Early war armour doesn’t seem to have the same attraction as the later war stuff, perhaps because the tanks of the period were less impossing. This is also reflected in the available figure sets with many more being themed towards being more suited to 1943-1945 than to 1939-1941. Although most of the differences are minimal and can depend on the colours used when painting it’s still nice to find sets with early war equipment such as this one.
This set comes in the usual Dragon open ended box on one large, light grey sprue together with a small light grey sprue that holds the weapons. It is an older set so the mouldings aren’t as sharp as more contemporary sets in some areas, mainly the creases and folds in the clothing which to me are a little understated, but to the average observer would likely never be noticed. The faces are good, though they all look the same and three of the four have moulded on helmet straps.
This set provides you with two anti-tank teams armed with anti-tank rifles, one pair is posed in action with the gunner prone and his asistant kneeling, the second pair are both posed walking. The uniforms are all M35 or M40 field uniforms ( depending on how you want to colour them ) with M35 helmets. All four get a canteen, breadbag, gasmask container, gascape bag, and a short shovel with the carrier and attached bayonet. There are also six Pz.B.39 cartridge carrier boxes and two Kar98k triple ammo pouches, which would usually be distributed with two cartridge boxes to each gunner and one cartridge box and one rifle ammo pouch to each assistant.
The weapons included are two Pz.B.39 Anti-tank rifles and two Kar98k rifles, with two holstered P08 Lugers also included for the anti-tank gunners. The Pz.B.39s each come with two optional bipods, one folded and one open. All the weapons and equipment are very well made with just the smallest ammount of flash on a few pieces to be cleaned up.
The assembly instructions and painting guide are provide on the reverse of the box . The painting guide is given for the M35 uniform with the grey pants and dark green collars, so if you want to portray these as in the later m40 uniform you’ll need to change these to also be field grey like the tunic.
These are a great little set of figures that will enhance any early war diorama, though shouldn’t be limited to just the “France 1940″ of the box title as these would be equally at home in the invasion of Poland, in the Balkans or in the opening stages of the war in Russia.
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