Best brand for 1/35th armour?

[PaulR]

Hi,

am mainly a aircraft modeller, but do occasionally drift over to armour. I used to do more armour 20 years ago, when the only real player was Tamiya, but since then other manufacturers seem to have waded in, such as Dragon. Question is, what is the benchmark brand now? I've recently built the Tamiya Porsche King Tiger and Late Panther G, and these both seemed very smart, but I'd like to know where to go for best accuracy, ease of build, value for money etc.

Thanks for any comments,

Paul

[Antoine]

As usual, you have to choose before the type of tank you want to build, then ask about the better brand for this specific model.

[Andy K]

Best brand.....hmmm..... Dragon I would say BUT the later Tamiya stuff is good too. Dragon kits can be very complicated due to the high parts count and sometimes iffy instructions, Tamiya kits are generally easier builds. Trumpeter can be very good armour-wise mostly (I'm thinking specifically the KV1 and II's, T-62 etc). Tristar also make some very finely detailed armour along with Bronco and Hobbyboss are improving steadily as their recent SdKfz 222 is a lovely kit.

[Matt Roberts]

Actually Dragon is not the best bet, they do every subvariant of a Pz IV or every Tiger ever built in real life, but for British armor they are not, well interested. The vehicles they did release was a Valentine/Bishop many moons ago and they were reboxes of a Russian kit. They do have a ton (or tonne) of Shermans - including Firefly's, and El Alamein versons.

The companies that have recognized that WW II Commonweath subjects had been virtually ignored are some of newer companies.

Bronco has done a Comet as well as a good selection of armored cars, Staghounds and Humbers Recently they have released a 17lb AT gun as well as a soon to come Archer

AFV Club has done a line of Churchills and Centurions

Miniart has a new Valentine series

There also are new injection molded figures showing up, some Eighth Army figures from a company Masterbox look especially good

http://www.armorama.com/modules.php?op=mod...9299&page=1

Tamiya has retooled a Matilda in the last year and have Crusaders in 48th, which I would not be surprised to see scaled up relatively soon.

You may want to take a look over on Armorama.com as they have a very good selection of news and thier forums have an option that allows you to filter discussions so that you'll only see ones on a subject you want.

http://www.armorama.com/

Modern vehicles you have Academy with a Warrior IFV, Trumpeter has a Challenger II - including Iraqi mods as does Tamiya. Tamiya has a Desert Storm Challenger I. Revell Germany has reboxed the AFV Club Scorpion a while back and AFV has a Scimitar, but I have not seen either for quite a while.

There have been many announcements made recently for 2011 and I recall there is another A/C coming - I think it is a Damlier (Matchbox had one in 76th IIRC)

(hey give me credit I'm coming off a three day stomach virus - my memory is not back up to snuff yet!)

So as an easy answer to whom has The best line of British subjects...well it is complicated now.

[Andy K]

Don't forget Tasca for Shermans, probably THE best Shermans on the planet

[Deon]

and finemolds forJapanesestuff also Great Wall hobby and AFV club are well worth checking out

[Andrew Jones]

For accuracy and ease of build you'll have a job to beat some of the more recent Tamiya kits, try their Cromwell/Centaur kits, you'll not be dissapointed.

[Jon Fitzgerald]

Hi Paul, I agree with others. It really depends on what subject and what period you want.

For WW2 German Dragon has just about everything under the sun, they also have a range of Imperial Japanese kits, and the Dragon Soviet Tanks are quite well regarded (especially T34's and their variants). However Dragon's interest seems to wane outside of Axis vehicles, even the Soviet Armour is not that wide in terms of choice. Like the Tiger's you will get every kind of T-34 you can imagine. But very little outside of that. Some of Zvezda's new toolings for Axis subjects have also been very good (Trucks).

WW2 Allied, like others have said Tasca set the standard for Shermans, AFV Club have given a lot of love to British armour of late, as too have Tamiya with some recent releases. Tamiya has some cutting edge Soviet kits also, their IS-2 and SU-152 are very well regarded. AFV club also released some impressive T-34's with full interiors.

For modern subjects AFV Club and Trumpeter have covered a lot of US Army, Canadian, and Modern British topics. AFV Club's Strykers are very good, and Trumpeter have LAV III amongst others. Tamiya's Challenger 2 is a very good kit also.

For Modern Russian for a long time all we had was Zvezda or Revell, which are just re-boxes of old Dragon kits. However Trumpeter have really stepped inot the gap and released some great kits recently. Their T-62 (not without it's faults but can be built into a nce kit), and BMP-3 variants are welcome releases. They also plan BTR's, more BMP variants, and even a T-64 for 2011 (we'll see how many of those actually come out!). Tamiya did a few Soviet kits, notably is their T-55 which came out in 2004, and their T-72 not without its errors is your best bet for a T-72, or T-90 conversion. T-80 is best left to SP Designs resin kits and some Skif components. Zvezda's T-72 and T-80 can be built up okay but are dimensionally inaccurate.

So in a nutshell Any of these brands would be a decent investment. No kit is perfect though and anything will have it's downsides and plus sides. Sometimes your interests will also dictate. For me thats modern Soviet and Russian... so it's either Zvezda or Trumpy mostly.