This is another kit that I was fortunate enough to pick up from a clearance house with a very generous multi-buy discount on top of the low price. I actually bought two sets, as I wanted to assemble both artillery and anti-tank teams; in this article, I’ll only be covering the anti-tank guns, but there’s very little difference between the two, primarily just swapping parts out to get a different model of weapon. I’ll be using them for a Flames of War Desert Rats army which has, unfortunately, been several years in the making.
Contents
The box contains 8 sprues, four with a single Quad Tractor and two variant roofs, and the remaining four with the guns on them (which can either be built as 1 of 3 different 25 pdr field artillery pieces or a 17 pdr Pheasant anti-tank gun), their attendant ammunition limbers, and two sets of crew each: one desert themed, one Northern Europe. So, plenty of options here!
It’s worth noting that there are two carriages, two gun shields, and a whopping four barrels per sprue, so if you can scrounge up an extra pair of wheels for each, it’s perfectly possible to get a second gun out of each sprue, although the uniform styles of the crew won’t match, and the second gun will be necessarily missing a limber. Alternatively, you could build each model without a limber, and use the wheels from that for the second gun.
Building and Modelling
Before we begin, I’d like to point out that the material that Plastic Soldier Company for their kits is slightly softer than that used in many other models. This isn’t really a problem though, it just means that the mould lines are easier to clean, and a little extra care needs to be taken when trimming sprue connections, as it’s a bit easier to remove more of the model than intended. With that said, let’s have a look!
First off, the Quad tractors. These mostly go together quite well, but for some reason the rear plate isn’t large enough to span the entire width of the vehicle, so there’s going to be some filling or other adjustment required there (or not, being at the back, you’re probably going to be the only one who sees it anyway!). Otherwise, they go together pretty easily and the end product is a nice-looking little truck.
The guns went together really easily, cleanup was a non-issue, nothing much to say on that front. The crew can be a little fiddly, but that’s nothing unusual with individual troopers at this scale, so I can’t fault the kit for that. There’s also a reasonable variation in the gunners, so they’re not all carbon-copies of each other. At this point, it’s worth mentioning that bases aren’t included in the box, so you’ll need to source some yourself (I happened to have some Flames of War spares lying around anyway, which fit the crewmen’s bases perfectly; PSC do their own, much cheaper, bases, but these don’t have any slots for the crew to fit in, so more base decoration is required to disguise this).
Summary
Aside from some minor issues, this is an excellent value for money kit which, with just a little effort, can be made even more so with the creation of an additional four guns. I’d definitely recommend any Mid/Late-War British FoW player consider this set when looking for some heavy guns.