Thank you Santa!

Well, Christmas came and went and I opened my parcel from Secret Santa.

Weeee.... A tank!

A plastic Panzer IV from Warlord games... but there was something else in the box...

A dismounted panzer crew, nice.

THANK YOU SECRET SANTA!




So upon opening the box and after a quick examination of the contents here are my thoughts.

Nice variety of kit on these figures

The dismounted panzer crew figures are very nice. My only two gripes are that the MP40 in the commander's hands looks a bit small (or maybe he has very big hands?) and that the last pose doesn't really fit with the others; he looks more like he is standing next to his tank posing for a photo. But they are all nice figures and I can always use the odd one out for another purpose. None of the figures have any headsets though.

Upper hull and hull sides, hull details, gun barrels and a crew figure.

Side skirts and their supports, a few tools, jerry cans and the short 75mm gun.

Lower hull, tracks and turret.

 The kit consists of three sprues with a few parts. It is oddly reminiscent of the Plastic Soldier Company's panzer IV kit in 1/72 and I suspect that Warlord Games has bought the digital masters. The kit is not entirely identical though, some details like separate headlights and the Notek light are included in the Warlord version, and the crewman included is different from the Plastic Soldier Company's. Also included in the Warlord version is the single-baffle barrel typical of the F2 and early G version which is missing in the PSC kit. (I went out and bought turned aluminium barrels for my PSC panzers to get the correct look.) Unfortunately Warlord has made it the same length as the late double-baffle barrel when in fact the early barrel was shorter. It's a minor quibble though, and I bet only serious rivet counters will notice it on the finished model.

Warlord games has also been very kind in numbering the parts and providing proper building instructions, something which was lacking in the PSC kit. All in all it's a very useful model kit, and good value for money.

As you can see the wheels are identical to the PSC sculpt.

So I will be building this as the Ausf H version, which unfortunately requires some modifications. First I need to remove some of the observation slits which were present on earlier versions. Second, I need to add zimmerit, because during the Normandy campaign german tanks had zimmerit. Ah well, I guess I need to learn how to do zimmerit someday, don't I? Might as well be now.