Review: Plastic Soldier Company T-55 Kit

Like many of you, I was excited to run a mass of T-55 when the Volks Armee book came out.  When I say mass I mean it - in a 100 point list you can run 62 of these guys. Think of rushing forward with 62 tanks, what list can put up enough shots to stop it? For those who dreamed of a huge horde of T-55AM2 tanks like I did, we were faced with the economic reality of the huge cost of such a list. You would need 13 boxes of tanks which gets you 5 for $72, so unless you have $1000 laying around to spend the horde was just a dream.

My actual list for Volks Armee did have about 20 T-55 tanks, and after buying 2 boxes and trading for a box of 4 tanks I was still short and I was waiting for the new T-55 kit from the Plastic Soldier Company to hit the shelf of my LGS.

The kit gives you 5 models and you have the option to build the standard T-55, T-55A, or the T-55AM. The AM version is the one you will need for your Volks Armee list.

The first great thing about the box is that it costs around $30, however you can find it even cheaper if you look online. The box gives you some hope to run that 62 tank horde with the cost dropping down to around $400.

I found the kit easy to build and I made all of my tanks the T-55AM version. As you can see above, you will have a bunch of extra parts left over no matter what version of the tank you build. 

As with many other PSC kits, if you like to use magnets to fix your turrets you will have to improvise, however this was easy to do. 

The other thing PSC kist lack is a crewman sticking out of a hatch which I use to signify the tank as company commander. Once again this is easy to over come if you have some tank commanders laying around from the Battlefront T-72 or T-55 kit.

What many of you want to know is how does the kit look and how does it compare to the Battlefront version of the tank? 

Well, as you can see above its a close match, but the Battlefront version on the left has a wider turret and some of details are a bit different. 

The chassis is also a bit smaller than the Battlefront version and once again some of the details are different. 

However with a basecoat on, the tanks look nearly identical. 

Fully painted up, they look so much a like you will not notice the difference. I painted these up with 4 Battlefront T-55's and I often couldn't tell them apart until I lifted them up. In fact I had 19 of the two types of tanks on my tray at Historicon when the judges came in to conduct the painting contest, I had to tell the judge looking at my army not to grade it since they had PSC models mixed in; so they could not tell the difference at first glance either. 

I do feel the resin T-55's are sharper and easier to build, however if you planned to run a lot of T-55's it just makes sense to go plastic and go PSC to fill out your army.

Twitter: @MitchWWPD
Mail: WWPDMitch@gmail.com