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I bought myself a Christmas present but unlike @Dmitriy1967 didn't wrap it up. The eagerly awaited (at least by me) new offering, from Peter at Atlantic Models of the River Class batch 1 HMS Severn. There'll be a Batch 2 along soon. The novelty being that the Royal Navy some 80 years after WW2 have taken to painting these modern vessels in schmes paying homage to their forebears. Rather like @JohnWS's HMCS Regina. And the first impression is just how big it is. Here compared to the Flower Classs Corvette The second impression is just how fine a moulding the hull and superstructure pieces are. They are exquisite. Far superior to the G class destroyer that I've built previously. There were no moulding flaws and the detail is remarkable The main body /hull comes as 2 pieces in that you cna model with the whole hull or just a water line version. A beatiful etch fret accompies together with smaller resin moulded pieces and rather incongruoously by todays standards, a small bag of white metal detail pieces. A nice decal sheet completes the package. Instructions are line drawn and there is a colour profile of HMS Severn. (Other ships are available). My only dispaointment was that up to receiving the kit I had assuned that the hull was white with Northern approaches green and a darker blue. The photos are misleading, careful examination confirms that the hull is in fact Weatherwork grey. Let's not forget that these are colour photos and it took me quite some time to work this out not having seen Severn inthe flesh. what hope do we have really - when we pour over B&W wartime photos and conjecture the colour schemes when it's this hard with multiple colour imiages easily available I've been working on this for thee last 2 weeks whilst waiting for paint to dry on Eyebright. I've decided to model this on a stand, and FWIW, all my modern RN vessels will be mounted. The upper and lower hull pieces fitted really well and needed a minium of filing before joining. I used epoxy glue and then filled with putty and spent happy hours sanding to hopefully an invisible join And whilst all this was going on I started on my 3rd vessel (who's retired then ) in the form of the diminutive P200 Archer Class Fast Patrol Vessel, again from Atlantic modles and released some months back to no rel fanfare. Think of this as an "amuse bouche" or more properly a proof of concept exercise to test out some ideas before commiting to Severn. Hard to think of a simpler model - resin hull and superstructure with some resin rafts, RIB and an etch set of railings. Sadly no decals but Peter advises using his 1/600 set of pennant numbers. I've chosen to model HMS Puncer P291 And whilst not Puncher, here's a good ariel shot to get the idea of the deck layout These have been in service some 20 years plus so that there are several iterations and layouts. I'm modelling with the square rafts on the foredeck Construction is simple. Sadly the etch doors provided sit over the opening rather than within it - so I used some alternate doors from an Infini set that sat more naturally That left me a spare door for the rear hatch/doorway (which is not provided) You can see it here together with a RIP and a scratched outboard. Most recent shots show the Archer Class carring a large rectangular raft rather than the RIB on the rear deck, the RIB is more appealing Most also carry a Casualty cradle that is well illustrated in this photo I scratched that Primer Weatherwork Grey from colourcoats applied and then I'd like to thank @andrewa for an excellent tip in one of his historical WIPs that suggested using "marker pens" - Yes!! You can get fine detail - it's impermeable and I think it works. In fairness @Chris Hewitt also mentioned at Telford that he uses them for modern vessel windows, more on this later. The Deck colour is slightly elusive bt this 50 : 50 combo gets close. And YES those decals do work and really are the right size More soon on Puncher and Severn Thanks for looking Rob