Bolt Action! Trenchworx review, Part 2: BT-7

This is a review for the Trenchworx Soviet BT-7A  1/56th scale resin tank. Trenchworx creates scale models for table top gaming, with the intent to manufacture in 3d printing, and eventually cast in resin. The BT-7A kit comes with the resin tank kit, instructions, magnets (for the turret), and some extra machine gun pieces (all contents pictured below).

Overall I found the casting quality to be excellent, the details were sharp, and there was obviously a lot of love given to accurately modeling the tank and its features. The inclusion of extra machine guns proved to be a good idea as well, as it didn't take long to snap the barrel off of one while trying to assemble it into the tank's turret.

There were a few surfaces that had some remnants of the striations that you get with 3d printing; but for the most part they did not warrant repair, or had been sanded away prior to the master mould being created. The only other problem I encountered was that the plugs that formed the forward and aft turret machine guns were too thick to slot into the turret and required me carving them down to make them fit (my initial efforts to push it in without significantly widening the port resulted in the break I mentioned before).

The assembled BT-7A, an excellent reproduction.

Aside from those minor complaints the kit is high quality and came together easily, cleaning the flash and heating the thin parts (such as the tracks) to make them fit is to be expected for a resin kit such as this one. From what I've seen of the three kits we received, the quality has been consistently good.

The BT-7 is an interesting design, I found this cut away image that explains the locations of a lot of the tank's features.

It's often mentioned, but bears repeating; every unit, vehicle, and piece of equipment from WWII has a rich history waiting to be explored. The history of these conflicts eclipses the most fanciful fiction writing. I won't post the entirety of what I learned about this tank here, but let's take a quick look at how the BT-7A came to be:

The turret with magnet installed. It fit perfectly with no modeling required.

In the 1920's the soviets looking to modernize their tanks, held a competition looking to develop a new tank that focused on speed, while still carrying comparable armor and armaments to other tanks of the era. Enter an American (J. Walter Christie), an inventor who had developed a new suspension system utilizing torsion bars that provided superior handling at high speeds for a new "Christie" tank the M1931. Christie who had attempted to sell his tank to the US army without success, saw his opportunity and smuggled two prototypes (sans turret and weapons) into Russia with falsified papers claiming that they were farming tractors and not tanks. The Russians liked what they saw in the trials and they began to reengineer the tank  as the BT: "Bystrochodnij Tankov" or 'fast tank'.

The BT series advanced over the years to the mark 7, and the chassis of the BT was well suited to variations such as the BT-7A close support artillery tank (the subject of this review). The BT-7 saw the majority of it's fighting with the Soviet invasion of Poland. 

  

However the tank was never intended to fight against medium or heavy tanks, and the new german tanks of 1941 with thicker armor rendered the BT tanks useless for anything except for fast recon. 
The remaining BT-7's that were not destroyed in battle fell out of service due to logistics.

There is one last notable thing about the BT-7, and that is there seems to be an inordinate amount of imagery involving flying BT-7's on any image search I did. The 'fast tank' 7 was light, weighing in at under 13.5 tons and had a V12 diesel engine outputting 450hp allowing it to reach speeds of over 35mph, and while I couldn't confirm the event pictured in the below photo on my quick research, let's just say that I really, *really* want it to be true. 

The BT-7A retails for $29.00, visit Trenchworx to see the BT-7A and their other offerings.

If you're interested in Trenchworx and their tanks, there's a Kickstarter running now: The tanks in Manchuria Kickstarter.  You have a chance to get the BT-7A and other tanks that served in that theater at a reduced price, the Kickstarter runs until May 14th, is already funded, and it's their second successful Kickstarter.

Cornumortem

Bolt Action: cheap alternatives to tanks, Part 2

If you caught the first installment of this series, you will remember the low cost Revel Pnz IV kits.

I decided to pick up five of them after finding an ebay seller that gave me a good combined shipping
deal.

These kits are decent but not perfect, so I decide to make a couple simple changes to make them a bit more realistic.

First detail that was missing was the round vent on the top of the turret. Adding a simple detail like this really goes a long way and brakes up the empty space, also this one detail is one of the Pnz IVs iconic identifying features.

I used a hole punch and some plastic card and a smaller punch to make a smaller disc that is under it to raise it up a tiny bit.

The second change I made was to trim the rear lower skirt to a taper as it should be, when flipped over to the correct height the corner that is cut off becomes the bottom rear. Check out the difference between the first two images in the post.

After that a quick scuff over the graphics some primer and base paint,

I decided not to paint the track sections, they come black and I just brushed on the yellow to the hull side and wheel centers.

 Then it was off to the airbrush for a Normandy style three color camouflage pattern.

As you can see I masked some of the skirt panels to keep the camo off them to represent replaced sections as they were lost or damaged frequently, I may even cut one or two off at some point and have them missing a few.

after that, painting in the tracks, muffler and tools, painting the tank numbers (these were painted by hand by the crew) and a tan drybrush to pick up some highlights and blend it all together.

