Zvezda 1:100 M3 Lee

Battlegroup: Pacific has hove into view over the horizon, and though it will likely be a couple of months before my own copy arrives out here in the back of beyond, I'm planning ahead.

Out in the Far East, the Brits made good use of the M3, which remained competitive there against the Japanese opposition long after it became an obsolescent death-trap against the Germans in North Africa. In the desert, the Grant version was preeminent, but in Burma the Lee was more common (though most often — but not always — with the turret MG cupola removed).

I have digital models of both the Grant and the Lee, and I will print some, but that takes ages. So I picked up this 1:100 (15mm) Zvezda kit of the Lee. It's not bad, for the price (about $9 in NZ).

It all went together without any issues. I had to fill a gap around the turret cupola, and there are a couple of other spots that a perfectionist would probably want to fill, but I suspect they'll be largely invisible after it's been painted.

It lacks the track guards that were often used on British vehicles, and the 75mm gun has the counterweight modelled on the end of the barrel. It would be a simple matter to trim it off, and I don't think the shortening of the barrel would be noticeable, but I think I'll leave it there.

I've never modelled any vehicles for the war in the Far East, so this will be a new painting adventure for me.

Zvezda Maus (repaint)

I bought this 1:100 scale Maus a while ago, mainly out of nostalgia since it was one of the first things I ever attempted (and failed) to scratch-build when I was a lad. I painted it at first in a wholly spurious splinter pattern, but I found I didn't much like that, so I repainted it.

The decals are from an old Battlefront 1:100 kit, and they're pretty crappy as far as registration goes.

It's highly unlikely that a Maus will ever turn up on my wargames table, except maybe as a trophy objective. Still, you never know.

Zvezda Jagdtiger

A while ago I bought myself this Zvezda 1:100 kit of the 128mm tank killer, Jagdtiger, and I just got around to assembling and painting it today.

I have no immediate use for it, but I have a sentimental fondness for the vehicle from the days of my childhood, when our wargaming consisted of getting as many of the biggest and baddest tanks on to a table as we could, pretty much stacking them wheel to wheel. I would sneer at such a callow display these days, but boy, did we have fun.

This was the first real outing for my Badger Sotar 20-20 airbrush, and to say that I am satisfied with it would be a profound understatement. It is by far the best airbrush I've ever used. I have a fine tip and needle set coming to me, but it may not really be necessary — even the medium set it currently has installed is excellent.

Zvezda Sturmtiger (15mm)

This is another 1:100 scale Zvezda snap-together kit, the SturmMörser Tiger, or Sturmtiger.

In the photographs I looked at of the Sturmtiger, none of them appeared to have any unit markings or vehicle numbers, which made life a lot easier for me.

This is my first attempt at the 1944 "ambush pattern" camouflage scheme. I'm not entirely dissatisfied with the result, but I feel it could be better — I just can't quite put my finger on just what's wrong.

Zvezda Tiger II (15mm)

I picked up a couple of these Zvezda Art of Tactic snap-together kits the other day, not because I have any immediate use for them, but because I had a sudden fancy to play around with German late-war three-colour camouflage patterns.

It's a nice little kit, and pretty straightforward to put together. The track detail is the only thing that really lets it down, but I can live with that in a wargaming model.

Zvezda KV1 (1941)

 Here'a another 1:100 scale (15mm) KV1 from Zvezda, a slightly later model than the previous one with a slightly better 76.2mm gun.

I tried for a dusty look with this one rather than the mud and rust I've gone for before. I can't say I'm completely happy with the outcome though.

Zvezda KV1 (1940)

Here's my 1940 KV1 in 1:100 scale, from Zvezda.

You can tell it's the early model KV1 because of the gun — it has the recuperator above the barrel, which gives it that snouted appearance.

Zvezda T35 (15mm)

I built and painted this mainly to test a new Vallejo colour to represent 4BO Protective Green, and I'm pretty pleased with the result.

I already have more T35s finished than I really need — I bought five of them from PSC as a "squadron" deal, and there are still two left in their boxes. In fact, T35s worked in units of two.

Flexibility Through Modular Design

I've discovered that, thanks to Soviet tank development pragmatism, I can expand the variety of tanks available to my force by simply swapping some turrets around.

The BT5 turret is almost identical to that used on the early-model T26, while the turret supplied with Zvezda's T26 is very similar in size and profile to that used on the BT7-2.

There are, of course, differences in detail, especially in the BT5 and BT7, but they look close enough to pass on the wargames table. So, that's handy.

It does mean that I'll have to be a bit more careful about keeping the polarity of my turret-mounting magnets identical though — of the five T26 I have at present, this is the only one I can swap with my only BT5.

Zvezda T-26

 Here's the 1:100 scale (15mm) T-26 WWII Soviet light tank,a snap-together kit by Zvezda.

