Well, this is certainly
something of a record for me. From start to finish in
less than two weeks - unheard of! I am a notoriously slow
builder; if the pyramids had been left to me to construct
there'd be a lot of very annoyed mummys lying around the
sands of Egypt right now.
What a great kit. Parts fit is excellent, which is a good
thing as you wouldn't want to be doing a lot of seam filling
around all those rivets. I did very little to this kit
in the way of extras. The front and rear flaps had missing
rivets added and hinges scribed in, the cannon was replaced
with a scratchbuilt one as the kit's was hopelessly out
of round, and I added door handles from .010" plastic
rod. The guns are meant to move but the method seemed
a bit dodgy to me, and I'm not in the habit of playing
with my toys anyway, so I glued them in place.
The kit can really only
be finished as "Mephisto" straight out of the
box as each A7V was different and the kit has all the
features applicable to this tank. Humbrol paints were
used, and I replaced the wonky Eiserne Kreuze decals
(see in-box review)
with some from Pegasus Models. The rest of the decals
were excellent - some of the best kit decals I've used.
I thought the white may be a bit translucent but this
was not the case at all and the decals were very thin
with excellent adhesion. A bit of Micro Sol snugged them
right down over the rivets. Even the large cross on top
of the grill went on beautifully with a bit of slicing
and judicious amounts of decal solvent. My only complaint
was that the white backing for the devil did not extend
to his horns and fingers making them almost disappear
when applied so I had to overpaint these to match the
rest of the figure. I also managed to add his nose and
beard with black paint.
Weathering was done with
brown and gray pastels and I decided to have a go at making
some mud for the first time. The main attribute of a WW1
tank seems to be not how effective a combat vehicle it
was, but how much real estate it could drag along with
it, so I figured a 'clean' tank just wouldn't do. A quick
look through my kitchen cupboard to see what the wife
had left behind yielded a savoury combination of icing
sugar and dried dill. Mixed with some Humbrol Brown enamel
and plastered all over the tracks and running gear it
does the job. This had the added benefit of covering up
the seam line running down the centre of the one piece
tracks and also makes a delicious topping for cakes and
muffins. Mmmm..... armour.
And there you have it -
a big Lego block on tracks. Hats off to Emhar for producing
something I thought I'd never see as an injection moulded
kit in the manly scale. Bring on the Whippet.
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