35072 – German Armoured Car Crew
Lately some of the figure oriented kit manufacturers have started to provide figure sets that fill specific needs, particularly when it comes to crews for vehicles. This set from MiniArt does just that in providing a collection of five figures for crewing armoured cars. I say a collection rather than a “set” as the five figures portray a variety of uniforms and wouldn’t all be able to be used together in the same vehicle without some stretch of the imagination as to how the odd collection of uniforms came together.
This kit comes in a medium sized lightwieght open-ended box on two smallish grey sprues. You get five figures together with a small assortment of weapons but no personal items. The sprues have no numbering, rather a small printout is provided with location numbers corresponding to the sprues, though assembly is pretty self-explanatory. A simple “what goes where” assembly guide is provided on the rear of the box as well as a painting which provides colour references for use with Vallejo, Testors, Tamiya, Humbrol, Revell, and Mr.Colour paints.
The moulding is what we have come to expect from MiniArt, clean, crisp, well detailed with well defined facial features, nicely done uniform detailing and hands that actually look like hands. There’s the usual small ammount of cleanup required and those who are so inclined will still find the odd area to sharpen up, but overall the level of detail is very good. At an average of around 50mm they scale out at around 175cm/5’9″ so are of a good hieght.
The figures represent a mix of early war tropical uniforms and late war SPG uniforms. One of the tropical figures includes a Pith helmet and another the high lacing tropical boots and riding breeches. Whilst the uniform detailing is sharp and includes very well defined medals and belt buckles I did feel that this set was a little let down by the actual uniform sculpting. The creases are reather heavy and minimal and several have the appearance of being knicks rather than creases. But that aside the finished result is still good.
The weapons included are three holstered pistols, a Kar98K rifle, and two MG34 machine guns which each come with an open bipod and a drum mag. One of the drum mags in this set had a large injector sinkhole in the front surface which will need to be filled, but other than that all the weapons are on the right side of average, being better than most but could still benefit from some sharpening up.
Collectively these are a good set of figures with the aded bonus of the few weapons, though you would need to build a wide variety of german armoured cars to find a use for all of them as they do tend to have that look of being able to be used quite well singularly more than as a set, or even two sets. But of course that’s just me and you may well be able to envision a setting where all five ar used. Still well worth getting for those vehicles that never come with a commander figure ( or come with a badly sculpted one ).
Click on thumbnails for larger image.
The Afika Korps figures look great, couldnt see how the Waffen SS figures would fit a Puma?
Yeah the use of the panzer wraps sort of limits their use to armoured cars attached to armour units rather than to grenadier units. Puma might work for the standing one but the driver’s pose is too upright to fit the Puma properly which is a shame as he’d be useful in one of the open topped 234s. If I get a chance I’d be interested to see if he would be adaptable to a StuG.