Thursday 27 April 2017

Rapid Fire! France 1940 in 20mm - The A13 MkI arrives (from China...).



Somewhere in Northern French, in the destroyed village of Le Pen, a group of British A13 MkI are searching for the 1st Armoured Division gathering area....


The S-Model is another brand to bring double kits to the market. They are very accurate renderings of the original, the detail is crisp, the construction is easy and the PE parts are nice for those with nerves of steel. On the down side sometimes an important detail of the vehicle is missing. This happens in particular with the A13's.

But with little work you can improve them.



In the turret you can add a headlight, a verticle scope, two side handlers (replacing the PE parts) and a vision slit close to the 2pdr gun all made out of  pieces of Evergreen.


On the left side of the turret you can place the typical double smoke launchers these vehicles had. A small rectangle as its base and two pieces of rod, all plasticard, and it's done. The complicated PE antennae support was also replaced by a piece of plastic roughly of the same shape but more resistant.


PSC made nice rivets on its A9 turrets something S-Models didn't bother. I also skipped doing them as they are time consuming.


With its small faults the A13 MkI from S-Models is a beautifullly designed model and you just need to add a few missing parts in order to have some relatively rare models on the table and the first of its kind to be made in plastic.

Next: More Cold War stuff.

4 comments:

  1. More to add to my list, your conversion details will come in useful, thanks

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  2. Thanks Will. PSC nas more chunky models but in the end they are more complete than S-models.

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  3. Nice improvements. Good idea to replace the PE parts with more sturdy details for gaming. Interesting point re rivets - I think the rivet detail on some of the PSC kits is actually overdone and creates am exaggerated or even slightly "cartoonish" appearance...

    Cheers, Dave

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  4. Abolutely right and well said! PSC overdones rivets and such things but by doing so catches the main characteristics of those machines. Years ago I used to buy plenty of Britannia models and figures and got used to the cartoonish look of miniatures.

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