Now I have a finished German Pnz IV zug for Bolt Action Tank War for under $50. They are not perfect, but it will get me on the table for some games and didn't have to rack up the credit card.

John

Bolt Action: Cheap alternatives to tanks!

With the release of the new Tank War supplement for the Bolt Action WWII system, many of us find ourselves dreaming of lots of tanks rolling over the tables in our upcoming games.

Warlord has a few new releases and some plastic kits , but most ring in at $30-50 for an oddly underscale lump of resin and lead. (don't get me started on those tiny jeeps)
Most of us have gone the way of using some of the high quality plastic kits in 1/48 scale or even some nice die cast stuff that is already built, but even these options hammer away on the wallet still around $20-50.
How about some super cheap kits that you can buy truckloads of you say?

How about $8 Shermans and Panzer IVs? Two of the most prolific tanks for the two big armies are available in 1/48 scale for the price of a Mclunch.

 Revell has rereleased a couple of 70's snap together WWII tanks that you might consider for your gaming needs. The Combat Crushers kits are definitely targeted to kids but I ordered a couple to see if these toys can be used as a decent low cost option to bolster your armor to the sizes needed for the new Tank War games.

These kits are blister packed and prepainted in crazy graphics to grab the attention of kids , but I figured with a little work and some paint they might be useable.

You can find them searching for Quake and After Shock with Revell on Ebay.

Unboxing reveals how simple these kits are and they go together in a few minutes. The horrible graphics are tampo printed and need to be knocked down a bit with some sanding before you paint over them to avoid seeing the designs under the paint.

The Sherman is an odd kit with the late war HVSS type chassis with what looks like a 105 turret and a early 75 gun. Purists out there may not want to deal with this, but on the good side, it looks like a sherman tank if you dont look too close and its scale is pretty good.

Here are some pics with a Tamiya Sherman based Firefly, as you can see the height length and width all compare pretty well.

A little paint goes a long way and this odd kit can look pretty presentable with a simple quick paint job. The .50 cal machine gun looks pretty silly so  drilled out the grips and added a bit of rod to make the barrel look better

The Panzer IV kit fares a bit better, once you flip the side skirts over where they should be, it looks pretty good. You could even make an earlier version by ditching the skirts and turret shields, and even chop the barrel and do a little plastic card work to make the F1, sure the details are molded on and not too amazing but it's really pretty decent on the table with a paint job. A nice airbrush camo job will really make this thing a contender.

 Here is mine waiting for some camo. I drilled out the barrel but that's about it.

One other problem is that these kits don't have decals. 1/48 decals are available out there, and if you have been using plastic kits, odds are that you have some extra sitting around and if you are planning to make a fleet of these you can find a sheet with lots of 1/48 decals reasonably,

So is it worth it? I think the average player would say yes, if you love building superdetailed models, not so much. A Tamiya kit can be found on Ebay for around 30 bucks and is a wonderful kit to build, and that's cheaper than a rhino, but you can buy 3 of these Panzer IVs for that and they look pretty good on the table...so I guess it's up to you.

I think I will be buying a few more of the Panzers and a decal sheet set for my Germans, add some weathering and some stowage and see how they look.

If you do go after these snap kits, be careful of the shipping fees and find a seller that will combine at a reasonable fee, most of the 8 buck kits seem to have that much in shipping fees, and that kind of kills the great deal, so make sure you get a good combined rate.

John

The largest private tank museum in the world: part two: Germans

Here's part two of our excursion to the MVTF, the Militairy Vehicle Technology Foundation. For more about the museum, which is privately owned, go here

Yesterday we looked at a bunch of American vehicles, today I figured we will look at the German WW2 tanks and other vehicles.

Here's the star of the museum: a fully restored Panther tank, only one of two fully restored Panthers in the world. 

This particular vehicle was found in a bog in the Ukraine in the 1990's and brought back to life here at the museum. 

You can see the anti magnetic textured armor on the side of the Panther 

You can see the size difference between the Stuart and the Panther, this tank is truly huge 

The museum has two 88mm Flak guns, this one actually served in Spain, before WW2. 

All the details have been restored

Here's one of my favorites: the Kettenkraftrad. This vehicle looked in perfect shape....

with original weapons mounted on the back of the halftrack 

Here are two halftracks 

and the inside. You get a good feel for the how soldiers were transported. 

I always feel ambivalent about seeing the SS logo, but no one in the museum is glorifying the dark past - it's meant for education. When I showed this image to my 9 year old daughter, she asked me about it and it gave me an opportunity to tell her a bit about it. 

Here's the Afrika Korps corner

 Check the hand grenades in on the right

and this amazing, running, BMW with sidecar. John mentioned this would probably be close to 100.000 dollars worth. 

Last post will feature British and, for my friend Tony, Russian tanks!

Here's the link to the first part of this series

SC Mike