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A birthday gift from my lad. Plan to build this as the Berlin Brigade scheme over the long summer vacation that’s coming up. I gather there are some issues with the pattern as provided by Takom, so any pointers would be gratefully received.

After a hiatus of about a year, I finally got around to finishing my Berlin Brigade Chieftain. I just couldn't face the masking. I'm not totally happy with the finish so, no, I'm not uploading bigger pictures! The paint are the Ammo by Mig box set with a light pin wash of thinned oil paint. I noticed some errors in the Takom guide and went with pictures I could find on-line, and even then I made mistakes. The front underside should be white and brown but I realised too late. The construction is nearly identical to my Mk 11, less the TOGS. I've kept the weathering light as they were kept clean constantly and especially polished twice a year for the Queen's Birthday Parade and the Allied Forces Parade and in-between mostly going backwards and forwards to Ruhleben down the Heer Strasse Bill

Chieftain Main Battle Tank Kagero Publishing The Chieftain MBT was the natural successor to the Centurian, and utilised the new armour to give it the edge over the "Red Menace" on the battlefield, which was envisaged to be the border between East and West Germany in the Cold War era. It put right the wrongs of WWII, when British armour had been under armoured and under armed by equipping the turret with a 120mm rifled gun, ensconced behind the aforementioned composite armour, although it wasn't the fastest tank on the battlefield as a result. The Book The subtitle reads "Development and Active Service from Prototype to Mk.11", which is an accurate description of this interesting tome. Part of the PhotoSniper range (number 7), the book is an oversize A4 size in portrait form, perfect bound at the left hand side as you'd expect. The thick card jacket is printed in full colour on the outside with a glossy picture of a Chieftain hull-down in camouflage on the front, and some profiles on the rear. The first 26 pages are devoted to the development and service of the tank, and it goes into detail from the beginning to the every end, interspersed with some interesting and relevant photos. There are also two scale three-view drawings of two marks of the Chieftain, in 1:55 scale, which I'm guessing was "page scale" to allow the drawings to be as large as possible. The next section spans the following pages to page 50, documenting the tank in derelict and in-service settings, with some interesting captions that offer insight into what the Chieftain was like to work on and crew. This section has a black background to differentiate it from the rest, which also makes it easier to find. Pages 50-62 are taken up with a detailed walkaround of both the exterior and interior, getting into nooks and crannies that you wouldn't normally see. The final 9 pages (10 if you include the back cover) show the variations in camouflage of the Chieftain in service with the British Army, Iran, Kuwait and even one found in Iraq in 2003, thought to have been crewed by defecting counter-revolutionary Iranians during the Iran/Iraq war. Conclusion If you're serious about the Chieftain, this is an excellent book for reference, but should also make for a good read. Written by Robert Griffin, it is entirely in English (some Kagero titles are mixed Polish/English), and with colour photos throughout (where the source material allows), plus some handy engineering-type drawings, it gives plenty of inspiration for the modeller and diorama builder. Now we just need a new mould Chieftain model that doesn't blur the distinctions between marks. Let's hope our friends at Meng are looking in! Also, don't forget that the Chieftain was often paired with a 432 for exercises, so you'll need to pick up one of those too, and do your bit for keeping model shops in business Review sample courtesy of