MiniArt 1/35 Poland: 1944

MiniArt continues with its innovative and interesting diorama bases with this complete diorama kit. You get a building corner section and base made from thick, vacuformed plastic. There is an injected sprue to go with the base that includes some door and window frames, all to be used a detritus on the street.

Unlike their other sets, this one includes a ZiS-2 57mm anti-tank gun and crew. As you'd expect, the crew are all Soviet soldiers and includes a man carrying ammo, a loader, aimer, crew commander and one other who is bringing up more shells. The vacuformed portion includes a few additional pieces of rubble to assemble. There are indentations in the base for the wheels and trails of the gun so one really does not have a lot of options in terms of placing the gun. However, the set up is quite realistic. You are provided with the option of making the gun a ZIS-3 76.2mm piece if you wish as the basic parts of the carriage and gun are the same. My first reaction on looking at the bag containing the gun was that both were included, but that is not the case. The plastic parts have a bit of flash on a few parts and there are some ejector pin marks on a number of bits that need to be cleaned up prior to assembly. Otherwise the quality of the moldings is quite good.

The instructions are well done and point out what parts are used for the 57mm and what for the 76.2mm version. Color information is extensive with Vallejo, Testors, Tamiya, Humbrol, Revell and Gunze paint references, though just about all the painting info is for the gun and troops. The excellent box art is a good guide as well. No decals are provided as none are needed.

For those who want a complete diorama, you couldn't do much better than this set.

February 2008

My thanks to www.dragonmodelsusa.com for the review kit. You can get yours at your favorite hobby shop. If they don't have it in stock, ask them to order it for you.