of 10 historically accurate eastern front short shorts. (New favorite scoring metric! - Judson)
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“Craig Baxter is the Director of the WWPD Northern Research center in Anchorage, AK. When he’s not contributing to Boltaction.net he is busy blogging, painting, modeling and rolling dice. You can find more of his work and articles at frozengamerak.blogspot.com.”
