With the Early War in Afrika Battlegroup book imminent, I've been looking around for suitable kits to make wrecks from (as always), and eventually ended up with 2 boxes from Italeri of the Italian M13/40 tank (and a box of the wargames Semovente 75/18 M40-M41 but that played no part in the period the book is for so is set aside for later)
If you like anymore information of the vehicle, please look here >
Wikipedia M13/40
The kits come in the standard Italeri box one can open from the sides. I'll start off with the regular kit first.
Italeri kit No 7036 is actually a rerelease from the old Esci kit, and as such, comes with rubber/vinyl tracks. Getting these in the local shop might be a problem as this was released in 2006 and as far as I know, is no longer in the Italeri catalogue so can't be backordered anymore. But you never know, there still may be some in your local shop. I know they can be found on Ebay, and some of my local shops still have them. They tend to charge 10-13 euros for this single kit, but I guess I lucked out because I picked up my copy for 5 euros on the 2nd hand market.
You get 2 sprues, a decalsheet, and a set of rubber/vinyl tracks. The decalsheet is worth it's weight in gold, because sofar it is the only set I have seen that has the Australian white kangaroo on it that they used for the captured versions. I have not been able to find aftermarket set for those sofar, so this is nice to have. Suspension comes in a lot of pieces (too many if you ask me) and the turret hatches can open. According to the Internet the tracks takes superglue with no problem and they are nicely detailed.
Italeri kit No 7517 is the wargamesversion, with 2 basic standard painted tanks on the cover. The very basic machinegun on the turret and the very basic trackwork stand out, but the rest of the tank is nicely detailed.
The single trackunits make building this kit very short work compared to the normal kit. No opening hathces on this turret though, but from the looks of it the top turret box is the same so could be swapped out with the wargames model. I've seen this box online for 10-12 Pounds UK (I've seen listings that noted they had 10+ in stock), but found none with the local retailers. I found this one on the second hand market for 5 euros.
If you want a tank in your Italian forces (or a captured one for the Germans or Asutralians), you can get the wargames version and have a nice deal with these, if you can find them. If you need quite a few more, you are best off looking for the ones sold by wargames companies like EWM who do a resin and metal one for 8.50 Pounds (and sell a command version too) or Frontline who do one for 7 Pounds but is of considerable lesser quality. There are some prebuilts on Ebay as well and they go from 5-15 Pounds. SHQ sells a all metal 1/76 one that goes for 10 pounds. Britannia does one that has open top hatches and sells for 6,50 Pounds, but their qaulity can be hit/miss.
It does pay to shop around. If you are like me and only play 350-500 pts games, you'll never need loads, but for bigger games you will need a few more.
Since picking these up for use as wrecks, I've decided to keep searching locally for a few more and set them aside for a small Italian/ German anti-partisan force. So they won't become wrecks yet :)
As someone who is looking to do Australians with their Kangaroo marked tanks myself, I agree, it's a pain in the bum finding those decals - Dan Taylor Modelworks have enough to do one tank bundled in the Operation Compass set, but that's a lot of money on wasted decals for a single tank (especially when I want at least a Platoon of M13/40s and M11/39s).
BeantwoordenVerwijderenI've also read some pretty critical feedback about the tracks on the 'full kit' 13/40, in terms of thickness and inflexibility (with some people going so far as to suggest replacing them with UM T-26 link and length track that is apparently sold separately!), so it'll be interesting to hear how you get on with them.
I did notice the track is pretty thick but more flexible then it seems from just looking at it. But still, it's crap. I might just get more of the fastbuilds for moving tanks, and use the "real" model partially dug in to hide that lower half as a bunker? Not sure yet. For the Kangaroo, maybe get get a local-ish decal maker to make you a A4 sheet of the various sized Kangaroos (and there is a big white ball too for some reason?) that you can split in 4 or 6 pieces and sell off the remainder? There must be interest in that and it offsets your costs a bit.....here they print a A4 sized colour decal sheet in any colour for 15-30 euros......there must be such a service on your end somewhere?
Verwijderen