Somewhere in France
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Great dio and work 👍
IMHO, just the bricks could be painted in a more random set of various earth colours? 🤔
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Tamiya kit is an old one, 1972 to be exact. Scalemates lists it as 1990 vintage and "new parts" though I really don't know what these new parts are supposed to be. All the sprues including figures, chassis and body are stamped 1972. It's possible new parts refer to vinyl tracks and wheels but even if it is so claiming this is false advertising. And honestly had I known this I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. Anyway…….
The age shows in that it's composed of old timer hard plastic. I can't speak for details, or lack of them as I'm not particularly familiar with this vehicle. Judging by the photos it looks fine enough as vehicle was quite smooth when it comes to body. Parts count is fairly low, entire kit has 3 main sprues, 1 sprue for figures, 2 large parts for body and bits and bobs like tyres, metal shaft, vinyl tracks etc. Of main sprues one is for road wheels, idler and drive sprocket. Compared to Dragon kit Tamiya is simple build, generally nice fits but hard plastic makes gluing more problematic. No engine but that hardly matters since it's not visible anyway. A weekend build though of course you need to build it in several separate sections, such as separate road wheels, tracks….. Tracks were a bit of a problem to build because of the sag. They didn't want to stick to road wheels so I used a bit of a wire to pull top part down and then tied wire to underside to keep it like that. Not perfect but I think good enough.
I didn't do wear & tear because setting will be 1940 France so not much field damage yet. I just used some dust, combination of a wash and pigments, where I might overdid it a bit. At this point I'm happy with how things are turning out.
I decided to not use Tamiya figures because they are trash. 1970s moulding and lack of detail. I used combination of MasterBox figures, one Tamiya figure left over from different build (this one is from 1990 so more detailed) and one figure from Dragon figures set. Since these figures have different set up in terms of equipment I had to add some scratch built Y-straps to make up for their lack in Tamiya and Dragon figures. Plus headgear is different but I think having driver and officer in charge of gun crew having caps instead of helmets is realistic. MB figures are pretty good, different poses and some extra arms in set so you can create even more variety, box even suggests buying two sets and combining them. Dragon set is not bad in terms of moulding and details but lack Y-straps and has 2 identical sprues so less variety.