Son of Gods

I ordered a couple of Mark V Composite tanks from Syborg. These are more commonly known as Hermaphrodites, as they have one male sponson and one female sponson, using the terminology of the Great War. In Russia they were known as "Ricardos", after the manufacturer's name on the engine.

In order to get a model in 15mm with one gun and one MG sponson to date you had to ask a manufacturer nicely to mix things up and then apply both file and Miliput. Consequently I haven't bothered, and just subbed in a couple of Mark IVs if I've needed them in an RCW game. When I saw the Syborg catalogue at Partizan I noticed it had the Mark V Composite listed. Simon didn't have any in stock, but said he'd print me some if I ordered them. 

Well I did. Simon sent me the scans or whatever so I could check they were what I wanted. The cost was £6 each, plus £3.50 postage. I got them within a working week of ordering them.

Enough of the preamble. What are they like?

They come complete with unditching beam, which is printed on. The running rails are solid, and I chose not to drill them out, relying on black paint to create the illusion. If you can see there's some sloping under the guns, as a consequence of the printing process. I could have filed that flat, but I'm not used to the material, and I thought it didn't show that badly. I contemplated drilling the guns and MGs out and replacing them with brass rod, but decided against it.

This picture shows the male side, with the 6 pounder guns. I've painted them as "White" tanks, but I may have got the recognition stripes the wrong way round. These are based on the Osprey. I have Deryabin's Russian booklet on the subject, and that shows the stripes horizontally. I forgot I had that book when I painted them, until after I'd done the varnish.

Here you can see the opposite sides, female to the left, male to the right. The prints, like earlier ones I got, are a little bit ridgy, but less so than before. With the way I paint and varnish, these marks are barely perceptible.

Here we are head on, and you can clearly see the mismatched sponsons, - and the slopey underside of the guns. You can also see the print had an issue with the underside of the unditching beam. The underside looks messy as I stuck it to a piece of cork in order to paint it. I can tell you that hot melt glue bonds this type of print to cork really, really, well.

A final shot of them. They've come out okay, in fact I'm rather pleased with them. I'd have preferred some metal models, but these will serve their purpose perfectly adequately and it has saved me a lot of work on a conversion I'd probably never have done anyway.

It will be a little while before they make it to the table top, but a useful addition to the armoury.