MiniArt 1/35 Street with Ruined House

No foreplay on this one; it is straight to the kit description. This is any one of many possible European town brick buildings. This is a relatively simple kit as these things go. A circular drainpipe section is also included, exiting onto the narrow sidewalk along the side. The sidewalk itself is a stone block and the street in front and along the side is brick as well. A lamp post is included on the small sidewalk and the window includes opening 'glass' sections.

So much for the description. For the kit, you are presented with two light grey injected plastic sprues and two sheets of thick vacuformed plastic. This is a great way to do the building and street bits as to have them in styrene would have meant some very heavy pieces. The vacuformed bits are both the inside and the outside of the corner section. Into and onto these bits are placed the various injected plastic parts in the form of the windows, downspout and the lamp post. A sheet of acetate is included for you to cut out the lamp bits using a template and for the 'glass' in the windows. Of course, you'll want to make some of these look like they are broken and you'll also need to strew around a lot of debris. As MiniArt tends to use common sprues, there are a lot of parts that won't be used with this one, such as a garden gate, wrought iron fence bits, window shutters and a front door amongst them. Add them to your spares bin for later projects.

The instructions are quite simple and show you the basics on how to construct the base. No painting information is provided aside from the box top, but that should be more than adequate for most builders. Apparently there was a need to provide added value, so the US importer, Dragon USA, has added in a figure set, #6154. This set is titled Winter Combat (Eastern Front 1942/43 and includes four german figures in various poses. Apparently this was a set for which there were excess without boxes or standard instructions, as the instructions, though well done, are ink-jet printed. Still, it is quite nice to have this added to the set and allows the builder to do a nice diorama without having to purchase additional figures.

This is a very nice diorama set that is well detailed and provides a bunch of extra bits to use with other work or to incorporate in this one if one wishes to expand it. It is something that builders of all skill levels can handle and also gives those who are a bit leery of vacuforms an opportunity to do a simple one to see what it is like.

November 2007