As part of an ongoing (and increasingly sporadic, if I’m perfectly honest) project to build a World War III British force, I decided that the next phase would be to focus on the armoured component. There are really only two ways to go for the British if you want MBTs: either the classic Chieftain, or the more modern Challenger.
Box back cover
The differences between the two are obvious, with the Challenger sporting a far heavier armour stat, and with a correspondingly high price tag (I might have picked this up wrong, but it always feels to me like armour is the one statistic that causes a unit’s price to skyrocket more than any other feature).
What might not be so obvious are the similarities: they both have the same weapons loadout, complete with a lower rate of fire on the move than stationary, unlike virtually every other MBT in the NATO arsenal.
As I wanted to get more than a handful of tanks on the table in a reasonably-pointed force, I opted for the Chieftains, for the simple reason that to get the most use out of either of these tanks, you’ll have to make the best use of cover to ensure a stationary moving rate of fire anyway. The fact that I think the Chieftain is the better looking tank has nothing to do with it!
Contents
Complete contents
The box comes with five sprues (those smaller ones are part of the larger sprues, but chopped off to fit in the box), and a resin sprue of commanders. They’re all cleanly cast, particularly for older kits.
There aren’t any Unit Cards or decals included, so you’ll need to source those elsewhere if that’s important to you.
Individual sprue. There are five of these to a box
Building & Modelling
The kits are for the most part east to assemble, with the part needing most cleanup being – predictably – the barrel. There are a few small pieces to attach on the turret which you don’t find on every new MBT model, but there’s not too much extra work, and everything slots together nicely. The machine-guns are a little fiddly as usual, but nothing out of the ordinary, and there are spares if you manage to snap something.
Tank commander sprue
Summary
These were actually a joy to put together and the end results look great. For what’s in the box they’re also comparatively inexpensive as wargame sets go, but obviously if you want the cards and decals that’ll push the price up.
The finished models