Zvezda 1:100 scale Panzer II kits

Box art and instructions:

Sprue containing the 5 parts:

These kits are made from a rather glossy soft plastic, and although they clip off the sprue easily you must take care when removing mould lines as they can easily be scratched. A new blade in your craft knife is recommended, and i also used some 300 grade wet & dry sandpaper for this job. Having said that, these particular kits had a minimal amount of mould lines and were prepared in less than 5 minutes.

After preparation i cleaned the parts in soapy water before assembly. As can be seen in the instructions on the back of the box, the track sections are held in place when you join the upper and lower hull sections together, and being snap-fit they do not require glueing (although i did use a little glue with mine) The same applies to the turret, in fact while i did a 'dry fit' of the first turret i could not remove it again, and it is rather difficult to make it turn round. A minor fault, but one that wont bother me personally.

The first tiny tank. The detail is rather good in my opinion, and a lot better than i was expecting after reading some other reviews of kits from this range:

 

 Being so small i imagine these being rather tricky to paint, although i will be putting mine onto medium size bases from Battlefront (a personal preference for my FOW vehicles)

Another small drawback for me is the lack of any decals with these kits. However, given thier price (going for between 2.50 and 3.00 GBP a kit) its not a big issue to spend a few more pounds for decals.

Zvezda also make the Panzer 38(t) in this scale, so its possible to build a decent sized Panzer company from the FOW Blitzkrieg book for under 30 pounds, and i cant argue with that!