1/72 Mars Merkava & Orion Israeli Infantry

Gallery Article by Greg Kerry on Apr 25 2013

 

This was the fourth (and probably last) Mars kit I tried.  It shares the attributes and faults of the other kits I've described here.  Worst fault is the same as with the Challenger: the lower hull is too narrow to fit the upper part (and thus needs to be widened).  Also, the road wheels on this kit were odd in that they all had a strange extra lip around them (not just molding flash) which had to be cleaned off.  All this done, the upper hull detail proved quite nice and the tracks were far more accurate than in any of the other kits - but then I found the armor side skirts didn't fit very convincingly either.

However, once it was all together it looked well enough so I painted it with Tamiya acrylics, washed and dry-brushed it with watercolors and refused to worry about the lack of decals.

 

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I tried the Orion figures as an alternative to my more usual Caesar Miniatures offerings. Alas, they didn't compare so well.  The Orions are quite well detailed but their poses aren't so convincing and finally they have too much of a troll-like look.  Also, a few of the figures are just odd: one appears to be a female nurse, another looks like a civilian yet neither really Jewish or Arab looking.  But there are three tankers which is very useful. Anyway, I painted them in similar fashion to the Merkava. 

The base was some odd scrap with a plaster house wall, wooden telephone pole, wet-and-dry paper roadway and a little real dust.

For the first photo I simply used a crudely painted paper backdrop sufficiently far from the model to be slightly out of focus - a nice stormy looking, atmospheric background.

Greg Kerry

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Photos and text © by Greg Kerry