Miniart Middle East Diorama 1:35

[Shar2]

Middle East Diorama
MiniArt 1:35

Having released the Middle Eastern house on its own, MiniArt have now given it a base and some additional buildings and re-released it as a diorama kit. Of course you could still use the house parts on your own base should you wish, as it’s always nice to have options. Contained within a deep, top opening box, with a picture of the completed model on the front, are eight sheets of grey vacformed styrene, six sprues of grey injected styrene and the vacformed base. The injected parts are crisply moulded with only a small the tiniest amount of flash which can be easily and quickly removed with a sharp knife. The vacformed parts are very well moulded, with good detail definition on the parts and the styrene is actually quite thick. There are still the unusual polyps over the surface of the vac parts which will need to be removed, but they don’t appear to be as numerous as in previous kits. The removal of these polyps can sometimes result in small holes in the surface that will need to be filled and sanded down. The instructions for the injected parts and their sub-assembly are very clear, and whilst the building parts are clear, plenty of test fitting will be required to get everything square.

There is a lot more work required in building this kit than others I have reviewed, as there are in fact two parts to the main building, including separate floor sections, a separate face of another building, a wall and an archway connecting the wall to the secondary building. Each wall, floor and arch section is made up of inner and outer halves. As with other vacform kits, it’s not necessary to cut all the way through the styrene to remove the parts, just score with a sharp blade and snap apart. Care should be taken when scoring the corner parts of the buildings as these make up prominent joins and whilst it is a ruined building these corners are meant to be intact. Once the parts have been removed from the backing sheets they will require a good sanding on the mating surfaces, (I usually tape a sheet of emery cloth to a large board to ensure the mating surfaces stay as straight as possible), to ensure a tight join, care and patience prevail here as it will mean a lot less work with filling and sanding later on. Once all the vac parts have been prepared they can be glued together. With the sub assemblies constructed the two sections that make up the main house are joined then affixed to the base. This is then followed by the corner wall, secondary house front wall and the interconnecting archway. It is up to the modeller how they proceed with this but I generally build the buildings first, fill any gaps as required, give it a coat of primer before painting it in the basic colours. When this is done, then the injected parts can be built up, painted and attached to their relevant positions.

The injected parts in this kit consist of several doors, window frames, shutters, gates plus a host of generic parts found in most, if not all of these diorama kits. The nature of these generic parts means that you are left with quite a few spares which can be used as debris for the completed diorama.

Having made quite a few of these buildings I have found that the plastic is readily melted by liquid glue, which, whilst making gluing parts together easier, care must be taken to prevent glue getting over the surfaces of parts as it will show. Once construction is complete one can paint/weather to your hearts content, plus add any troops/vehicles as you desire.

Conclusion
This is another super diorama set from MiniArt and will build into a very attractive attractive model in its own right. Of course it could be used to depict all sorts of vignettes within the diorama, with interactions between vehicles and various personnel, no matter which nations forces you wish to model. Since the style of building hasn’t really changed over the years the kit could be easily used to show off vehicles from any era, be it WW1, Interwar, WW2 and post war, giving the modeller even more options.
Very Highly recommended.

Review sample courtesy of