The first thing I noticed for the vehicles, is that each one is contained entirely on the one sprue, boding well for ease of construction. This was indeed the case when I put them together. Only referencing some photos online of finished miniatures, I found them to be exceptionally intuitive in their design. There were no fiddly small bits with the BO-105 like I had experienced with the other helicopters and both the Marder and Leopard 2 followed this trend with an excellent design. I will put it out there and say that these are by far the best miniatures for construction from Battlefront I have seen thus far.
I wanted to get some paint on them straight away but did not have access to the correct NATO colours within my arsenal of paints. Seriously as a side note, I must have well over a hundred and fifty separate paints but never the ones I actually need when I get a new army! I took a good hard look at some Panzer pictures and checked out the paints that I had and came up with three that most closely resembled NATO from the WW2 range. It actually made sense to use paints I had used on late war Panthers and Tigers so off I went and did some experimenting.
The paints I used were two from the AK Interactive Wargame series range being Olivgrun Base AK1172 and Rotbraun Base AK 1169 along with Vallejo Model Color German Grey 70.995. On top of this I used the AK Interactive wash for NATO vehicles and then dry brushed with bone.
I used the templates supplied by Battlefront on the website and found these to be my only slight negative with the product. The templates are offered in both hi and low res which is excellent and all the vehicles are contained on the one download which is very much a positive. The negative is that whilst they are fantastically painted examples the weathering actually hides the pattern and I found myself a little lost at times as to where the camouflage pattern should go. If I could recommend anything it would be to go back to a simple template clearly showing the patterns without all the very nice weathering.
Another real positive to these kits are the decals. They are super easy to put on and only need a small time in water to easily slip off the paper. Once on the miniature I was able to move them around into the right position without them falling apart so they are pretty hardy as well. In the below shot you will see the size comparison with the other two MBT's currently available.
I put together one of each of the vehicles in order to get some finished products to show you my initial impressions and it is my intention to put together the rest of the force as soon as possible and get some games in. These are a fantastic range of miniatures so far and I could not recommend them more highly to someone looking for a new army or as an entry nation into the game due to the high quality.
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