I've recently received two of the new-ish Warlord Games M7 Priests for a little conversion project that will be its own article at a later date, but first I thought I would take some time to go over these great resin kits from Warlord for those out there that want to add some bang to their British or American forces.
This is your standard Warlord resin kit, as far as the hull and tracks are resin with metal crew and extra pieces. Sometimes you have a lot of flash with resin, especially in the gaps in the tracks. Surprisingly, both of these Priests were nearly flash free. They had the usual injection plugs, where the resin is injected into the mold, but once these were cut off, assembly of the hull was super quick. The one downside to these kits is often they don't have any assembly instructions. Especially when assembling guns, this can be quiet soul destroying as you try and work out how to assemble all the metal gunsights and elevation wheels that go onto them.
The crew are great, as you would expect from Warlord. You have one guy getting a shell ready to load, another on a radio, while the last guy is nonchalantly looking over the side of the superstructure. These guys are in US uniform, so if you plan to use the Priest for your Brits, you may have to do some converting or source some other crew.
The fighting deck has an incredible level of detail with a mass of ammunition and other bits, as well as the mount for the 25pdr itself. This includes spare tracks mounted on the front of the Priest, as well as tools and recovery equipment on the engine deck. This is great for an open-topped vehicle where you get to see some much of the internal area of the vehicle and it would be very poor if it was a blank slab (even if it would make my plans for these vehicles a lot easier!)
Inside of Bolt Action, the M7 Priest is not a bad little choice. At 160 points for the regular version, you get an 8+ armoured vehicle, with open-topped, a forward-facing medium howitzer and a pintle-mounted HMG. Not a bad little mobile howitzer for a very responsible price.
I give this kit 8 smoking shells out of 10. The level of detail is great and it fitted together perfectly. The only downside was the lack of assembly instructions doesn't exactly make this user friend for a new entrant to this great hobby of ours. For a further look at this kit, watch this space, as soon they will be back in a new form after going through the BAA chop shop.
"Anf" is a long-time gamer from Down Under, who currently focuses his hobby time on Bolt Action.
With an equal love of rockets and Ice Hockey, he constantly explores weird and wonderful army lists in his never-ending quest to collect them all.
