Zvezda 1:100 Panzer II

Battlefront on the left, Zvezda on the right.

 I just got an order of three Zvezda 1:100 scale Panzer II.

Just five pieces.

Six if you count the stupid flag.

It's a clip-together kit for their Art of Tactic game, and comes as just five pieces, so it's exceptionally quick and easy to slap together.

I bought them from Mighty Ape, and they cost about ten bucks each — that's just a little more expensive than they would have been from The Plastic Soldier Company, after postage had been added. However, after PSC got my hopes up, they dashed them when it turned out they had none in stock, so Mighty Ape it was — which had the advantage that the delivery time was a whole lot quicker.

Shown here alongside a Battlefront resin-and-metal model, you can see that it's perceptibly smaller. I don't know which one is more dimensionally accurate, and I don't much care since they're just gaming pieces and not part of a diorama; the relevance to me is that I probably won't want to be mixing them within the same unit.

Note: the Zvezda model is too small for 1:100 scale. It should be 48.1mm long; in fact it is only about 43mm. It looks like in that case Battlefront's model is about right, judging by eye.

The detail on the Battlefront model is much more pronounced than Zvezda's injection-moulded offering, but the limitations of metal casting means that the gun barrels and tracks are very much chunkier than they should be in scale; they're a lot finer on the plastic vehicle.

Adding a commander figure to the Zvezda kit would require quite a bit of surgery, since the hatches are moulded closed and the turret is pretty much a solid bit of plastic.

The Zvezda model sits much lower, and has a more convincing Panzer II silhouette

A few hours later.....

I got the three of them painted up and ready for the tabletop. I can't say they're my best work, but they'll do the job.