Russian tanks in disruptive camouflage patterns were rare until the latter years of the war, but this colour scheme was actually formally adopted in 1939, two years before Operation Barbarossa began. It's very similar to that adopted by the Germans from 1943, and it's possibly not entirely coincidental that they adopted it after encountering it in Russia.

This is a very simple kit of only five parts, and it literally takes just a few minutes to put together. Then it takes me considerably longer to replace the post-&-hole turret mounting with a pair of magnets so that I can rotate the turret easily — the original mounting is very stiff.

Red Horde

This is all the Zvezda 1:100 scale WWII Soviet tanks I've got left to paint now, though no doubt I'll get more at some point in the future. I need a couple more T-34s at least. I'm not a fan of production-line painting, as I've mentioned before on more than one occasion, but at least if they're assembled I can use them on the table, in extremis.

They're all very easy to assemble, but I'm not a big fan of the hole-&-post method of mounting the turrets. It's simple, but it makes the turrets very stiff. Therefore, I've got rid of that and magnetized the turrets of the KV-1s, T-34s, and just one T-26. The remaining four T-26 are built straight from the box; I may revisit them if I find I really need their turrets freed up, but modifying them in this way is a lot less straightforward than it is for the other vehicles.

Zvezda BA-10

BA-10 from Zvezda, Soviet infantry from PSC.

This is Zvezda's 1:100 scale (15mm) WWII Soviet BA-10 armoured car.

It's the trickiest of these Zvezda kits I've encountered so far. Not a difficult build, but there are a few things to watch out for.

• The hull pieces interlock, and it took a bit of judicious bending and stretching to get them all seated properly against each other. Once in place, the fit is good and snug. 
• The headlamps are very small and delicate, and there was no hope of getting their struts into the holes provided for them. I chose to trim them down and just glue them in place, though I could have enlarged the holes (but I couldn't immediately lay my hands on my pin vice to drill them). Both of them shot out of the tweezers, one of them never to be found again.
• The wheels are not interchangeable, and you do have to take care to get the right group off the sprue at the right time. And now, looking at the picture, I see I put the front wheels on inside-out. Too late to fix that now.
• The turret is very stiff on the pin provided. I got rid of the pin and magnetized it, so now it turns quite freely.

It builds up into a nice little kit, and now my Soviets have some scouting capability.

As an aside: Vallejo have changed their Yellow Green recipe since the last time I bought a bottle. It's now very much brighter than it used to be. The washes and weathering toned it down a bit, but it gave me a bit of a shock when it first went on.

I've painted on some basic markings, mainly so I can tell the two apart on the wargames table,
but also because I prefer them a little less plain.

Zvezda KV-2

 Next up on the painting table for my stash of Zvezda 1:100 scale (15mm) Soviets is this brute, the KV-2 heavy artillery tank.

I learned that there's no evidence that any KV-2 actually had slogans painted on its turret, but I don't care about that because I like the flavour it adds to WWII Soviet armour, so mine does.

(Note that I provide no guarantee for the accuracy of the translation for the slogans. I don't read or speak Russian myself, so I got them via Google Translate.)

Slogan reads: Patriotic Slogan!

Slogan reads: Hooray for Our Team!

Zvezda T-26 Flamethrower

Here's another of Zvezda's 1:100 scale snap-together WWII Soviets — the T-26 Chemical Projector (or flamethrower, as other armies would have described it).

Considering the mortality rate amongst Soviet armour of the period, I really doubt that a tank would be likely to have survived long enough to get this tatty and battered, but I like to filth them up from time to time.

Zvezda BT-5 (15mm)

 This is another one of Zvezda's cheap snap-together kits, this time of the Soviet BT-5 Fast Tank. They produced a lot of these, alongside the BT-2 and BT-7, until about the end of 1941, when production was ceased in favour of the T-34.

At present I only have this one, but I'll no doubt be getting more as and when I can.

I really do like these little Zvezda kits, but this one suffers from having a very prominent mould seam around the turret. I've cleaned it up as much as I could, but it's bad enough that it really needs more significant putty attention.

15mm Zvezda SdKfz 222

The box

This arrived on my doorstep this morning — a 1:100 scale (15mm) Zvezda SdKfz 222, a German light armoured car of WWII.

As always with these little Zvezda kits, it's a snap-together affair. This one was trickier than most to build because quite a few bits interlock, but even so it was a pretty simple kit to slap together.

Something I've found with most of Zvezda's wheeled vehicles is that the axle stubs are a little fragile, so I generally reinforce them by slathering the connection with a boot of 5-minute epoxy. That gives them enough strength to stand up to my ham-fistedness when they're on the wargames table.

Another modification I made was to chop off the turret's peg and add a couple of magnets to allow the turret to turn freely. It's not always necessary, but I thought it a wise precaution in this case because the barrel of the 20mm autocannon is so slender; I don't think it would stand up to some clumsy oaf trying to turn the turret by it against any sort of friction.

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